Joe Eszterhas talks Hollywood smoke screen

Eszterhas: "I'm haunted by the fact that I may have caused lives to be lost."

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(CNN) -- For Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, the road to fame and fortune was often full of smoke. Cigarettes were a critical element in developing his characters -- chief among them, Sharon Stone's role in "Basic Instinct."

Eszterhas is now apologizing for the part he has played in glamorizing smoking on the silver screen after being diagnosed and treated for throat cancer, the result of a life-long smoking habit.

CNN anchor Paula Zahn spoke to Eszterhas on Monday about his illness and his current cause.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Good to see you, good to see you looking so well. ... How is your health?

JOE ESZTERHAS, SCREENWRITER: It's good for the time being. The terrible, diabolic thing with this disease is that you are always looking behind your shoulder every couple months with the most recent checkup to see whether there is any sign of it, and I thank God to say at this point there is not.

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ZAHN: Thank God is right. This has caused you to go on a very personal journey, a journey, I imagine, you never thought you would you take... to a point now where you have considered yourself, or called yourself, an accomplice in the murders of untold human beings.

ESZTERHAS: Yes.

ZAHN: When did you come to that realization?

The most difficult personal lesson

ESZTERHAS: Well, I have spent a lot of time in the past 18 months since my surgery around cancer wards and around people with this disease. You know, I met, for example, an 18-year-old boy who didn't smoke but his mother was a chain smoker, who had cancer of the throat. I've seen a whole bunch of really horrifying things. And, of course, my own experience in the first three or four months was absolutely excruciating. So I've learned the most difficult and personal lesson, and at a certain point, I literally asked God for strength to get through this, and I promised him that if I would, then I would do everything I can to stop people from smoking, and also on my own particular turf, to stop Hollywood from showing smoking. So that's what I'm doing.

ZAHN: What a challenge you have on your hand. The American Lung Association has reported that depictions of tobacco use are in over two-thirds of last year's top 25 box office hits, including 11 of them that are rated PG-13.

Haunted by his past

ESZTERHAS: That's an absolute sin. Look, I begin by criticizing myself. I've written 14 movies, and in many of them, people were smoking, and heroes were smoking. I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking. Of course, I regret it. I'm haunted by the fact that I may have caused lives to be lost.

The irony to this is that I don't think it would be very difficult to stop this. I think if screen writers and directors would get together, or if the guilds would get together, and urge screenwriters and directors not to do movies with smoking, if smoking stars or superstars would get together and say, we are not going to be in movies showing smoking, if a few production entities would get together and say we won't make movies showing smoking, I think it could snowball. There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies.

Rob Reiner, who in my smoking days, I used to nearly loathe, is a hero on this turf because he has almost single handedly led this battle in Hollywood. Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission ... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.

ZAHN: But everybody has seen the warnings on the packs of cigarettes. Why haven't they done this?

Putting down the cigarette

ESZTERHAS: I thought, and I think many other people think, that they are under the radar, that, yes, other people may get sick, but they won't.

I'm here to say that none of us are under the radar, that we are either maiming or killing ourselves and others by continuing doing this. I understand, having been through this, that it is the most difficult addiction in the world to stop, as tough as heroin. To this day, 18 months later, I walk five miles a day, I'm paranoid about picking up another cigarette, and there are certain days when I have an amazing craving, 18 months later, and I literally pray that I don't smoke. It is very difficult, but people have to do it because it will maim or kill them.

ZAHN: I'd like to close with something you wrote in a painfully personal essay about your journey here.

You write, "A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star on screen is a gun aimed at a 12 or 14-year-old. The gun will go off when the kid is an adult. We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smokescreen of phrases like creative freedom and artistic freedom. Those lofty words are lies designed at best to obscure laziness. I know, I have told those lies."

ESZTERHAS: Yes. I have. I will no longer, and I'm hoping that other creative people, screen writers and directors, will stop telling the same lies.

Being more creative

ZAHN: You go on to say -- there are more original ways to reveal a character's personality.

ESZTERHAS: Of course, to show someone smoking is almost a cliche in terms of personal depiction.

ZAHN: Do you want the public to get involved in this in some way? Do you want people to start protesting movies that glamorize smoking?

ESZTERHAS: I don't think it would hurt if the public wrote or sent e-mails to the studios saying why do you have -- why do you persist? Why do you show smoking? What would be the loss if you didn't? I think that might be a really good idea.

ZAHN: Thanks for sharing your story with us. Continued good luck to you, and keep us posted on how Hollywood is reacting to your plea here.

ESZTERHAS: I will continue walking and praying. Thank you.