# Unexpected screenwriters **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 29, 2022, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920 "2022-03-29T16:58:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Julius\_Henry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8797f3/32.png) [@Julius\_Henry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Julius_Henry)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/21 "2022-03-29T19:39:23Z")
_Shadow of a Doubt_, one of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies, was co-written by playwright **Thornton Wilder** , best know for _Our Town_, and novelist **Sally Benson** , best known for _Meet Me in St. Louis_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/22 "2022-03-29T19:50:52Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > Film critic Roger Ebert wrote the screenplay for the critically panned **Beyond the Valley of the Dolls**. He also wrote the screen stories or screenplays for a couple of other Russ Meyer epics (Russ Meyer did Beyond…) – **Up!** and **Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens** In case you don’t know, Russ Meyer’s films are basically excuses to show women with exceptionally huge breasts. I doubt if any of the customers complained very much about the quality of Ebert’s screenplays ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/23 "2022-03-29T19:54:05Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I doubt if any of the customers complained very much about the quality of Ebert’s screenplays “There was dialogue? I must’ve missed that.” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/24 "2022-03-29T19:54:47Z")
Speaking of absurd sex movies, Nicholas Meyer – author of **The Seven per Cent Solution** and other Sherlock Holmes novels (I’m reading his _Return of the Pharaoh_ right now), director and screenwriter of several Star Trek movies, including II, IV, and VI (the even-numbered good ones) and the King of TV Movies ( **The Night that Panicked America** , **Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders** , and **The Day After** ) also wrote the screenplay for **Invasion of the Bee Girls**. He reportedly tried to get his name taken off, but was talked out of it. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/25 "2022-03-29T20:19:18Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **Roald Dahl** – He wrote the original script for the James Bond film **You Only Live Twice**. Okay, he was a friend of Ian Fleming’s, but does that qualify a childrens’ book author to write adult spy flicks? He wrote a piece for _Playboy_ on how he came to write the screenplay. Dahl’s best work was his stories for adults. He wrote several stories that were dramatized in _Alfred Hitchcock Present_: “The Man from the South,” “Dip in the Pool,” “The Landlady,” and, of course, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” where he also wrote the screenplay. “The Great Switcheroo” and “Bitch” are hardly children’s fare. Dahl made his reputation on sardonic and dark humorous stories, and he was a master of the anticlimax. A Bond film was well within his wheelhouse. Stephen Sondheim wrote several episodes of the TV show _Topper_, and the movie _The Last of Sheila_. AFAIK, none of it was sung. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/26 "2022-03-29T20:34:49Z")
Walter Koenig, best known for playing Chekov on _Star Trek_, wrote scripts for _Land of the Lost_. ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/27 "2022-03-29T23:42:52Z")
_Lifeboat_ (1944) is an "Alfred Hitchcock production by John Steinbeck,” although Jo Swerling got the “screenplay by” credit. Novelist J.G. Ballard had several of his books and short stories filmed. Among his few and much lesser-known works for film is the treatment for _When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth_ (1970). While technically not a screenplay, keep in mind the film’s dialogue consisted of only 27 words. I find this hard to believe, but apparently Quentin Tarantino worked (uncredited) on the script of _Its Pat: The Movie_ (1994). > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > F. Scott Fitzgerald got assigned to many lousy pictures… As I’m sure you’re aware, Fitzgerald wrote - in a disguised manner - about his screenwriting experiences near the end of his life in _The Pat Hobby Stories_: "Pat Hobby is a down-and-out [screenwriter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenwriter) in [Hollywood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,_Los_Angeles,_California), once successful as “a good man for structure” during the [silent age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_film) of cinema, but now reduced to an alcoholic hack hanging around the studio lot. Most stories find him broke and engaged in some ploy for money or a much-desired screen credit, but his antics usually backfire and end in further humiliation. Drawing on his own experiences as a writer in Hollywood, Fitzgerald portrays Pat Hobby with self-mocking humor and nostalgia." (from Wikipedia) Unusual for Fitzgerald, the stories are light and amusing. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/28 "2022-03-29T23:53:12Z")
> [@Dropo](#): > > Unusual for Fitzgerald, the stories are light and amusing. I’d say that most of his short stories are light and amusing, mostly because he wrote them for _The Saturday Evening Pos_t, which paid him a staggering $5,000 a story. That’s why he had the barrels of money to throw away with Zelda. If we’re going with unproduced scripts, one of the most (in)famous in movie history is _[Giraffes on Horseback Salad](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/07/710032236/salvador-dal-meets-the-marx-brothers-in-giraffes-on-horseback-salad)_, the treatment that **Salvador Dali** wrote for the Marx Brothers, or really for Harpo whom he identified with. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/29 "2022-03-30T00:10:52Z")
Has anybody mentioned **Quentin Tarantino‘s** script for _It’s Pat!_? ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/30 "2022-03-30T00:17:03Z")
Joseph Heller, author of _Catch-22_, wrote an [episode](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0644922/) of _McHale’s Navy_. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/31 "2022-03-30T00:26:43Z")
Not exactly what the OP is talking but Bill Murray said one of the reasons he signed on to do the voice of Garfield in _Garfield: The Movie_ was he because he mistook the screenplay writer’s name, Joel Cohen, for Joel Coen of the Coen Brothers. (Another screenwriter for the movie disputes this account though.) ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/32 "2022-03-30T00:29:10Z")
Here’s a weird one… Actor Freddie Prinze Jr. has worked for professional wrestling company WWE as a writer and producer. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/33 "2022-03-30T00:29:32Z")
Now I finally get why Julia Sweeney had that cameo in Pulp Fiction. It was so random and provided nothing to the film. I’m guessing that Quentin just wanted his friend in the film. **Chuck Lorre** , who is famous for creating some of the biggest sitcom hits of recent years (Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men) used to write for cartoons early on. He wrote scripts for the cartoon Heathcliff in the 80s, and was approached to help create the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. He passed on that project, but did help co-write the theme song for the show. He also wrote the song [French Kissin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Kissin_(song)), which Debbie Harry recorded on her second solo album. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/34 "2022-03-30T00:33:00Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Dahl’s best work was his stories for adults. He wrote several stories that were dramatized in _Alfred Hitchcock Present_ : “The Man from the South,” “Dip in the Pool,” “The Landlady,” and, of course, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” where he also wrote the screenplay. “The Great Switcheroo” and “Bitch” are hardly children’s fare. Dahl made his reputation on sardonic and dark humorous stories, and he was a master of the anticlimax. A Bond film was well within his wheelhouse. > > Stephen Sondheim wrote several episodes of the TV show _Topper_ , and the movie _The Last of Sheila_ . AFAIK, none of it was sung. I’ve read his adult fiction (Lamb to the Slaughter was one of my mother’s favorites. This might help explainm me) But it’s not really Bondian. Even with Dahl’s reputation for dark humor, a Bond movie is something else. As for **The Last of Sheila** – my all-time favorite mystery – he co-wrote it with Anthony Perkins. There’s another odd pairing. They supposedly based it on mystery games they used to set up and play with their acting crowd. Anthony Shaffer learned about these and based his play _Sleuth_ on them (I hear some scenes from the movie were filmed in Sondheim’s game-filled apartment). You can see the similarities between Sleuth and Sheila – sadistic games-master playing real-life mind games with a captive audience. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/35 "2022-03-30T00:38:56Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > It still blows my mind that Sylvester Stallone wrote “Rocky”. > > (Sylvester Stallone is a notable action movie star.) - And earned an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/36 "2022-03-30T00:53:50Z")
Pulitzer-winning novelist Dave Eggers co-wrote the screenplay for _Where the Wild Things Are_. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/37 "2022-03-30T02:14:45Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Anthony Shaffer His first screen credit was for _Cry of the Penguins_, described as “A young london biologist spends most of his time pursuing girls rather than pursuing science. When the opportunity to go to the Antarctic to study a colony of penguins presents itself, he agrees to go, not so much for the benefit of science, but rather to impress the girl he has recently been chasing.” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/38 "2022-03-30T03:05:22Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > His first screen credit was for _Cry of the Penguins_ , described as “A young london biologist spends most of his time pursuing girls rather than pursuing science. When the opportunity to go to the Antarctic to study a colony of penguins presents itself, he agrees to go, not so much for the benefit of science, but rather to impress the girl he has recently been chasing.” I’d heard of it under the title **Mr. Forbush and the Penguins** (it’s listed under his accomplishments in the paperback editions of his plays) , but I never saw it. Looking it up on Wikipedia I see it has an impressive cast – John Hurt and Hayley Mills. The review in _The Guardian i_s one we can all strive for: > [@](#): > > _The Guardian_ said the film “isn’t as bad as we’d been led to believe.” ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/39 "2022-03-30T03:15:08Z")
George Miller wrote all of the Mad Max movies, but also both Happy Feet movies and both Babe the pig movies. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920/40 "2022-03-30T05:37:34Z")
Has Jack Nicholson been mentioned yet? Wrote (co-wrote?) the Monkees’ movie **Head**. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unexpected-screenwriters/961920.md?page=3)