Hollywood's 10 Most Surprising Early-Career Screenwriting Credits

Breaking into moviemaking involves paying your dues. Rare are the Diablo Cody-like overnight successes; far more common are the writers and directors who toil on paycheck jobs before they get to explore their passion projects. Below are 10 scripts written by some big-name Hollywood scribes early in their careers…

10. Aaron Sorkin, The American President (1995)
This may not seem that much of a surprise given the political themes in Sorkin’s recent work, but tonally, the Michael Douglas-Annette Bening White House rom-com is far removed from he brittle hard-talking dramas like The West Wing and The Newsroom. (The film was Sorkin’s third produced screenplay, coming after 1992’s A Few Good Men and 1993’s Malice. He later did some uncredited work on action-thrillers likeThe Rock and Enemy of the State.) The first draft of President reportedly ran 385 pages — applying the page-of-script-equals-minute-of-screen time formula means this version would ran almost six and a half hours.

9. Tony Gilroy, The Cutting Edge (1992)
The man who adapted Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne book series for the big screen — and wrote and directed the Best Picture-nominated Michael Clayton — got his first “written by” with this fan-favorite romance starring D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly. Almost all of Gilroy’s credits since (including Dolores Claiborne, Duplicity and State of Play) have explored more serious terrain, but as the writer told Movieline when he was starting out. ” I was so desperate to get a movie made.”

8. Busy Philipps, Blades of Glory (2008)
Speaking of “toe picks”… Busy Philipps is an actress best known for her work on TV shows like Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek and Cougar Town. She also has one writing credit on her resume: the Will Ferrell figure-skating comedy Blades of Glory. While Philipps has yet to fully explain how her storyline for Blades became a movie — she did acknowledge it in an interview with US Weekly: “I have a ‘story by’ credit on Blades of Glory. You’re welcome, America.” Thank you?

7. Joss Whedon, Toy Story (1995)
Fans of the Avengers director define the Early Whedon-era as his writing on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But in the midst of all that slaying, Whedon was one of four writers given a screenplay credit on 1995’s groundbreaking Toy Story. (His also found time to work on Alien: Resurrection and the animated sci-fi flick Titan A.E.)

Whedon has described his role on Toy Story as that of script doctor, saying “They sent me the script, and it was a shambles, but …the concept was gold. It was just right there. And that’s the dream job for a script doctor: a great structure with a script that doesn’t work.” He shared his Pixar experience in a 2012 Reddit AMA: “It was so much fun. They were in this crappy, sprawling space in the middle of nowhere, and I spent most of my time with Lasseter, [Andrew] Stanton, [Pete] Docter and the late, very great Joe Ramft, just making jokes, pitching ideas and watching them get Sharpie head-aches from sketching. We all learned so much from that experience. Mostly about Sharpies.”

6. Vince Gilligan, Home Fries (1998)
Those who appreciated the loving, romantic side of meth-dealing murderer Walter White might not be surprised to learn that the Breaking Bad creator has a soft and sweet dimension of his own. Gilligan’s first Hollywood credit was for the little-seen 1993 fantasy-romance Wilder Napalm — he gained attention for writing 1998’s Drew Barrymore rom-com Home Fries (which he wrote it in college).

Gilligan used a quick shot of a Burger-Matic — Fries’ fictional fast-food joint — in an episode of Breaking Bad.

5. M. Night Shyamalan, Stuart Little (1999)
The writer-director of 1999’s The Sixth Sense and 2002’s Signs has moved to more family-friendly fare as of late, with movies like The Last Airbender and the Will Smith-Jaden Smith actioner After Earth. But many forget that around the same time Shyamalan was working on The Sixth Sense, he’d also been a gun-for-hire on the hit family-comedy Stuart Little. Shyamalan also recently revealed that he was a ghost writer on another 1999 film: thecoming-of-age comedy She’s All That – a claim disputed by credited screenwriter R. Lee Fleming Jr. in a since-deleted tweet. Bizarre.

4. Alexander Payne, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)
The writer-director behind such modern gems as Election, Sideways and The Descendants is a double-nominee for Most Surprising Credit: In 2001, he was one of three writers who worked on Jurassic Park III — thought to be a franchise killer, until we learned about next year ‘s Jurassic World). More puzzling is his involvement with the 2007 Adam Sandler-Kevin James gay-panic comedy Chuck and Larry, a short three years after he won a best adapted screenplay Oscar for Sideways. As reported by Vulture in 2007, the finished product bore little resemblance to the “sensitive but sharply funny” script Payne and frequent-collaborate Jim Taylor turned in to the studio. ” We wrote a pretty darn good screenplay,” Payne told Moviefone in 2011. “And then turned it in and kind of forgot about it. … Adam Sandler got involved and brought in his team to … well … to ‘Sandlerize’ it. It’s not what we wrote.”

3. Judd Apatow, Heavyweights (1995)
At first glance, the strangest credit associated with this underrated fat-camp comedy is Ben Stiller’s playing one of lead roles — heavily touted in a repackaged 2012 Blu-ray release. But look closer and you’ll see sharing the writing credits with director Steven Brill is current King of Comedy, Judd Apatow — four years away from his TV cult-hit Freaks and Geeks. Apatow’s history with Stiller dates back even further: After writing for Tom Arnold’s three Naked Truth HBO specials, the comedian co-created The Ben Stiller show with the actor in 1992. That experience allowed a “Roger Daltrey”-haired Apatow to serve not only as writer but executive producer of Heavyweights at the tender age of 26. “It was that time in life when you have no responsibilities, so you can just go to a summer camp and shoot a movie,” Apatow told Movieline.

2. Louis C.K., Pootie Tang (2001)
There’s no doubt that the Louie comic is one of today’s comedy titans, but he doesn’t exactly scream street slang — or whatever you’d call the unintelligible dialect (“Sa da tay!,” “Sepatown!,” “Cole me on the panny sty!”) identified with this cult classic. After steady gigs writing for Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, Dana Carvey and Chris Rock, C.K. followed Rock to the big screen, penning both of his 2001 movies, Down to Earth and Pootie Tang (and helming the latter).

The Louis C.K.-Pootie Tang marriage was not a happy one, however. C.K. was fired from directing the movie before its completion (“I was sucking at making the movie, and they rightfully fired me,” he has said). Though the once-critically lambasted comedy has grown a devout following in the years since, its author still considers Pootie a massive failure. At a Television Critics Association panel in 2012, C.K. called the film “a tragedy to me,” and “a very huge mistake” that “never should have been made.”

1. J.J. Abrams, Gone Fishin’ (1997)
And the award for Most Surprising Early Credit goes to the writer of a little-seen Joe Pesci-Danny Glover fishing comedy. Known then as Jeffrey Abrams, his prior screenwriting credits included Taking Care of Business (1991) starring Jim Belushi, Regarding Henry (1991) starring Harrison Ford (1991) and Forever Young (1992) starring Mel Gibson. A year later, Jeffrey Abrams became known as J.J. Abrams — and his career would take off. He was one of six credited writers (along with our old friend Tony Gilroy) on Armageddon (1998), and who would go on to create TV’s Felicity, Alias and Lost before of course being given the keys to reboot both Star Trek and Star Wars.

To this day, it seems Abrams has never publicly addressed his role in the creation of Gone Fishin’.

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