Screenwriter Spotlight

I know it's cliche to cry about screenwriters not getting any credit, but it's pretty crazy. Especially since in TV it's the directors who are so interchangeable. When the Best Director category came up on the Emmys, I realized I had worked with every single one of them back on Dharma & Greg (I'm old).

Yet in film, the directors are "geniuses". No one really cares about who wrote what, even though that's the basis for everything in the movie. Very illogical.

Anyway, I was watching the movie Limitless recently - which was a very okay movie - and as per usual I looked up the writers on it. One of them was Leslie Dixon.

I had never heard of Leslie Dixon, and neither have you. But it turns out, she's been writing movies for exactly 25 years, with 13 produced features under her belt. It's amazing to have that kind of career and yet we don't know who the hell she is. Alas, that's the way it goes for a movie writer.

What has she written besides Limitless?

She did the remake to Heartbreak Kid, which people did not like but was actually not the worst movie I've ever seen. She wrote Hairspray, the Reese Witherspoon movie Just Like Heaven, Freaky Friday, and Pay It Forward.

That's not too shabby. It definitely would pay the bills. But before that, she wrote:

The Thomas Crowne Affair with Pierce Brosnan. She seems to specialize in these remakes, and while the other ones weren't too great, I love the Thomas Crowne Affair. Very clever movie, with a sick ending.

Before that, she wrote Mrs. Doubtfire. That's the one that probably set her up for the last 15 years.

But let's go back further, cause she also wrote the great Patrick Dempsey vehicle Loverboy, and the Bette Midler/Shelley Long comedy Outrageous Fortune.

Sandwiched between those, she wrote a movie I've seen over a hundred times. A little film called Overboard, starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Now let's bring it back, where did we start? Oh yeah, Limitless. Isn't it crazy that the same chick who wrote Limitless, also wrote Overboard? That's range. If I ever met this woman, there is only one question I would want to ask her. Just one. It would be:

Did you invent the rotating shoe shelves for Goldie Hawn's closet in Overboard? Cause that shit was genius.