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SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY (1991, uncredited)
IMDb It was a busy time. Doing re-writes was very lucrative, but not what I liked doing. I flew out to Wilmington, North Carolina, and I never got out of my hotel room. I was staying a hundred yards from the ocean, but I never saw the ocean the whole time I was there. The day I arrived, I was told that the second lead actor had quit because he thought the script was so badly written. I had one week to rewrite the entire second act, and my work had to be strong enough to entice a new actor. The problem they were having was that you had to instantly fall in love with a character as soon as you met him. I thought, How do you make an audience fall in love with someone instantly? Then it hit me. I decided to create a scene where Julia Roberts looks out her window and sees this guy downstairs mowing the lawn and singing the Jet song from West Side Story. It was totally endearing. The next thing I knew, they had a new actor and they got a green light for the movie. Joe Roth, the President of 20th Century Fox, called me from LA saying, “You saved the movie.” It was a great moment. |