Scott at 2011-03-22 08:05:08:

Thanks for that link, James. The Paris Review! Such a well-read group of GITS readers! I think this is worth a separate post -- the depiction of writers in Hwood movies. I'll give you a HT for the link. Again thanks.

Carlos M Hernandez at 2011-03-22 10:04:45:

I'm confused. Maybe I just need a refresher or there are pieces of the story missing here, but what is the background?

This doesn't seem like something a newbie spec writer could do, right? Was there a deal already in place with Leslie before the script was written? Rights obtained from the pitch? And then Leslie, frustrated that no one was trying to push the development forward, decided to write it for free with the caveat that if they do not pick it up in [insert time frame], the rights are Leslie's and Leslie's alone?

Scott at 2011-03-22 12:25:35:

@Carlos: Leslie Dixon is an established screenwriter with dozens of credits. Mostly known for comedies, she has for years tried to expand into more action type of projects. Evidently she had zeroed in on Limitless and what she explained in the OP is how she went about securing the rights to it. Reading between the lines, the Weinsteins owned the rights to the underlying source material. She squeezed her way in by basically to write the script for free. They got distracted. Option period ended. She ended up with the rights to the story.

Ferdinand at 2011-03-22 12:34:16:

@Carlos

This is something I would recommend a newbie NOT DO. It would be career suicide to try to pull a fast one on a producer like Harvey Weinstein. You don't want to burn bridges.

Leslie is not a new writer as she wrote the screenplays for Overboard, Thomas Crowne Affair and Mrs. Doubtfire. So Weinstein knew she wasn't a newbie.

Leslie liked the novel The Dark Fields which is what Limitless is based on and wanted to adapt it but found out that Weinstein owned the rights. I believe it was at Miramax before Harvey Weinstein left and while Miramax was imploding. So she wrote Harvey and told him she would write the screenplay on spec. But she added some stipulations in her contract. She wrote the contract and timed it so the contract would expire with her screenplay obtaining the rights. And the rest is history.

This is an amazing tale. She did something writers shouldn't do.

James at 2011-03-22 13:56:26:

Scott: I can't think of much that tops Rip Torn's best-selling novelist in "The Wonder Boys."
"I... (ridiculous pause) am a writer."

Also, Jonathan Franzen has a great interview in last month's Paris Review (should be available on their website eventually, and is still in stores). On him, there's a wealth of interviews, articles (the "Why Bother" essay from the nineties and all the noise over his dispute with Oprah in the early aughts), and youtube videos that reveal his personality as it relates to "the-being-of" a writer. Surely, he'll be the subject of a movie someday.