These Things Take Time

Heh. Back when I was first dating through newspaper personal ads, before Internet dating, I had lunch with a pleasant screenwriter in Los Angeles. We'd spent some hours over a week or two in phone conversations during the wee hours, since he was a total night owl and I was between jobs and staying up all night.

Anyway, I just read some entertainment news today and noticed the screenwriter's name associated with a project slated to star Meg Ryan. I wonder if that's the screenplay he sold a few weeks before we met—that would make it at least 10 years between his selling the screenplay and the studio's signing Meg Ryan to star in the movie.

Allison Burnett and I had some fun, benign phone chats but didn't feel a spark when we finally met. Still, I'm tickled for him. I remember he lived in a quaint Craftsman bungalow around the corner from Nicole Brown Simpson's former place; he said he sold his screenplay for something like $100K at the time, and bought a Volvo as soon as he got paid.

After some dutiful poking around online I see he's a wildly successful writer.

I doubt he's still driving that Volvo. ;-)