Playing Against Type/Film Writing


 * Al Franken, comedian, writer, talk radio host and U.S. senator, made an interesting turn as co-writer of the romantic drama When A Man Loves A Woman, starring Meg Ryan as an alcoholic struggling to keep her marriage together.
 * The film is supposedly based on Franken's real life relationship with his wife, who is a recovering alcoholic.
 * Leslie Dixon, usually a comedic writer for films such as the Hairspray remake, also wrote the sci-fi thriller Limitless, about a man who becomes addicted to a powerful mind drug.
 * Aaron McGruder, creator of the comic strip turned animated series The Boondocks, also co-wrote the non-comedic war film Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II.
 * John Patrick Shanley, the Pulitzer Prize winner playwright of Doubt and Academy Award winning writer of Moonstruck also wrote the adaptations of Were Back a Dinosaurs Story and Congo, along with the fantasy comedy Joe Versus the Volcano.
 * If this can be extended to television, Stephen J. Cannell was not limited to cop dramas and adventure shows - as one newspaper article pointed out, do The Greatest American Hero and Baa Baa Black Sheep have any real similarities other than both involving flying?