It wouldn't be a story about M. Night Shyamalan without a bit of mystery: After the director told Movies.com in an interview on May 29 that he helped ghost-write the 1999 teen comedy "She's All That," the film's credited writer, R. Lee Fleming, took to Twitter to refute those claims.
"Only in his mind," Fleming wrote in response to a question about whether Shyamalan actually helped write "She's All That." Fleming's tweet has since been deleted, but the screenwriter did later retweet this famous Mark Twain quote about fibbing:
Despite the protestation of Fleming, whether Shyamalan did indeed ghost-write parts of "She's All That" remains unclear. For what it's worth, however, Shyamalan's claim is hardly new news: the writer-director first discussed his work on "She's All That" back in 2002 during the press rounds for "Signs." On Twitter, screenwriter Brian Duffield noted that Shyamalan was rumored to have only tweaked one part of Fleming's script: the dialogue spoken by Kevin Pollack, who plays Rachel Leigh Cook's father in the film.
Ghost-writing is a common practice in Hollywood, though the ghost-writers themselves are rarely given any public credit. For instance, Aaron Sorkin famously did uncredited work on films like "The Rock" and "Schindler's List," while Joss Whedon lent his touch to "Speed" and "X-Men."
For an alternate theory about R. Lee Fleming, one that posits he might actually be M. Night Shyamalan (he's not), head over to Salon.
