So Did M. Night Shyamalan Really Rewrite the Script For SHE'S ALL THAT?

For a while now, it has been rumored and reported that writer and director M. Night Shyamalan, who is best known for his thrillers The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, actually wrote the 1999 teen rom-com, She’s All That. Now, if you look the film up on IMDb, you’ll see the writer credited with the film is R. Lee Fleming Jr., but if you listen to the film’s audio commentary, you’ll hear director Robert Iscove saying that Shyamalan polished up the movie’s script.

As there probably aren’t a whole lot of people who have listened to the audio commentary, the news didn’t go widespread until an interview with Movies.com, in which Shyamalan said: “I ghost-wrote the movie She’s All That,” and the news really began to spread. But that’s when R. Lee Fleming Jr. jumped in to try and refute the claim. When one Twitter user, James Mitchell wrote, “OMG, at the end of his career, it turns out he was a ghost writer all along #spoileralert” — referring to Shyamalan — Fleming responded with this (since-deleted) tweet:

“Only in his mind, James.”

More recently, Fleming also tweeted (and deleted) a quote attributed to Mark Twain, that read:

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

So who’s right? Both writers, according to movie producer and NYU adjunct professor Jack Lechner, who served as Miramax’s head of development in the late ’90s. As Lechner explained in a comment left at The Mary Sue on Monday:

“R. Lee Fleming wrote the script we bought, which is recognizably the same movie you saw (if you saw SHE’S ALL THAT). M. Night Shyamalan did an uncredited rewrite on the script, and a very good one that got the movie green-lit.”

EW called Lechner just to make sure the comment was legit — and after confirming that he wrote it, he reiterated that Shyamalan “did more than a polish” on the movie’s script:

“He did a solid rewrite … He made it deeper, made the characters richer.”

“I can see how Fleming would say it’s his movie, and I can see why M. Night would say it’s his movie,” Lechner continued. “They’re both right.”

I get why you’d want to be credited for writing a movie, but I also don’t think anyone cares that much about the script of She’s All That all these years later. It doesn’t change the fact that Shyamalan went on to have a solid movie career, and Fleming has had a steady TV writing career. Good for both of them, hopefully they can move on.