10 Totally Confusing Hollywood Screenwriting Disputes

Terry Gilliam has fought several wars with Hollywood throughout his career, but one of his most contentious battles was over credit for his adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear And Loathing In Last Vegas. Writers Alex Cox and Tod Davies completed a script in the mid 1990s that Thompson found unsatisfactory. Gilliam was hired to direct the film with only ten days to write a new script. Still, he and frequent collaborator Tony Grisoni wrote an entirely new screenplay that Thompson preferred and was subsequently filmed.

Shortly before the film’s release, the WGA insisted that Cox and Davies would be the only writers to receive on-screen credit because it deemed Gilliam’s script substantially similar to the original. Gilliam argued that different scripts that were adapted from the same novel would obviously be similar. Though the WGA allowed Gilliam and Grisoni to be mentioned first in the credits, Cox and Davies still receive on-screen credit for a screenplay they didn’t write.

In retaliation, Gilliam and Grisoni published their screenplay as “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas: Not The Screenplay” and Gilliam burned his WGA card during a public appearance. In addition, Gilliam and Grisoni were denied co-writing credit on their next film The Brothers Grimm despite substantially rewriting the screenplay. They credited themselves as “Dress Pattern Makers” instead.