In the nineties leaze merchant Joe Eszterhas (the writer responsible for Basic Instinct and Showgirls) could basically sneeze into a tissue and get paid millions for the movie rights. He really out did himself with the pitch for One Night Stand though, a movie about a man whose short-lived affair slowly destroys his marriage. When the flash of inspiration came to Eszterhas he simply scribbled it down on a nearby cocktail napkin, before later showing it to a studio executive. Instead of the executive recoiling in horror that a professional writer just handed him an outline written on a napkin, he instead read it and hired Eszterhas to turn it into a script; for which he was paid the modest sum of $4 million. When the final movie came out he was upset the director completely rewrote his screenplay, though since it turned out to be one of the better films based on his work, this was for the best. If nothing else, One Night Stand is the best movie ever made that was inspired by a used napkin.
