‘The Cheese Stands Alone’: the curious case of the first million-dollar script written by a woman
In the early 1990s, screenwriters flipped the script on directors and actors by becoming the most sought-after and highly paid assets in Hollywood.
When Shane Black sold his Lethal Weapon screenplay for $250,000 at the age of 24, it helped spark a feeding frenzy in the world of spec scripts the likes of which had never been seen. It all ballooned over the next seven or eight years, with Joe Eszterhas being paid a cool $2million for a Showgirls pitch hastily scribbled on a napkin and Black receiving $4million for his Long Kiss Goodnight script. In the midst of this, though, is the curious story of the writer who sold the first-ever million-dollar screenplay penned by a woman in Hollywood history – a script that has still never been produced to this day.
Before the planets aligned and Black’s ultraviolent buddy cop changed the industry, selling spec scripts for huge figures was not the done thing. Before they started being hoovered up by studios in the wake of his success, though, most screenwriting was done on an assignment basis – and female writers were rarely paid anywhere near their worth.
In 1990, several unnamed agents told The Los Angeles Times that even the most successful female writers, such as ET’s Melissa Mathison – who was a friend of Steven Spielberg’s and married to Harrison Ford – and Mask’s Anna Hamilton Phelan, were paid considerably less than their male counterparts. Lawyer David Colden confessed, “I do think that women face discrimination in Hollywood. It’s an old-boys network.”
That landscape is why it was so stunning when Kathy McWorter, an unknown 23-year-old, sold a comedy spec entitled The Cheese Stands Alone for $1million. This was the most money that had ever been paid to a female screenwriter and the largest fee ever paid for a comedy – and it was given to a recent graduate of Cal State Northridge who had only switched to screenwriting classes to prevent herself flunking out entirely. “I don’t know what to do with this kind of money,” a shellshocked McWorter admitted. “I’m still going to shop at Pic ‘n Save.”
Interestingly, The Cheese Stands Alone wasn’t McWorter’s first sale – but it was the first one that cracked the million-dollar mark. She first came to the attention of agent Randy Skolnik when he read her children’s fantasy script, The Boy Who Eats Rocks. He helped her secure a deal for it and another script entitled Bats before he specifically told her to tailor her next script to be as commercial as possible. She, therefore, came up with The Cheese Stands Alone, a rom-com about a Hungarian man who blames the troubles in his sex life on his ex-girlfriend placing a curse on him – and it made her rich beyond her wildest dreams.
At the time, McWorter couldn’t have been accused of lacking confidence. In fact, when asked if her success surprised her, she admitted that she was only shocked by how fast it happened. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Maybe that sounds pompous, but I knew that someday I would do it.”
By 1993, Universal hired McWorter to write the sequel to its 1991 hit Fried Green Tomatoes. Her spec, The War, for which she received $500,000, had finally become her first to enter production, and its director, Jon Avnet, was also the man who made Fried Green Tomatoes. For those sequel duties, she was paid $700,000, and that figure rose to $950,000 once cameras rolled on the film, which starred Kevin Costner and Elijah Wood.
Fast-forward to 2001, and the spec script bubble had well and truly burst. Studios were burned when the likes of Showgirls and The Long Kiss Goodnight tanked at the box office despite the exorbitant fees paid to their writers. On top of that, many of the deals that were struck began to look suspiciously like ego-driven gimmicks designed to make the press.
Unfortunately for McWorter, she was arguably one of the victims of the screenwriting gold rush dying out. Despite selling seven scripts in total, with each one reaching “high six figures,” The War remained the only one that was actually produced. The Cheese Stands Alone, her script that made history and turned the industry on its head, languished in development hell for years and seems extremely unlikely to ever see the light of day. “There are probably ten reasons why it didn’t get made,” a sanguine McWorter lamented. “There’s never one answer.”
It’s unknown if McWorter still writes screenplays or if she’s just been living off the fruits of her incredibly lucrative ’90s labour. One thing is certain: She never had any ambition of becoming a director, unlike many of her contemporaries, such as Black or Thelma & Louise’s Callie Khouri.
As one anonymous executive rather cruelly put it, “Most writers don’t have the temperament to direct. They think they want to be famous, they want to go to screenings, but basically, they became writers so they don’t have to talk to people.” Harsh, but at least McWorter made her money and then some.
