M. Night Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for She's All That. Let me just repeat that wondrous revelation: M. Night Shyamalan once sat down, presumably in a chair, and wrote the script to the 1990s teen sex comedy She's All That. Let's try it in an offhanded way: M. Night Shyamalan, the mind behind the 1999 exercise in frivolity She's All That, wrote the script for that movie. Add it to the chart!

In an interview on May 29, M. Night Shyamalan confessed that he ghostwrote in his past and that he was too embarrassed to even say the name of the film. (Yes, so this news is a little under two weeks old, but it will be breaking news to all the minds and souls that read this.) After the gentlest of prodding from the interviewer, who simply said "We'd love to hear about it," Shyamalan replied: "I ghostwrote the movie She's All That."

If She's All That was not a pre-teen cultural touchstone for you, it's a remarkable film that manages to employ every tired conceit of the teen movie, while draping the characters in banging 90s fashions. Here's how it starts: the most popular boy at school is dumped by the most popular girl, so she can date someone from The Real World named Brock Hudson. To enact revenge on his ex and prove his popularity domination, this smart-jock protagonist places a bet that he can transform a secretly hot girl into an overtly hot girl and get her named prom queen. Here's a key line, a line that M. Night Shyamalan wrote:

"Who the hell does she think she is? There are two thousand girls at this school and I could bump monkeys with every one of 'em. Taylor Vaughan is totally replaceable."

Cutie Freddie Prinze Jr. plays a cutie named Zack. Rachael Leigh Cook (THREE-WORD-NAME LOVE) plays a girl who no one knows is pretty. Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker, Dule Hill, and Anna Paquin all assist. Usher is the DJ at prom who is credited as "Campus DJ." He presides over a choreographed campus dance that still holds up beautifully in the eyes of history (clips below, of course).

Here's why this disclosure is important for your individual life: when people go off on a tirade about M. Night Shyamalan peaking in 1999, you can inform them that their point is no longer blasé, because Shyamalan ghostwrote the cliché-driven teen comedy She's All That in 1999. The IMDB for Full Cast & Crew She's All That (1999), hasn't been updated yet so don't let them check that.

[Movies.com, Image via AP]

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