Diane Drake worked for Sydney Pollack's production company, Mirage Enterprises, from 1988 to 1992, rising to the position of Vice President of Creative Affairs.[2]
Writing
Drake began writing screenplays in 1991. Her first screenplay, Dog Meets Cat, though never more than optioned material,[3] earned her a writing assignment with Hanna-Barbera. She worked on rewriting The Prince and the Pauper, with dogs, in a project that was never produced.[1]
In 1995 Drake wrote a spec script called Ladies Man, in which a male protagonist who works in advertising has a freak accident which gives him the ability to read women's thoughts. In November 1995, Caravan Pictures which was based at Hollywood Pictures, a division of Disney studios, optioned the script for 18 months.[6]
According to the New York Post, Drake's agent, Justin Dardis of APA, sent Ladies Man to Nancy Meyers in 1996 as a writing sample.[7] In 1999 Nancy Meyers rewrote a script by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, called Head Games, based on a pitch they sold to Touchstone—another division of the same studio that had bought Drake's script—in June, 1997, (nineteen months after Drake's original script had been optioned by the studio and one month after the studio's option on Drake's work had expired.) [8]Head Games was developed with Todd Garner, who served as an executive under Joe Roth, co-owner of Caravan Pictures.[9] Their work also had a male protagonist able to read women's thoughts. Meyers changed the title of Head Games to What Women Want, a line of dialogue taken directly from Drake's script. The New York Post said:
"Nancy later told Paramount she had never read Diane's screenplay, but the record showed she had taken a meeting with Drake based upon the script's submission as a writing sample," the Paramount source added. Drake had her attorneys contact Paramount, and around Dec. 1, 1999, Paramount paid Drake $700,000 - officially saying it was buying Ladies Man.[7]