Script writer is 1 of 2 Brighton friends big in Hollywood

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Nov. 5, 1999) -- What are the odds that two members of a local high school's graduating class -- friends since kindergarten -- would both become major players in Hollywood?

Yet with today's opening of The Bachelor, it's happened.

The romantic comedy starring Chris O'Donnell was written by Steve Cohen, a 1982 graduate of Brighton High School. His lifelong friend and fellow graduate, Ken Sanzel, wrote last year's The Replacement Killers and has since written and directed a made-for-cable movie called Scarred City.

Cohen's Bachelor screenplay was big news in the industry trade papers in 1997 -- it was sold for a substantial $850,000, a major amount in what had been a slow period for big-money script sales.

Cohen adapted the screenplay from a Buster Keaton silent film called Seven Chances. It details what happens when a terminal bachelor learns he'll inherit $120 million of his grandfather's money if he gets married by his 33rd birthday.

"I had written an earlier screenplay which got a lot of attention in Hollywood but ultimately didn't sell," Cohen says. "So I decided to write a second screenplay that would sell. And Hollywood loves remakes, because they can look at scenes and see how they'll work in a new version."

Cohen says he combined aspects of the silent film with some of the "talkie" dialogue of the original 1920s stage play to formulate much of his screenplay. But the film's initial set-up is pure Cohen, he says.

The script made its way to hot young actor O'Donnell, who made it a high priority. Several studios expressed interest and New Line Cinema submitted the winning bid.

Cohen is the son of Morton and Esther Cohen, who still live in Brighton. Steve went from Brighton to Columbia University, where he majored in film, and he now lives in New York City.

Like his title character, he's a bachelor, though involved in a relationship.

Cohen is writing another script, which he also hopes to sell, and then plans to write yet another screenplay, which he also plans to direct.

"I absolutely want to move on to directing my own films," he says.

By the way, old friends Sanzel and Cohen still manage to say hello to each other through their films. Sanzel put a character in The Replacement Killers named Stevie, and Cohen wrote a guy named Sanzel into The Bachelor.