Kevin Pollak said he signed up for the movie in part because he was impressed with Freddie Prinze Jr.’s performance in The House of Yes a few years earlier and was interested in working with him. Writing R. Lee Fleming Jr. is officially credited as the sole screenwriter for the film. In a 2002 interview, M. Night Shyamalan stated that he polished the screenplay while adapting Stuart Little and writing a spec script for The Sixth Sense. This was also confirmed in the film's audio commentary by Iscove. In 2013, Shyamalan claimed that, rather than simply polishing Fleming's original script, he actually ghost-wrote the film. This was disputed by Fleming. Jack Lechner (who served as Miramax's head of development in the late 1990s) confirmed that technically both Shyamalan and Fleming contributed to the script: Fleming wrote the initial script that Miramax bought, while Shyamalan did an uncredited rewrite (doing more than "a polish") that got the film green-lit. Lechner reiterated that content from both writers was included in the final cut of the film. Producer Richard N. Gladstein said that the script "was pretty much done" already, but that Shyamalan's changes "helped enormously with the relationship with Kevin Pollak [who played Laney's father, Wayne]". Iscove attributed the performance art piece and the hacky sack sequence to Shyamalan. Fleming attributed the line "Am I a fucking bet?" to Shyamalan. Fleming included various pop culture references in his script: Laney Boggs was named after two characters played by Winona Ryder, Kim Boggs from Edward Scissorhands and Laney Pierce from Reality Bites; the characters Zack and Taylor were named after two of the three members of the band Hanson. Pollak constantly guessing Jeopardy answers incorrectly is a running joke, which he previously did in the 1997 film Truth or Consequences, N.M.. The idea was in Fleming's script but Pollak expanded and improvised his answers. Iscove was influenced by the movies of John Hughes and was trying do something different for the '90s generation that would still resonate. He stressed the importance of the story having a heart, how Zack had to be worthy of Laney, and how Laney had to learn to be more open. The story was rewritten to better fit Prinze Jr. and make Zack a more sympathetic character with his own challenges. Iscove was well aware that it was implausible to suggest Rachael Leigh Cook was ugly, but said it