Anthony Bagarozzi

Hunkered down in a spare room at his mother's Laguna Hills home, Charles Mondry and his writing partner Anthony Bagarozzi worked feverishly to finish their screenplay, an action-thriller about an amnesiac suspected of planting bombs throughout Los Angeles. Mondry and Bagarozzi, who met as teen-age video store clerks in Lake Forest in 1987, had no idea if their script would sell, but they knew they were onto something good. How good?

Hunkered down in a spare room at his mother's Laguna Hills home, Charles Mondry and his writing partner Anthony Bagarozzi worked feverishly to finish their screenplay, an action-thriller about an amnesiac suspected of planting bombs throughout Los Angeles. Mondry and Bagarozzi, who met as teen-age video store clerks in Lake Forest in 1987, had no idea if their script would sell, but they knew they were onto something good. How good?

The parties never went away. They are, to many in Hollywood, legendary. They take place in screenwriter Shane Black's Hancock Park home, a mansion set on a well-kept lawn and in a gated community. On this night, it is Black's 43rd birthday party and the cars -- expensive and shiny, like giant jewelry -- come gliding in. Black sips a Grey Goose and soda as he moves from room to room, stopping to flirt with a local weather girl -- "Isn't she beautiful?"