Screenwriter Ron Bass, who has been called “The Two Billion Dollar Man” because movies he’s written have grossed that much money at the box office, came up in a recent discussion. For those of you who don’t know about Bass, he works with a ‘team’ of researchers, assistants, and writers in their own right to help with his many script projects (he averages between 6 and 7 scripts per year):

“Bass put together his development team in the late 80s. It has turned ‘Ron Bass’ into a machine that moves with brutal efficiency from one project to the next. And it has led to accusations that Bass is not a writer at all, but a manager of other writers whose ideas and opinions he collects, collates and then passes off as his own work. The first person to join him was Jane Rusconi, a former researcher to Oliver Stone on JFK. After Jane came Mimi, and after Mimi came Hannah; and soon there were eight, mostly female team members. (One Hollywood wag has nicknamed the group the “Ronettes”.)”

For more background on Bass, here is a March 1999 BFI article.