I accepted the deal and eagerly awaited the wire transfer. I remember thinking how fun it would be to look at my account balance and see $50,000. However, my account was overdrawn, so when the money was wired, upon checking my balance I saw the slightly less satisfying $49, 922. Still, it was a lot of money for someone not used to money, and not good with money, to have. I remember feeling nervous at the time, having all that cash in my account, like I would black out one night, run to Vegas and lose it all. Over the next few weeks, I ensured that wild gambling losses were not in my future. After my agent got his 10 percent, I took care of all my personal debts, paid off a student loan, two high-interest credit cards and my computer. I blew about $5,000 on god knows what, which left me with approximately $20,000. I got a financial advisor, opened an IRA, invested in some stocks and set aside the rest for taxes. I put the remaining funds designated for the IRS in a Money Market account and then explained to my financial advisor that one day I might call him and ask him for the money, but under no circumstances should he give it to me, unless it is in the form of a check made out to the United States Treasury.

With all the financial dissemination going on it was a miracle that I kept my day job. But I did, which I considered the pinnacle of responsibility at the time. However, four months later I quit, finding it impossible to compartmentalize my double life. I had to field a number of "Plan B"-related phone calls on a daily basis, and offering line changes like "You better take insurance out on your ass, because there's gonna be none of it left" while you're sitting in the reception area of a law office is, simply, unprofessional. When I received approximately $11,000 as payment for another rewrite, I quit my job and dedicated myself completely to "Plan B." Contractually it was pay for a single rewrite, but it implied that many rewrites were necessary. Considering the projected budget was a lowly $2 million for this production, I was already overpaid. Money was no longer an issue.

During the next eight months, I performed so many rewrites I finally stopped counting. It was only then that I realized how natural it had become to me. "Plan B" was my skill set. Some people learn carpentry, bookkeeping, plumbing. Some people go to law school. Some people go to medical school; I wrote "Plan B." It is at once my greatest point of pride and my finest shame.

I remember waking up one morning after a long night of "Plan B" rewrites, blanketed under a pile of papers. As I pulled bits of script out from beneath the sheets I thought for a long while about what I might have become had "Plan B" never been. Would I have made more of my life? Would I ultimately be a more substantial human being? Well, yes. But then I realized I didn't care. I am the kind of person who invents the Pet-Stay Collar, I'm the kind of person who sleeps with 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper, I'm the kind of person who doesn't think that peeing should be implied, and I'm the kind of person who looks for the joke first and figures the substance will follow. Humor is as meaningful and as substantial as anything else; it just has a better front. And while I loathe discussions of character arcs, I must provide one for you here. This is my arc.

"Plan B" was shot in the summer of 2000, with Diane Keaton playing Fran and Paul Sorvino as Joe. Our first West Coast premiere was scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001. We had a week-long limited theatrical release in Boston and Los Angeles. I attended one of those screenings with four complete strangers, and even followed a pair of women into a restroom afterward hoping to overhear their review (they were already on the subject of footwear). And that was it.

Other than a couple of small film festivals, "Plan B" has not been seen in the rest of the United States. It is, however, available in Bulgaria and Vietnam. Recently, Warner Bros. purchased the video rights to the film and I have been assured it will be on DVD one of these days, possibly this summer. This is good, because now I finally have an answer to the question I've been asked repeatedly over the last four years: What happened to "Plan B"? But long ago I stopped thinking about when "Plan B" would be in theaters, on cable or in your local video store. "Plan B" isn't about the DVD I plan on giving as Christmas gifts ad infinitum; it is about the hours, days, weeks I spent sitting alone in a room, trying to find the joke.

In the final draft of "Plan B," Raymond wears snow chains instead of a dog collar. And there is only one dog, thankfully. Donnie, the first and sweetest prisoner, falls in love with Fran -- Stockholm syndrome at its finest. In the end the gangsters try to prove their deaths by splattering themselves with ketchup and lying still in an open grave. I made one final, valiant attempt to make the prostitute a maid. I even suggested that she come from a topless cleaning service called Got It Maid. But the answer was no. And this time, I learned my lesson: Sometimes a hooker is just a hooker.

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