Jim Cash

Comprising the unseen half of one of Hollywood's most commercially successful screenwriting teams of the past decade, Jim Cash resided in Michigan where he taught a film course at Michigan State University while partner Jack Epps Jr, a former student, lived in Santa Monica, California and handled all the Hollywood meetings. Cash and Epps learned how to write by computer modem long before it became the rage, and had, in fact, seen one another only a handful of times since they first became partners in 1975. It was a partnership that has attracted big name stars and delivered products of varying quality. Their first produced script was "Top Gun" (1986), the tale of fighter pilots that firmed Tom Cruise's adult stardom. That same year, they also wrote "Legal Eagles," a somewhat muddled romance between prosecutor Robert Redford and defense attorney Debra Winger. Michael J Fox starred in their screenplay for "The Secret of My Success" (1987), in which he was an eager beaver young man from the boondocks on the corporate rise in the big city. In 1989, their script for "Turner & Hooch," teaming Tom Hanks (before he became an icon) with a drooling bulldog in a police tale was produced. Cash and Epps also received screenplay credit for Warren Beatty's adaptation of the comic strip "Dick Tracy" (1990). After several years of development hell and numerous re-writes, "Anaconda," a "Jaws"-like thriller about a documentary film crew terrorized in the jungle by a snake, was released in 1997.