The first screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, written on cocktail napkins and fueled by margaritas, was a female action-thriller about girls who kill members of the Navy Seals.
The script “never saw the light of day,” Ms. McCullah Lutz added, but it cemented a partnership that has made the pair that rarest of Hollywood commodities: a successful female writing team, one whose output (“Legally Blonde,” “Ella Enchanted,” “She’s the Man”) has been frothily funny yet informed by female empowerment.
“I guess all our films have been about people learning they don’t need to be what others expect them to be,” Ms. McCullah Lutz said. “It just happens. We get to the end of a script, and I say, “Well, we did it again.’ ”
The latest example reached theaters on Friday: “The House Bunny,” starring the “Scary Movie” star Anna Faris as a rabbit-ear-wearing beauty who gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion. Ms. McCullah Lutz and Ms. Smith had sought out Ms. Faris, having admired her in films like “Just Friends.”
“We saw a beautiful actress who was weird and brave and bold in her comedy,” Ms. Smith said. “It didn’t seem like she was being hampered by vanity or likability. She was just kind of this hilarious, hot lunatic.”
