It was his first screenplay and he had exactly one director in mind. Only Stanley Kubrick could pull off a three-hour black comedy about a string of teen tragedies.

Writer Daniel Waters even claimed the introductory cafeteria scene was an homage to Full Metal Jacket. He chased Kubrick, got nowhere, and finally gave the script to friend-of-a-friend Michael Lehmann.

HEATHERS (1988) stars 16-year-old Winona Ryder as Veronica, the reluctant fourth member of a ruling clique of girls otherwise named Heather. Christian Slater is JD, the outsider who seduces her into a killing spree staged to look like an epidemic of self-destruction.

New World Pictures didn’t know how to sell a comedy this dark, and it flopped, earning about a third of its budget. Then cable and video found it, and a box-office failure became one of the most quoted films of its generation - not to mention a hit off-Broadway musical.

There was a darker, much longer version that never got made. In the original script, JD’s homicidal machinations cause the deaths of hundreds of Westerburg High students. All meet again at an afterlife prom, punch bowls full of drain cleaner, Martha Dunnstock providing musical entertainment.