 Brooks agreed to produce and direct Old Friends, a screenplay by Mark Andrus. Andrus'script "needed you to suspend disbelief" but Brooks realised "my style when directing is that I really don't know how to get people to suspend disbelief." Brooks spent a year reworking the screenplay: "There were changes made and the emphasis was changed but it's the product, really, of a very unusual writing team," and the project became As Good as It Gets, taking a year to produce after funding had been secured. According to The New York Times, Brooks "was constantly experimenting, constantly reshooting, constantly re-editing" the film, changing its ending five times and allowing the actors to improvise the film's tone.
