With his writing partner Scott Alexander, this clever, sometimes subversive screenwriter has risen above two early flops to pen two of the more successful and controversial biopics of the 1990s. A fan of schlocky drive-in movies from childhood, the Indiana native was a film critic for an NBC affiliate and wrote "Beyond Our Control", a local satirical TV show (which won an award at the Chicago International Film Festival).

Karaszewski teamed up with his USC roommate Scott Alexander and sold the crime comedy "Homewreckers" to 20th-Century Fox for $300,000 in 1986, though the film was never