Writer - same as 'The Player'? whoa...

I was reading trivia about Rober Altman's 'The Player' and I saw this tidbit of info-

"Writer Michael Tolkin actually had a film company ring him up and try to option "Habeus Corpus", the blatantly ludicrous film that is pitched within the movie."

So I looked him up and I was suprised to see he also wrote 'Gleaming the Cube'.

Now I enjoy both of these movies, but in very different ways (I don't want to get into to explaing how different they are).

Has anyone else seen them both?
If so, are you suprised by this?

If you haven't seen 'The Player' (you should), he also wrote 'Deep Impact' and 'Changing Lanes' which aren't as good as 'The Player', bu might give you an idea of diferent his work got from GTC.