Pen Pal

Back in 1986, Washington Post film critic Paul Attanasio scripted a front-page Style section tribute to the hot-shot producing team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Touting the release of their “Top Gun,” Attanasio dubbed them the “twin Midases of Melrose Avenue,” heralded Simpson as “the Sugar Ray Robinson of the Pitch,” proclaimed the twosome as “virtually the only vestige of (Paramount’s) glory days.” Attanasio also sketched the Simpson-Bruckheimer film as a combination of “striking visuals, exciting music, straight-ahead narrative drive and texture around the edges.”

When Attanasio left the Post last year, he made his first script development deal with . . . Attanasio said that when his Simpson-Bruckheimer project is done, he’ll move on to a development deal at Columbia (“and I’m doing rewrite work for a major star”).

But he noted on S&B;, “I hold them in the highest esteem as producers. I’m happy to be working for them. My respect for them has only grown through the experience of collaborating with them.

“I think they’re great. That’s what I said in the (Post) piece. I think the same thing today, only more so.”