“We are the experts in Hollywood on what you can and can’t get away with,” says Scott Alexander, one half of the screenwriting team that just won a Golden Globe award for its latest film, The People vs. Larry Flynt. ” Lawyers love us, because we know the rules. And as long as you don’t have Jerry Falwell saying something inappropriate, it’s cool.”

I am seated across a conference table from Alexander and his partner, Larry Karaszewski, in their office on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, Calif., which is trimmed with heavily ironic arcana like framed Slim Whitman records and Chicks in Chains movie posters.