Who are they fooling? No one buys that you can have a brand new Mercedes and live in a high rise apartment by "reviewing a few scripts" every few months.
Sure, but he has a Civic from the mid-2000s and lives in a typically-priced LA low-rise rental apartment in an okay-but-not-amazing neighborhood. Funnily enough, he's dating a girl in a very similar situation who currently has an occupation of "pet sitter."
If you actually sat down and did the math, it'd be obvious. But most people don't think that hard about it, and will accept an answer of "I'm a script writer" in the context of e.g. telling a Tinder date what you do for a living.
