[5] Rudnick's first play was Poor Little Lambs, a comedy about a female Yale student's attempt to join The Whiffenpoofs, an all-male singing group.
[8] In the late 1980s, Rudnick moved into the top floor of a Greenwich Village brownstone, which had once been the 1920s home of the actor John Barrymore.
[citation needed] Rudnick also wrote Valhalla, which entwined the lives of a World War II soldier from Texas with Ludwig, the Mad King of Bavaria,; Regrets Only, a drawing room comedy starring Christine Baranski and George Grizzard,; and The New Century, a collection of related one-acts, which was produced at Lincoln Center and for which the actress Linda Lavin won a Drama Desk Award.
"[17] Rudnick has worked as an uncredited script doctor on films including The Addams Family and The First Wives Club.
He was credited through the pseudonym "Joseph Howard" for his work on Sister Act, which was originally intended as a vehicle for Bette Midler.
He received sole writing credit for Addams Family Values, In & Out, and the screen version of his play Jeffrey.
In 1988, Rudnick began producing satirical film criticism for Premiere Magazine writing from the perspective of a married woman living in Manhattan named Libby Gelman-Waxner.
Rudnick (as Libby) resumed writing a monthly column for Entertainment Weekly in 2011 and occasionally contributes reviews to The New Yorker.
[19] Publishers Weekly, in a review, stated that the book included "writing that's hilarious, profane and profound (often within a single sentence.
)"[20] Scholastic also published his second Young Adult novel It's All Your Fault which Booklist called "A laugh-out-loud, irreverent tale built on as much snarkiness as sweetness.