[1] He was 30 years old and working on the Space Shuttle for Hughes Aircraft Company when he decided that what he really wanted to do with his life was to be a screenwriter.
His biggest success would come when Langen was hired to work on the film adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The original treatment of 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was written by Bobby Herbeck; Langen was brought in by Inga Vainshtein, who ran Limelight Productions film division, to do a "Page One rewrite," that is, a complete revision based on a screenplay that a studio had deemed interesting bur unworkable as submitted.
Inga Vainshtein and Langen approached the reworking of the existing script by first figuring out their potential audience base.
Figuring out how young the key demographic was, Langen and Vainshtein realized that the script would have to appeal to both kids and their parents.
The main story was aimed at kids while the jokes and comedic references would appeal to the parents who would not be opposed to seeing the film more than once.