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Having a killer idea and realizing it's already a film
- Thread starter Freestyle
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I spent time on that story, man. Time.
That's actually happened to me several times before, while writing.
I got this wonderful idea of an actor being terrorized by a fan...
...look it up just to make sure it hasn't been done before:
"Misery, by Stephen King"
Damn.
Ironically, I'm a fan of King and that was one of the few books of his I hadn't read.
I got this wonderful idea of an actor being terrorized by a fan...
...look it up just to make sure it hasn't been done before:
"Misery, by Stephen King"
Damn.
Ironically, I'm a fan of King and that was one of the few books of his I hadn't read.
As an aside, "Wings of Desire" is one of my favorite films! Absolutely beautiful. The remake (CIty of Angels) isn't in the same class of film, but is better than I was expecting. Wim Wenders is astounding...check out "Until The End Of The World" (if you can; it's kinda hard to find these days) and "Million Dollar Hotel".
As to the ideas, yeah, we've all been there and can feel your pain. But the good news? If the idea is good (which I feel this one is) there's room in this world for more than one story that uses it. Write your story. Do things a little different than Wings, or put in little nods to the film. Make a good film, and people will talk about how good it is (and maybe compare it to similar stories in a POSITIVE way). Too much emphasis, I think, is put on being different and unique as opposed to just being good. If you've got it all, then, yeah, that's great, but can you think of a few films that suffered from being different for the sake of being different? I can.
And of course, disclaimer: I'm really into folklore and traditional music. Part of that is seeing how stories and songs change over the years, and how they influence new works. And if you're good at it, you can do a song people have heard a million times in a way that they still enjoy it!
As to the ideas, yeah, we've all been there and can feel your pain. But the good news? If the idea is good (which I feel this one is) there's room in this world for more than one story that uses it. Write your story. Do things a little different than Wings, or put in little nods to the film. Make a good film, and people will talk about how good it is (and maybe compare it to similar stories in a POSITIVE way). Too much emphasis, I think, is put on being different and unique as opposed to just being good. If you've got it all, then, yeah, that's great, but can you think of a few films that suffered from being different for the sake of being different? I can.
And of course, disclaimer: I'm really into folklore and traditional music. Part of that is seeing how stories and songs change over the years, and how they influence new works. And if you're good at it, you can do a song people have heard a million times in a way that they still enjoy it!
I pretty much agree with the idea that every (or nearly every) idea has been done before, in some way. The best thing to do is make your story interesting in some way, whether it's similar to another film or not. Like Josh said, films that strive for "uniqueness" and nothing else often come across as pretentious. If you want an example of this, go to a film festival and watch all the hip indie films.
I disagree. I think that telling a story that has been told many times, and hoping that your retelling is somehow unique enough to make it special, is not the pinnacle of writing achievement. Striving for something new (something quality, not just for the sake of newness) is what writers should do. Otherwise you're taking the easy route.
That said I think that West Side Story, for example, is an original twist on an old story, and that you can be very creative in retelling old plots if you do it right. So it goes both ways, I suppose.
That said I think that West Side Story, for example, is an original twist on an old story, and that you can be very creative in retelling old plots if you do it right. So it goes both ways, I suppose.
But you can always make it new. You can bring a brilliant character with 'something' in the eyes, in the way he talks, the way he thinks. You can add something new inside the same history. A surprise in the end. You can add different problems inside the big one.
(er, I think my english in this post is not very convincing)
(er, I think my english in this post is not very convincing)
Yeah, tell me about it. Right as we speak this happens to me with a movie called TED. Mark
Wahlberg. A teddy bear that talks. Only in reverse. I invented the same thing and have made
three shorts playing with the idea. It's normal for my shorts to have 30 views on youtube,
but now one trailer of mine all of the sudden has thirty one thousand views and everybody
are angry with me for finding something crap and not Mark Wahlberg in it. One writes: "This
sucks.....YOU suck." So thanks for stealing my idea. Now I pay for it dearly on top of all.
No, it's just fun, to be honest.
Wahlberg. A teddy bear that talks. Only in reverse. I invented the same thing and have made
three shorts playing with the idea. It's normal for my shorts to have 30 views on youtube,
but now one trailer of mine all of the sudden has thirty one thousand views and everybody
are angry with me for finding something crap and not Mark Wahlberg in it. One writes: "This
sucks.....YOU suck." So thanks for stealing my idea. Now I pay for it dearly on top of all.
No, it's just fun, to be honest.
I sent a script to the BBC once, it got rejected. Three years later the BBC produce a film with all the key elements of my script including the lead character AND even the clothes he wears throughout. The ending is exactly the same too. Coincidence? thats what they said when I wrote a letter.
I now believe that maybe it was coincidence. Good idea's are shared between creatives, its just a matter of who makes it first.
I now believe that maybe it was coincidence. Good idea's are shared between creatives, its just a matter of who makes it first.
Yeah, no one was saying that. I think you've got a bit of a chip on your shoulder and tend to take things in the most extreme way, which is cool (and might serve you well as a writer), but takes conversations a bit too far. Hell, I was trying to be encouraging! I do think a truly unique and different story is absolutely the best a writer can aspire to. But those good, unique ideas are very few and far between. Not because writers are lazy, but because there has been a HELL of a lot of writing done. Same with music. But, the other side of the coin is that just because something has been done before doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. And, to mix metaphors a bit, standing on the shoulders of giants will get you further than reinventing the wheel.
My point was simply this: be unique if you can, but that shouldn't be your primary concern. Being GOOD should be. Eventually, hopefully, you can get to both.
But your West Side Story example is a good one. You know who made a career out of recontextualizing old stories for a modern audience? Shakespeare. Arguably the best and most influential writer of all time, and NONE of his ideas were new and unique. Food for thought!
My bad man, I don't mean to be that way if that's how I come across. Thanks for calling me out, I'll work on that. But I definitely wasn't meaning to be a dick. I'm actually pretty diplomatic in person, but I can see how that wouldn't come across in my limited interactions on this forum.
In any case, I'm coming from the fact that I draw a hard line myself - if a story has already been done, I'm done working on it. That might have something to do with the fact that I've got about 25 story concepts going right now haha. If one isn't original, I'll step back and work on another, no sweat. I know that's not everyone's situation though, I've just been writing for 20 years and have a backlog.
But it's like you said with Shakespeare - lots of extremely successful people have done that. The Beatles are a good example. And the bottom line with anything is to keep writing, so if you're piggybacking in any form and it's teaching you craft then do it and don't stop. I suppose I'd just rather strive to be original. That's my goal.
Another one of these for me was when I had the idea for a cop story where the ghost of a guy's partner appeared to him and helped him solve mysteries - 70s UK TV show. But I ended up adding a mental illness twist and now I'm proud of that story, so I guess what I've been saying isn't true in some ways. Carry on...