Sometimes you have an idea, and someone else ends up executing that idea, years later. Particularly if you're a writer (or some other person for whom the having of ideas is of central importance), that really smarts—"forced to take with shame our own opinions from another."* That's why you've got to get that shit out there, folks!
[The alternative title for this post is: "Scooped!" But we love you and want to help you. Somebody loves you—don't you know it?]
Examples from my own life follow.
2000–1 vs. 2003: The grim reaper(s)
In 2001 I finish a screenplay I started in January 2000, and one of the central original ideas in it was that... Well, you see, this guy dies, and Death comes for him, like the grim reaper, right?—and but (a) it turns out that Death's a girl, a cute one, and the guy totally falls in love with her, plus when he goes looking for her later he finds out that (b) there's more than one Death.
[BLOCH There's more than one of you?
DEATH There isn't just one Domino's delivery guy.
BLOCH Really? Do you have a dispatcher?
DEATH Lenny.]
So, OK. Then—I think it's summer 2003-ish?—along comes Showtime's Dead Like Me, featuring, I gather, (a) a cute gum-chewing Rebecca Gayheart grim reaper, and (b) the concept that there's many grim reapers. I never had the heart to watch.
1999–2006 vs. 2008: Hamlet 2 & Vampire Jesus
Hamlet 2 is a joke I came up with I forget when, but I found a reference to it as far back as Jan. 2, 1999: "I had the idea of Hamlet 2, set in 'London 1599' but filmed in current-day New York..." This idea followed me from project to project: I started and did not finish a number of projects called Hamlet 2**, and a number of other projects featured characters who were writing or had written things called Hamlet 2—most prominently, P.D., the antihero of my unpublished novel Under God (2006). P.D., in the novel, had a thing about irreverent uses of Jesus; here he is arguing with his producer long after the fictional Hamlet 2's release:
"Vampire Jesus," said P.D. "Best part of the movie, and you took it out."
"It didn't make sense."
"It made perfect sense! Why did Jesus rise from the dead after they buried him? Because that's what happens to you when you get bitten by a vampire! You die, and then you rise up and fly off into the sky—to feed on the blood of the innocent!"
"Right."
"Why does Dracula get freaked out by the sight of a cross? You would, too, if you'd been hanging from one by your nailed-up hands for three days! ... You ruined my movie."
..."It didn't make sense! You wrote this great, weird little movie about Harold Bloom and William Shakespeare going on a bender on the streets of 16th-century London, or 20th-century New York...or whatever... There was just no reason for—"
"There was every reason! There's no reason for them to be on the streets at night if they aren't going to be battling Vampire Jesus!"
Anyway, in 2008 a movie came out called Hamlet 2, and it apparently features irreverent use of Jesus—e.g., a song called "Rock Me Sexy Jesus." Again, I didn't have the heart.
2003–4 vs. 2008: A crummy superhero
The idea I had in 2003 and finished writing up into a screenplay in 2004—had some meetings about that damned script, too, came sort of close—was basically this: Batman has no superpowers but has (a) a whole lot of money, (b) a whole lot of training, and (c) a whole lot of scientific know-how, and if you took those three things away you'd wind up with some jerk in a costume going out to fight crime and getting his ass kicked. My superhero worked at a version of the Hustler Store, and although everybody told me later that he had to be younger, I pictured Benicio Del Toro in Fear & Loathing. Basically he got the shit kicked out of him a lot. A sample:
Suddenly, a NOISE from off-screen. Everyone looks up. Standing in the door to the back room is a tall man in his 30s, decked out like a superhero. He's wearing a cape and a mask. This is HIL. He holds up a suitcase.
HIL You lookin' for this?
...Joe lets go of Ted and runs at Hil. Hil throws the suitcase at Joe's face. Joe deflects it with a confident swipe of his arm and punches Hil in the stomach. Hil doubles over, and Joe knees him in the head. Hil goes down immediately...
JOE All right, let's go. (to Hil) Thanks, asshole.
The two punks back out of the store. Hil remains sprawled out on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. We stay with him for a moment.
HIL (to himself) Fuck me.
Anyway. Hancock got some what was going on here, but this SNL Digital Short kind of dealt it the killing blow:
One last one—this is what inspired me to write this whole post:
2006 vs. 2009: The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Darkness
So three years ago I had this great idea that I took my former classmate who works at a theater company but then lost confidence in and never finished: The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Darkness. What it was was, I'd take Hamlet and turn it into a trashy horror-flick kind of a thing: "a version of Hamlet in which the ghost is actually an alien zombie and turns Hamlet into an alien zombie (although actually I think it's quite faithful to the original—in its way)." I thought this was particularly hilarious because the idea of Hamlet with Hamlet taken out of it (i.e., speaking no lines) is so outrageous, and yet in a way making him the monster in a monster movie is true to the hugeness of his role... The idea was basically to take the entire text of Hamlet and then just mangle it a little, replace Hamlet the bester of wits with Hamlet the eater of brains. Here's a little excerpt:
Bar. Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course t'illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—
Enter GHOST, gnawing on Francisco's severed arm.
Anyway, anyway—you know where this is headed—a friend of mine sent me a link the other day to a brief little piece about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: "Like a DVD loaded with extras, the book includes the original text of the Regency classic, juiced up with 'all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.'" So...you know...it's done. Done, done. If I'd gotten it out there in 2006... But I didn't. So.
To be clear, my point is not that anybody ripped me off. My point is just this: if you've got an idea, you'd better fuckin' run with it. That is unless it doesn't bother you the slightest bit if somebody else comes up with it later and then you're reading articles about your own fuckin' shit.
I was going to set this to post tomorrow morning, but I guess I'd better post it RIGHT THIS FUCKING SECOND.
I'm gonna go lie down or something.
* Having an idea that it turns out someone else had many many years earlier is a separate problem, but thank you all the same for reminding us and making us feel bad, Ralphy.
** E.g., Hamlet 2: Revenge of the Sith (2005).
2 comments:
Shouldn't Hamlet 2 have been set in Denmark, 1599, not London?
Yes, except that for whatever reason it always seemed to me that Hamlet 2 wouldn't actually be about Hamlet and would instead be about William Shakespeare. The most common incarnation of this story was about Shakespeare's receiving a visit from a ghostly Harold Bloom; either Shakespeare would misunderstand Bloom's praise and then try to be a superhero, or the two of them would go out carousing (the connection to Hamlet 1 being entirely up for grabs).
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