FADE IN:
One of the websites I peruse daily is the Done Deal Script Sales board. It gives you a rough idea of what is being bought, optioned and submitted. The worst possible thing a writer could read is a similar idea beating you to the punch, so my word of the day today is
SONOFABITCH!
"Title: Town House
Log Line: An agoraphobic man lives with his teenage son in a historic Boston town house, which he inherited from his rock-star father. With royalties from his father's work dwindling, the man is forced to come to terms with his life. He falls in love with the ditzy Realtor assigned to sell his home after the bank has foreclosed on it."
This is a similar premise to my very first stab at screenwriting. I have the unfinished Final Draft files on the hard drive, but I abandoned it because I thought it was a bit too technical for my first attempt. I moved on to other projects and was actually planning on returning to this one after my current screenplay is shipped off. Mine was from the POV of the boy and he was the agoraphobic character, but the Boston townhouse, single parent, coming to terms stuff is eerily too close for comfort.
What do you guys do in these situations? Do you curse loudly until the wallpaper sheds, abandon it and move to the next idea? Or do you try to add in twists and turns and change it around so it isn't so similar, basically refuse to admit defeat and hope a reader or executive or whatever can look past the similarities? If they open my script and start reading and see it is about an agoraphobic kid stuck in a Boston brownstone are they going to close the plain white cover and heave it, or are they going to recognize my unique voice and kickass style and consider it?
This is the second time this has happened to me, so either I need to speed up my writing and get it out there or I need to ressurect that idea about the psychotic Elvis impersonaters who get tossed out of Vegas and go on a serial killing rampage and end up in a Yakuza showdown at a summer camp children's Ninja tournament...
FADE OUT
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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11 comments:
I'd switch the locations or the characters just enough to be different.
Sounds like a Copycat without the evil Henry Connick, Jr. character and merge it with chick flick like Sleepless in Seattle.
This type of thing happens a lot. Similar characters and the like.
Someone posted a scene from a script that was nearly verbatim to scene from my script.
His was comedy and mine was horror.
Thankfully scripts aren't like children.
If you don't like a script off to the shredder it goes.
I have two things to say:
Medium
Ghost Whisperer
If there were a law against copycat concepts being produced all at once, well... you know what would happen.
May the best script win!
I read Town House. I was underwhelmed.
I'll send you the synopsis, so you know how similar it is.
I'm voting for the Yakuza showdown. You can never have too many Yakuza showdowns.
I happens.
I used to play the guitar once and had a stab at writing a song or two. I write one I was really happy with and people who heard it said it war fantastic (by this point I couldn't help but be impressed with myself).
Then I was listening to the radio about a week later and there was a Jannet Jackson song with 3/4 of my chorus. I was calling her every name under the sun for stealing MY lyrics :)
The good news is that if one studio has it, others will want it. They are in constant, jealous competition with each other. The fact that yours is similar means that you are thinking the right way. Projects often die and similar ones get the greenlight. Hopefully, you've got it registered, and you can prove that you wrote it before reading about the idea. This shows that you have a good idea of concept, and it could make out for a good sample script if nothing else. Selling a spec gets you money. Gaining an exec's confidence with a sample script gets you a lot of work which will lead to much more money.
Could you move the POV into an entirely unrelated character who observes the father and son. Maybe the Ditzy Realtor is really the protagonist and the hook is something completely different.
The only other thing I can think of is to say that if the genres are so far apart, maybe the story will seem new. I mean, there's comedy, there's horror , and then there's horror/comedy (rarely done well), but comedy and horror are pretty far apart. I say sit on it for another year. Bet you salvage something really good.
Thanks gang...yeah, I am not abandoning the project completely, just need a few changes, twists n tweaks
So there I was at the Blackjack table with all my wash 'n dries... did I tell you I had the idea for them first?
You're The Moviequill. Name that movie.
By the way, *I* didn't come up with the idea for wash 'n dries, but I'd like to kiss whoever did. They're an awesome invention.
I hope this doesn't mean we aren't going to see the Yakuza showdown!
This happens to all of us. Back in 2001, I had a little idea for a movie about the Brothers Grimm ... and of course Ehren Kruger snuck into my bedroom, knocked me out with chloroform, and hacked my laptop. I'm on to you, Mr. Arlington Road.
If you like the script, stick with it. By the time it's done, they'll probably be so different only you will know the similarities. Maybe just change some key details so as not to seem the plagariste.
For example, I've got a great spec called "The Brothers Timm" ...
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