The value of “hating movies”

Shaula Evans sourced this gem:

Scott, have you ever come across the story of how Wilder and Diamond came up with The Apartment? I just read it in this Frank Cottrell Boyce interview (in the BAFTA Guru series) and thought of you.

“…the pleasure of going to movies and really hating it, which is a very important creative energy I think. Nobody ever talks about that. When you go to a meeting it’s always about ‘it’s a bit like this film that I really love’ and actually so much creativity comes out of really, really hating another movie.

“…It’s true, it releases an energy. There’s a brilliant story about two great heroes, Billy Wilder and Izzy Diamond, who went to see Brief Encounter together and just didn’t get it at all. Izzy Diamond said, ‘I just don’t know what was going on there, why didn’t he just give her one? What was that about?’ They hated the film. And Izzy Diamond said the only interesting person in that film was the guy who lent them the flat. What was going on in his head? What was that conversation? And by the time they got home they’d come up with The Apartment, which is about someone [Jack Lemmon] who lends his flat out to people. That kind of hatred and misunderstanding is such a power.”

Hating movies: another way to come up with movie premises.

Shaula was kind enough to think of me for two reasons: (1) She knows The Apartment is my favorite movie. (2) She also knows I’m always looking for ways to generate story ideas.

Per the latter, what Wilder and Diamond did was very much in the spirit of ‘similar but different,’ taking some preexisting story and working a variation on it. Instead of genre-bending or gender-bending, here they simply found a side character from Brief Encounter and considered the story universe through his eyes. This is how the Broadway musical “Wicked” came about — The Wizard of Oz through the Wicked Witch’s perspective. Or the upcoming movie Oz: The Great and Powerful which is told from the perspective of Professor Marvel.

So even with movies you hate, they can be the source of inspiration to create different story ideas.

While we’re here, we might as well have a go at this question: What are some movies you absolutely hate? Then as an exercise, is there something about them you can spin into a different story?

Thanks, Shaula, for that find. Another piece of trivia to add to my knowledge of The Apartment. And a helpful tip on how to generate story ideas.

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