Day Late, Dollar Short

I was reading Yucky Salad with Bones and I caught this bit here about an idea that languished until it was stolen:

Way back in 1992, when Mike and I were newlyweds and living in our first apartment over by Lake of the Isles, I wrote a treatment for a movie called "A Day in the Life of Sandra Kane", a fake documentary about a washed up bit player of an actress named Sandra Kane. A camera crew followed her around for a day while she pretended to be all that and a bag of chips as she scrounged for work and validation. One of the details I was so proud of was a framed photo Sandra had on her wall of her walk on on the show "In the Heat of the Night".

I got the idea for it after running into a local actress who'd been in a few low budget Hollywood flicks, and she was wearing a huuuuuuge floppy hat and rhinestone Jackie O. glasses and tried to big time me, so as I say, she was the inspiration for Sandra Kane......the treatment that ROTS IN MY BASEMENT AS I EAT STALE BARBIE BIRTHDAY CAKE AND WATCH LISA KUDROW STEAL MY IDEA. GAWD!!!!!!!!! And then of course there was my idea for a movie about a stand-in who thought he was the star and kept referring to himself as the understudy, but Ben Stiller stole that one. FER CRYIN'...And furthermore, if you think I'm ridiculous for these claims, sometime ask Mike about squeeze ketchup.

I feel yer pain.

No, really.

There have been a couple of those episodes in my life:

• A couple of years ago, when I was a little underemployed, I started - and got about 60,000 words and 1/4 of outline into - the NaNoWriMo contest, writing novel about a bunch of unlikely strangers who were marooned when their plane crash-landed. If it sounds a lot like Lost, well, you're right. It does. It's an idea that'd been ricocheting around my head for years, and now it's too late. "Hi, Mr. Agent, didja read my manuscript...er, yes, it is a lot like Lost...but...but...no, I really was first...". Blah.
• Back when I was a kid, I built a lot of models; airplanes, tanks, cars, rockets, and of course a jillion ships, my favorites. The key to good glueing, by the way, is to apply a very thin layer of it to the surface you want to glue to something else (and hope the injection molding of the plastic parts isn't all defective and the parts are so warped they pull apart, but I digress). This being about the time the Magic Marker was first coming onto the civilian market, naturally, I thought "Hmmm - what if we did the same thing, only for glue? It'd be handier and less messy than the plastic squeeze tube, and give you naturally thin layers...". Well, it came out, when I was in high school - and if memory serves, was gone by the end of college.

Next big idea I have, I tell ya...

Posted by Mitch at September 6, 2005 10:16 AM | TrackBack