My car was in the shop this week. The wheel bearings or something needed to be replaced (I know a shit ton about cars), so we dropped if off Monday night, and my husband caught a ride to work the next day leaving me his vehicle to drive.
My daughter was really excited about this change-up. It’s usually a struggle to get her to get into my car, but on this day, there was no fight. We were, “Riding in Dayee’s truck!”
It’s particularly difficult to get her to leave school because the lobby is full of books, a wagon, and puzzles, and she wants to stop and play with everything.
But when I went to pick her up, she ran straight to the door and waited for me to catch up with her. She was ready to roll.
“Go to the TRUCK Mommom!”
The sequence of events, the errands, the day’s destinations were all the same, the only thing different was the vehicle. But she didn’t know that; she was excited!
Isn’t everything kind of like that?
We want something new, or at least new to us, to break up the monotony of our days, our lives, our stories, our entertainment.
I’ve been frustrated for years with the story recycling going on in Hollywood. Are they out of new ideas? They must be. They’ve made The Hulk…three times now?
The most recent example of annoying recycling that comes to my mind is the movie Stolen.
I imagine the brainstorming session for that movie went something like this:
How about, instead of Taken, we call it Stolen?
Oh yeah, that sounds good. That movie did well. Instead of Liam Neeson, we’ll cast Nicolas Cage and set it in New Orleans instead of Europe.
Ooo, slam dunk and a budget cut; find and replace on the Taken script and repackage that mofo.
Instant classic.
This kind of obvious, lazy recycling bugs me.
I had a similar experience reading recently.
I use my neighborhood library a lot, and they have a whole section dedicated just to books that are currently on the New York Times Bestseller list. I pick up at least one or two of these at each visit. Sometimes I finish the books, and sometimes I don’t.
I just felt like walking…credit: myrunshorts.com
By the end of the first chapter of this book, I was about to stop reading because it was pulled straight from Forrest Gump. The running scene. Forrest runs to the mailbox, to the edge of town, across America. He runs until his beard is this long…
The main character in the book gets a letter from an old friend. He writes back, and starts walking to post the letter. He walks to the mailbox. He keeps walking. He’s old but he decides to keep walking across the country in attempt to save his friend from cancer. He learns about himself along the way. The media catches wind of his journey; people join him. They ruin the whole journey for him for a while, but he finishes the walk, says goodbye to his friend and to some other baggage he’s been carrying around for 20 years.
The entire time I was reading it, all I could think was, “I…just…felt like…running.”
But I finished it.
It wasn’t a terrible book, but the vehicle and changes to the whole foundation of the idea were just not different enough for my taste. Had I written it, I would have included Forrest Gump and his quote about shoes in my dedication.
I guess my point is, don’t get lazy in your influences and borrowing. We all do it, and anyone who writes anything will struggle with the reality that we’re all just trying to find a different way to say things that have already been said.
Or maybe this is exactly the key to getting on the NYT Best Seller List.
Beg, steal, and borrow.
What do I know, I have published no books.
Some people borrow so artfully and so obscurely that you don’t recognize the reference or the influence. Something to strive for in my own writing instead of complaining about it, I suppose.
Have you seen any distracting borrowing lately in your reading or entertainment?
Anyone?
Lena Dunham and her grosser version of Sex and The City is up for grabs here.
I guess it doesn’t bother me so much as long as it’s done with a different spin. There are only so many ways they can make a movie about haunted houses, but I still enjoy watching them. Police procedurals are often redundant, too, but I keep tuning in. Of course, as soon as I post this comment, I’ll think of a great example of too much duplication. Such is my life.
In general it doesn’t bother me much either. I will watch the same story over and over again as long as it has a slightly different spin or different characters. I guess sometimes a pop culture reference just gets too ingrained in my mind and that’s all I can see. Again, the book was engaging enough for me to finish. I kind of fell in love with the old man in the story, so the author did it well, and is on the bestseller list reaping the rewards
Have I seen any distracting borrowing lately in my reading or entertainment? One word comes to mind, and that word would be… Constantly!!! To the point that I’m constantly sick to death of it. Which is why whenever I see a movie or hear music that is genuinely original, in a way that I enjoy, I’m shocked and delighted! The funny thing is that you mentioned “Stolen” here in your post, because within less than 10 seconds of seeing the preview for “Stolen” (or maybe “Ripped Off”?) I turned to my wife and said “I can’t believe that they’re already doing a remake of “Taken”! Honest to God, those were my exact words. Sad, isn’t it?
I believe it. I laughed so much when I saw the Stolen trailer. There should be some type of time limit before you can redo the idea
I haven’t seen much of you lately, Chris. I hope you are okay–my reader hasn’t been showing me your posts lately, so I will head to your site this morning and catch up.
I agree with you, that there should be a reasonable time limit before the “recycling” of creative concepts can begin, because lately it seems like the time limitation for shameless imitation has gotten ridiculously short. Hey, just because I’m curious, do you like movies by the Coen Brothers? Their movies are usually about as original as it gets, they cover a wide range from off the wall comedy to deadly serious drama, and I’ve been a big fan of their films since the mid 1980s. My wife and I watched “Intolerable Cruelty” the other night, and we both laughed and loved it just as much as we did, when we first saw it in a movie theater back in 2003.
I’ve been away from WP until just recently, after my father passed away on December 30th. But I’m okay and at peace with his passing, because he was terminally ill, and his quality of life was all but gone a year ago. So his passing was more merciful than it was tragic. Sorry for bringing up such a depressing event here, but that’s why I’ve been MIA. I posted about Dad’s memorial service this past Monday, but please don’t feel like you need to read it or comment on it, Rachelle. Seriously. I know that your own emotions about losing your father are still painful and close to the surface, so there’s no need for my situation to cause you to relive your own, and I sincerely mean that.
I do like the Coen Brothers movies. I haven’t seen them all, but I agree, they are very original. I think I saw Intolerable Cruelty back then but I’ll have to revisit it.
I’m really sorry about your dad, although I am glad that it was merciful rather than tragic, and that is usually the case when a parent is terminally ill. Sometimes, even though it can be a comfort to know their suffering has ended, it doesn’t do nearly enough to dampen our grief here. I will check out your post for sure, and I appreciate your concern, but I would never ignore something you’ve written or experienced because it might remind me of my own grief.
My heart goes out to you.
Internet hugs and stuff
Thanks so much for your words here, that are a sincere confirmation for me, that your heart truly has gone out to me, because I can feel it. Your words are also as wise as they are compassionate. Internet hugs and stuff right back at ya, Rachelle. You’re a true gem.
I just sent you a reply that apparently ended up in WP Spam detention hall… Please let me out, when you get a chance. Lol
Ha! Constantly!
But the remake of The Italian Job was an excellent movie.
It’s the detail work that makes a played out idea seem good again.
It is pretty constant
I didn’t see the remake of The Italian Job, will have to check that out. I agree, the detail is the key to a good recycle.
THis is a very insightful post. I so wish my library had the NYT bestsellers culled out for me. I haven’t noticed recycling exactly, other than werewolves and vampires, but I haven’t actually read them. I am going to think about this and get back to you.
It’s one of my favorite things about this library! Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing back from you!
Since movies are so expensive to make it doesn’t surprise me that Hollywood is risk averse so they stick to remaking the same storylines over and over. On those rare occasions that I lower myself and watch a mainstream Hollywood movie, I get so bored after awhile I can predict the next line of dialogue. If it’s not fresh and different, it quickly loses me. As for Lena Dunham, if I were not on such a tight budget I would subscribe to HBO again specifically to watch “Girls”. She’s a talented writer and she impresses me. Last year, she wrote a wonderful piece that was published in The New Yorker. Two months later I read in the NYT that she scored a $3 million book deal. Easy peasy when you’re in with the in crowd, but I don’t think she’s a fake..
I get the risk aversion too, it just seems like they have been stuck in a rut. I generally wait until the mainstream movies are available on demand or on the movie channels because I feel too ripped off when I go to the theater.
I’ll be curious to see if she can make that interesting, or if fame takes the edge off her writing. Rooting for her though, even though that last line sounded like hater-ade.
I watched the first season of Girls and the new season just started. I agree that she is talented, I just have a love/hate relationship with the show. There are times when it is so raw and honest that I’m genuinely moved. Then there are parts that turn me off, and some of the sex scenes have this weird homemade porn feel to them (like they are trying to outdo Sex and the City). Not denying her talent, I just look at it two ways; for my entertainment, I mostly enjoy it. For the message that it might send to my daughter when she starts looking for an example of what her 20′s might look like, I have reservations. No matter how much I can relate to the show, I hope that my daughter can navigate those years with more confidence and self-esteem than some of the characters do, and with more poise than I did.
I read that she had scored that book deal, and I’m interested to see if she can live up to that advance. I personally hope she does, but I read somewhere there is a whole section dedicated to food journals from her teenage years
Witty and perceptive as usual! I run into this problem all of the time. I come up with an idea, talk about it but don’t do much about it, then find a very close version of ‘my’ idea as a book. How? Why? Frustrating when it happens in movies, definitely. It never ends. Remember the first Matrix, and those amazing slow-mo fight scenes and the all-black leather , etc? Well, how many times has that been done, now? At least nobody has tried to outright steal the concept for the Matrix- which, like Forrest Gump, was a complete original.
Thank you! I run into the same problem all the time. It’s all been done. Everyone jumps on the coattails hoping to get a piece of the cash that an original idea (or fresh spin on an old one) provides. I think another problem is the older I get, and the more I read, the more I recognize references that I was once too young to see. I kind of miss that perspective sometimes. Had I not seen Forrest Gump in 1994, I would never have seen the scene so powerfully in the book.
I want to “ride in the truck” again sometimes
I have to say Hollywood is a disappointment. You think there must be a lot of great, original scripts out there (there are so many people who write them!) that they could up with something new! I guess many stories are very similar. It’s all in how the story is told, and if the characters are worth your time. Sometimes I’ll write and think, wow, this is so cliche it’s been done a thousand times…so, I think it’s tricky to be original.
Most stories are the same at the core. The same issues, the same explorations, and it is all about the characters and fresh storytelling. It is so tricky to be original, and I’m not even sure it’s really possible. I just think about Harry Potter–JK borrowed widely from her influences but it all felt new. Thanks for commenting!
I hate that too, the movie recycling thing. When they do remakes of movies that didn’t need remaking (The Day the Earth Stood Still? Really???) or do cheap imitations of movies (like Taken to Stolen). Hollywood producers are astonishingly stupid sometimes. Or they assume that the movie-going public is astonishingly stupid. Also, I laughed at your aside “I know a shit ton about cars.”
I think that is part of it too, they assume that the public is astonishingly stupid. Glad you got a laugh at the aside. I really do…know nothing about cars.
I think recycling ideas is done pretty often, and can be done well. We all have different experiences we can bring to the same idea and put a different spin on it. What gets me is when movies are done so pedantically to the script that you really are just wasting your 2 hours watching recycled news. Remakes of remakes need not apply. Just because 5 years have passed doesn’t mean the idea is any better.
Agreed
My first thought was Red Dawn. The first one was filmed in the 80′s and I really enjoyed it. It had Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen when they were really young. In fact we watched it a couple of nights before I went to see the remake. They did a fabulous job with the remake and I really enjoyed it.
My second thought was A-Team. It is one of my favorite TV series of all time. I was really worried that they would screw up the characters which would ruin the dynamic of the movie. It was well done also and I have watched it many times.
There are many that I can name that have been a total waste of time and money. They are a total waste of brain space too so I try and forget those.
I need to read more, watch more movies, and watch more television. I haven’t had enough recent experience to see a remake when one slaps me in the face. I did take an obscure short story from the public domain and rework it into my last book. It was an experiment, it worked out really well, and was actually a lot of fun. But I am tired of Cinderella stores, etc.
I saw that you had done that, and thought it was a really cool idea. Again, not against recycling, I just hate it when I can’t get the original out of my head enough to enjoy the new twist on it.