OT: Simultaneous Ideas or Procrastination Doesn't Pay

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I worked with a guy who was a film nut - and he was working on a screenplay. I remember him telling me all the details about it and asking me to be on "FrienDA" (like an NDA but just sort of verbal between pals). It sounded fascinating at the time ('95 or so) and I thought if he ever made this film it'd be huge.

Fast forward to 2001 - Vanilla Sky (which, I realize, was based on a Spanish film called Abre su Ojos or "Open Your Eyes") comes out. Seemed to match a lot of the details right down to the cryogenics, entering a persons dreams, etc. etc. I checked the details of both films and he had nothing to do with either one.

Then skip on ahead to Inception - bam, that was everything else he'd told me about that I didn't see in Vanilla Sky. And again, he had nothing to do with that film either.

It was scary how much both films reflected his ideas. Of course, you could say that Tarkovsky's Stalker predated all three of those and his ideas and was an earlier form of questioning reality versus dream/fantasy...but still a lot of the ideas seemed plucked from what he'd told me about.