Just an anecdote - AMC's famous drama Breaking Bad was inspired by an actual news which Vince Gilligan's partner read in news about someone running a meth lab in an RV, told Vince about and then rest is history.

There you go, yet more proof: The stories are out there. We just need to look for them.

Just wondering: when you "loosely base" a screenplay on a real-life event, do you have to clear any rights with the people involved in that event? For example, did the producers of It Had to Be You have to buy the cop and the waitress' life stories, since so many of the details were changed? Or, are you covered by the "Any resemblance to persons living are dead is a coincidence" thing that we see in the credits of most fiction films?

L N, it's a dicey area and I'm dealing with a person now who owns the exclusive life rights to a famous deceased rock musician, but even that would not stop you or anyone else form writing a script involving that character. As far as I know, if they are in the public domain, they are free game. But you should vet that with a lawyer who knows this area of the law.

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.

That is a terrific find, Shaula. And sounds like the makings of a GITS post. As you know, The Apartment is my favorite movie, so anything related to it, I'm all virtual ears. Thanks!