Late to the party

We've all been there; where you come up with an idea, don't do anything with it, and then sometime later you see someone else do nearly the same thing.  I've been late to the party a lot due to procrastination, laziness, and sometimes just not having the funds.

Just 4 (of many) times this happened for me were:

A looong time ago I had an idea for a story or movie about the son of the devil not wanting to take over, but just wanting to be a normal kid.  I called it "The Misadventures of Little Damian".  A couple of years afterwards came a movie called "Little Nicky" with a very similar idea.  Funny flick, great actors.  Of course, it was well different from what I had in mind but the core story was there.  I was bummed but of there was no way I'd be able to do anything on that scale; it would probably have been a little comic book.

Later I had an idea for a movie I wanted to do; again, writing books was never part of the plan, it came later.  I wanted to do a more exploratory film called "Neon Eons" and it would show the Earth from creation to destruction.  Of course, I never fleshed it out as I knew I'd never have the funds to do what was in my head.  I went to see the move "The Tree of Life", a film that I adore, and it showed so much of what I was wanting to do with Neon Eons, often times right down to the exact visual.  I wasn't bummed about this; not only did I love the film, BUT seeing it on the screen, I just kept thinking "IT WORKS!" 

A long time ago I read a Richard Matheson short story called "Witch War".  I was stunned.  I fell in love with this story hard.  Instantly, it inspired stories within me.  I wrote out titles and ideas for roughly 16 stories [I still have them and have not yet written them].  All of these stories are strange (of course) and have a more fantasy twist to them, though I've actually yet to write a fantasy story.  One of which involved kids and an odd abundance of worms showing up everywhere.  I kept thinking of the spiders on the walls and ceilings in "Something Wicked This Way Comes".  It was thought of with kids in mind and it was to be called "WORMS!"  Well...just the other night my wife and I watched a good deal of an old horror film called "Squirm" which is about worms becoming incredibly active and carnivorous after a lightning storm.  Mine didn't really have to do with man-eating worms but it was more about them being everywhere and freaking the kids out.  I'll just say that this movie is Awful, just terrible.  And there were scenes of the worms going up the walls just as I had envisioned and everyone was freaking out; not children, but adults.  It wasn't remotely terrifying.  I told my wife about the old story idea while she raised an eyebrow.  I said upon seeing "Squirm", "I'm scratching that story off the list. That's just awful."  Sometimes missing the boat isn't so bad lol.

I grew up with my father showing me old silent films.  I love them.  There are some wonderful pieces of art in the silent film era.  For years I've had the bee in my bonnet to make some.  A friend and I were trying to think of film projects before and I told him, "I think we should make a silent film.  I want to make one."  I told him and the ex I was with at the time and both said they didn't think it would do well.  That there wasn't a market for silent film anymore.  Both asking "Why would you want to make one anyway?  Who cares about silent film?"  I felt frustrated and defeated and I let it go, though the idea to do one has never left me.  Awhile after this, there was a film that came out called "The Artist"; a silent film.  It did well, swept up awards and all that jazz.  I pointed it out, calling up my friend asking if he'd seen the buzz about this film.  Of course, it was the format that I was discussing and not the story, but it's the point of it all; the principal.