Has anyone else seen The Price of Life 1987? In Time 2011 takes the same basic premise and upgrades it. Some of the same scenes are in both movies.
The Price of Life is more charming in my opinion.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Once, long ago, Andrew Niccol and the writer/director of The Price of Life had the same agent. Some years before In Time was made the mutual agent called the Price of Life guy and said that Andrew Niccol wanted to adapt The Price of Life as a feature. A meeting was set between Niccol and the Price of Life guy, to be held at Niccol's office. The lawyers for the parties had discussions about the transfer of the rights, which were simple and straightforward. An hour or so before the meeting the Price of Life guy got a call from the mutual agent: Niccol is canceling. No explanation was given other than that Niccol was concerning himself with other projects. However, the lawyer for Niccol told the lawyer for the Price of Life team -- incredibly, but this is true -- "He's just going to do his own version." And some years later that's what he did. It's all there in In Time: The multitudes of poor always living at the last moments of their lives while the rich live for centuries. The worn-down mother whose life the ambitious young man wants to save when her time is running precipitously out. The lush, distant enclave of wealth the ambitious young man journeys to. The Price of Life guy was stunned by the brazenness of the appropriation. He spoke with an attorney who specializes in these things. The attorney read every draft of everything possible, including David Peoples' Timebomb (a superb script on the same theme which had no perilous journey to a distant enclave and no stakes built around the mother's life, as it was written independently of either project.) In the end the attorney advised the Price of Life guy that because there was no paper or electronic trail -- the meeting had been scheduled and canceled before the advent of universal email, ditto the conversations between the attorneys -- and because time-as-money is not itself legally protectable as an idea, he would not be guaranteed of success in a legal action. Plus he'd look like one of those schmucks who sues for plagiarism just as a movie is coming out. So with a great sense of relief, and the guess that one way or another Niccol would reap the harvest -- either in the form of bad conscience or simply by virtue of being destined to live his life as a writer who once passed off the labor of another writer's imagination as his own -- the Price of Life guy swept all the drafts and letters and notes related to the topic off his desk and got on with his work for the day. The puzzler here is why Niccol, who has one of the great imaginations in the business, would need to have done it. We'll never know.
shareThanks for sharing your story, juliusmckay.
Creatives have the hardest time guarding their work from plagiarism. If the two men never interacted, the Andrew Niccol could claim that they both came up with the same idea, independently.
Jealousy and ego can cause one person to pass another's work off as their own. The least Andrew Niccol could have done is add a line, Inspired By Stephen Tolkin and threw him a few thousand bucks. That would erase some of the bad feelings.
I'm glad to see that Stephen Tolkin wasn't crushed by the experience. He's been writing and working steadily in Hollywood since The Price of Life. No wonder he just shrugged off the experience.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Interestingly, there's this, from Wikipedia:
Many of the elements of In Time can be found in the 1987 short film The Price of Life,[14] made by Chanticleer Films. Its basic premise and storyline are so similar that In Time has been called an unacknowledged remake of the earlier film.[15] The Price of Life was a 38-minute short film (story by Stephen Tolkin and Michel Monteaux) in which a time account is physically linked to every infant at birth, with death automatic when the balance drops to zero. An elite upper-class is portrayed as living hundreds of years or more. The protagonist is given a certain amount of time as an infant, and as young boy adds days and years to his time account by buying valuables from people and selling them to visiting tourists from the rich enclave. After his sister dies after gambling away her time, the protagonist (now a young man) sets out on a journey to the enclave of "the Old Ones" in order to save the life of his mother, who is (literally) running out of time. He gets there and meets a beautiful older woman who co-opts him into the immortal lifestyle.