Wasabi, Kemosabi, No, I never got paid for any work I did for the movie buisness. I saw that movie, however, and liked it except for the overly sweet scene with the little angel winged thingies slowly winging their way... Other than that, pretty good stuff, didn't ruin it for me, still gave it a thumbs up overall. Good on your friend!
To be frank and honest I used to (and still do but less frequently) cook up scenarios and plot lines "just for fun", mental exercise. When I lived on my sailboat in San Diego before moving that boat to the yacht club, I lived onboard while at a commercial marina. There were, how do I say it without suffering the wrath of the PC police, two "girlie men" living down the dock from me a couple hundred feet. They were artsy craftsy writer types with Holyweird connections. As they were "an item" together in preperation for a world cruise on their boat and were not hitting on us straights, I was friendly toward them, giving preparation advice and so forth. On learning of their profession (writers) I tried a couple of my scenarios on them. One of them payed close attention and asked if I had the one in written form. I printed him out a copy. Later he gave me a cleaned up and professionalized one page synoptic version as a thankyou for my preperation advice.
Stand by to make a leap of faith or choose to disbelieve my veracity. Not so many years later I saw this movie, a SciFi number with the TV Star Trek cast in it. The plot line just happened to coincidently, innocently, and independently use nearly verbatim the scenario I had written. It was the humpback whale thing. The aquarium stuff and the whale being pregnant and the time travel and the StarTrek connection, and the "everyone remember where we parked", and the transparent aluminum etc. was above and beyond but the general premise regarding the alien's intended destruction of the earth due to its being void of humpback whales was, shall we say congruent, a vitrtual clone.
If their was an actual conection, and not just a really really improbably coincidence then I am flattered, not upset, flattered. If it was coincidence, I'm still flattered.
Patrick
P.S. The macho he man of the writer duo got cold feet and was afraid to go on the trip, just liked the idea of talking about it, not doing it. The other "guy" was looking for a crewperson when I left that marina when a suitable slip became available at the club. (I think this last part qualifies in some sense as a "joke."
