10 Movies Inspired By Things NOBODY Expected
Movies are often born in the most unexpected of places.
No movie exists without some sort of inspiration, and while the majority of filmmakers look to relatively familiar and expected sources like recent news, their own lives, and of course other movies, sometimes the impetus for a film comes from somewhere massively unexpected.
Sometimes a writer or director is just going about their day and something happens which gets the creative juices flowing from a most surprising avenue.
And that's most certainly true of these 10 movies, each of which came to fruition by means nobody could've seen coming, not even the filmmakers themselves.
Some of these films were sparked to life by a random thought during a most mundane of activities, while others stemmed from scary life encounters, and there were also those born from nightmares of all things.
Each film came from a wildly unexpected place that few, if any, who've seen the film would've likely been able to guess.
It just goes to show - you can smash your head against a wall trying to come up with an idea for a movie, but sometimes it'll just fall in your lap while you're living your life...
10. Christmas Shopping - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Though it's no secret that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was somewhat inspired by the crimes of murderer Ed Gein, but writer-director Tobe Hooper only threw a chainsaw into the mix after an especially harrowing bout of... Christmas shopping. Yup.
At the 2014 Cannes Film Festival to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary, Hooper revealed that while he was working on the script, he found himself doing some seasonal shopping in a Montgomery Ward department store, where he became frustrated with the crowds.
As he attempted to escape the masses, he glimpsed a chainsaw in the store, and a macabre idea immediately took root in Hooper's mind. He said:
"I thought - 'This is a no-brainer. What a way to get out of this store!' But rather than go to jail, I decided to instead incorporate the hedge-cutting weapon into the script."
To think that arguably the single most iconic aspect of the entire franchise was the result of pure happenstance while its director was begrudgingly running errands. Wild.