50 First Dates

I really hate Adam Sandler. It’s almost a personal hatred. Almost single-handedly he has lowered the standards of funny movies to a level I’ve never seen before. But from time to time he has tried to do a movie above this shitty level. I hate him so much that I haven’t seen Punch Drunk Love or The Wedding Singer, both of which were reviewed well. But I had to see this one. For one thing, it sounded like a good idea. For another, I was pretty sure it was my idea. I wondered if I might have a lawsuit.

In 1989 I wrote and published a short story called “Just Another Perfect Day.” It concerned a man who had anterograde amnesia, which means that he can’t form new memories. So far as I know this affliction is really more like it is portrayed in the excellent Memento, where the protagonist will lose all his new memories without warning, so that from one minute to another he never knows when he will be hurled back to square one, memory-wise, to the day he suffered the brain injury that put him in this predicament. But in my story, he lost his new memories every time he went to sleep.

After seeing it, I think there is at least a possibility that I could have sued. There were two problems. First, I’d need to show that the author, George Wing, had read my story. However, that would only be if the case came to court. Suits like this are commonly settled before they ever get there, as nuisances. Second, I’d have to have the two stories compared in open court … and his story is better than mine. Ouch! But I admit it, he made much more of the idea than I did. And I’ll even admit that Sandler was not bad. It would have been a better movie with someone else … but that’s sour grapes. I liked it.