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Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle6/30/2023 ![]() Boulle used the same “experience” of being a Japanese prisoner of war during World War Two in two completely different ways: first, in The Bridge Over The River Kwai, to write a realist (or even ultra-realist) novel based on his own memories of being a PoW and then, in Planet of the Apes, to write a philosophical and fantastical sci-fi novella, in which he abstracted from his actual experience to create one of the most complete fictional worlds ever imagined. That is because his own writing – in particular his two masterpieces, Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï/ The Bridge Over The River Kwai (1954) and La Planète des singes/Planet of the Apes (1963), which were both made into hugely successful films – is an object lesson in how, as Aldous Huxley put it, “Experience is not what happens to a man it is what a man does with what happens to him”. Pierre Boulle is a writer that every other writer (and in particular every other screenwriter) should read. ![]() ![]() The Story Behind The Screenplay is a new series by Martin Keady, our resident cinema historian, that examines the origins of some of cinema’s greatest screenplays. ![]()
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