I've only just discovered the story of Jack Barth, the original creator of Yesterday, and Christ alive, it's one of the most grotesquely ironic stories I've ever encountered in the film industry. For those unfamiliar with it, Barth was a struggling screenwriter who conceived an ingenious premise: a musician wakes up in a world where The Beatles never existed, realises he's the only person who remembers their songs, and starts passing them off as his own. Barth wrote the screenplay, originally titled Cover Version. After decades of trying to break into the film industry, he finally sold it. Enter Richard Curtis. Curtis rewrote the screenplay, transforming Barth's rather melancholy examination of artistic failure into a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy. Curtis received sole screenplay credit, while Barth was left sharing a story by credit with the considerably more famous writer. Now, Barth agreed to this arrangement. That's important. But what happened afterwards is what makes the whole business so bloody unpleasant. Curtis subsequently described receiving little more than a one-sentence premise, despite Barth's original screenplay containing several remarkably specific elements that survived into the finished film, including the elderly John Lennon and the Harry Potter gag. Barth has argued that his contribution was systematically minimised, leaving him struggling to convince people that he created the story in the first place. And here's where the irony becomes so vicious that Kafka himself would probably have rejected it for being too fucking obvious. In Barth's original version, the protagonist DOESN'T become enormously successful. He possesses the greatest collection of songs in popular music history and STILL struggles to make it. It's a story about the cruel indifference of artistic success. About how creative talent and commercial recognition are frequently separated by circumstances beyond an artist's control. Then Barth watches his own creation become an international hit, with another writer receiving the lion's share of the acclaim. And now, six years after Barth publicly complained about the whole miserable business, Yesterday is becoming a West End musical. Judging by his reaction today, the news appears to have come as something of a surprise to him. Fucking hell. I appreciate that contracts exist. I appreciate that Curtis substantially rewrote the film. I even appreciate that Barth received payment and agreed to the credits. But there's something profoundly depressing about an industry that can take a struggling writer's original screenplay, turn it into a multimillion-pound success, and leave that writer feeling practically invisible. And now the machinery is apparently gearing up to do it all over again, this time with jazz hands. As for Richard Curtis, a gigantic FUCK YOU.