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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
1971 · Film · 100 min
Directed by Mel Stuart
When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner.
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6 comments on Hacker News
Interesting! It seems that although the original book was not an ad at all, the 1979 movie adaptation was indeed meant to work as marketing for an upcoming chocolate.
> Cadbury and Rowntree's were England's two largest chocolate makers and they each often try to steal trade secrets by sending spies, posing as employees, into the other's factory. Because of this, both companies became highly protective of their chocolate-making processes. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines in the factory that inspired Dahl to write the story.
https://roalddahl.fandom.com/wiki/Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory
> Wonka Bars were created by Quaker Oats (in conjunction with the producers of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory). The movie was funded largely by Quaker Oats for the intention of promoting the soon to be released Wonka Bars. However, Quaker Oats chose not to market the bars, instead selling the brand to their manufacturer Sunline.
> Other varieties of Wonka Bars were subsequently manufactured and sold in the real world, formerly by the Willy Wonka Candy Company, a division of Nestlé. These bars were discontinued in January 2010 due to poor sales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonka_Bar
You don't have to imagine, you can read in Dahl's autobiography that's nonsense. Pressure from NAACP jeopardised the production of the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, which turned into the first plank of his international legacy. Dahl was glad to change the book so the movie would get made.
I think many of the original posters (or stills from the movie) were just in the training data, to be honest.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in particular seems to be a direct reconstruction of features from that movie.
I have seen maybe half of these films. I was able to correctly name some of them immediately upon looking at them: Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, The Big Lebowski.
Some were obvious after reading the title: Star Wars, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (never saw it), Being John Malkovich, Space Jam (never saw it), Miami Vice (never saw it), Office Space.
Some that I half guessed or felt like I knew the name of the film but could not immediately recall the name: Castaway, Mad Max: Fury Road, Edward Scissorhands (Thought it was The Nightmare Before Christmas but Tim Burton so close enough)
Obvious ones: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
> I'd love to see the descriptions provided to the AI
Unless the descriptions were particularly detailed, I would expect that a lot of this comes from the training data and the descriptions are just prompts for the model to recall which film it is.
For instance, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) is clearly based on this real poster:
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Póster-Online-Willy-Chocolate-Factory/dp/B008CG5BSA
This seems less “generate a poster from a description” and more “recall half-memorised posters“.
Willy Wonka (screenplay by the genius Roald Dahl) has one of my favorite scenes in film and I invite you all to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM
> In 1970, when originally offered the lead role in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory by director Mel Stuart, the great Gene Wilder accepted on one condition. "When I make my first entrance,” he explained, “I'd like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause." Asked why, Wilder said, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth."
Quote from: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-part-of-another.html