The Basement (play) - Origin: "The Compartment"

Origin: "The Compartment"

The Basement is based on "The Compartment" (1965), an unpublished 27-page screenplay (circulated only in typescript) that Pinter wrote in 1963–65 "for a film never made, planned as part of a triple-bill, Project I promoted by Grove Press, New York, with Samuel Beckett's Film and Eugene Ionesco's The Hard-Boiled Egg" (Baker and Ross 112). Of the three works planned for this trilogy of films, "only Film would be produced, being released in 1965" (112).

According to Pinter's official authorised biographer Michael Billington, also cited by Baker and Ross (112), "Pinter's contribution The Compartment lay dormant until he rewrote it for television as The Basement" (Billington 191).