I got the idea for Lift from a couple of reasons, mostly from my two boys, my two children because whenever we’d be out and about, whenever we saw an elevator, they would fight over who gets to push which button. If one of them pushed the outside button, the other one had to push the inside button. And I started paying attention and I was like, I’ve never seen a kid not want to push an elevator button. They just like feel drawn to it somehow
So, I figured there must be a story there. But then I also remember getting into an elevator with my newborn, at one point, and just like watching his eyes. We step into this strange room and the doors close. There’s this magical ding and he’s looking around. And then the doors open, and we step out onto a whole new world. It was probably the second floor of the mall or something like that, right. But I was like to a baby this is a totally magical experience. There’s no explanation for what just happened.
As a writer, you kind of take that magical quality and try to take it to the next level of what if you had a magical elevator button that actually did take you somewhere completely different? What would that be like?
And for me as a writer I feel a lot of times my goal is to capture that sense of magic that comes from when you’re a child and you’re kind of looking at the world with fresh eyes, and how do you recapture that for an audience, a young audience? But also for an adult audience who may be more jaded, but you kind of like mimic that sense of magic and recreate that magical environment for just looking at the world in a fresh way.
So yeah. Lift very much was inspired by just paying attention to my children and how they navigate the world.