The Pillowman stemmed in part from McDonagh's experience composing fairy tales, with names such as "The Chair and the Wolfboy", "The Short Fellow and the Strange Frog", and "The Violin and the Drunken Angel", early in his writing career. Attempting to rewrite fairy tales he remembered from childhood, he realized that "there's something dark about them that doesn't quite come through." In a conversation with Irish drama critic Fintan O'Toole in BOMB Magazine in 1998, McDonagh retold the Brothers Grimm version of Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf's stomach is filled with rocks and sewn with green wire, leading to the wolf's death. McDonagh's comment – "I would love to write something as horrific as that if I could" – indicates a potential inspiration for the story "The Little Apple Men" in The Pillowman.[3]
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