Profit-mad corporation crushes the little guy

A Big Hollywood Movie Is Coming, and a Novelist Cries Foul

For an industry, and this company in particular, which is preoccupied with intellectual property rights to so unashamedly deprive an artist of his, has got to be the very model of hypocrisy.

It would be most gratifying to see some high-profile, celebrity power-players (who are already predisposed to speak out on the evils of corporate greed), to take a forthright stand against this practice.

That's why I'm leery of pitching my latest science fiction heist dramady coming of age musical Western fish out of water 3D chick flick to Hollywood.

Fortunately, Hollywood is crawling with liberals. We can rest assured that they will rush to the defense of this "little guy."

If this guy can prove his script was stolen, and not just that very basic plot elements in this movie are similar to his book, then I hope he gets every penny he's entitled to.

There's a shitload of movies that share the same basic elements. If you describe them vaguely enough, Harry Potter is the same movie as Star Wars.

Indeed. This is why Tri-Tac Games, the producers of the RPG "Fringeworthy", failed in their suit against the guys who made the movie "Stargate".

My guess is this will go into a WGA arbitration. They'll go back through the drafts of the two scripts and try to find proof that the writers of the new film knew about or read the original script or novel. If there is a connection, the original writer probably will get a "story by" credit. It happens quite a bit, where a film has many different credited writers, and one of them didn't write a single word of the film you actually saw.

Huh. Didn't even click on this thread at first, because I expected the title to be misleading a la sandbagger's.

Studios' ripping off writers is as old as studios, and they'll try it even with someone who isn't a "little guy":

Buchwald was also known for the Buchwald v. Paramount lawsuit, which he and partner Alain Bernheim filed against Paramount Pictures in 1988 in a controversy over the Eddie Murphy film Coming to America; Buchwald claimed Paramount had stolen his script treatment. He won, was awarded damages, and then accepted a settlement from Paramount. The case was the subject of a 1992 book, Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald V. Paramount by Pierce O'Donnell and Dennis McDougal.

So if it's a "model of hypocrisy," it's just one of many.

It's also an example of Little Guy + Big Agency = Who Gives a Shit?

His agent's not going to bother filing suit, so the writer's SOL.

And, guess what? You can't copyright an idea. "An adrenaline-fueled bike messenger who tears through the city [New York]," you say? Sounds vaguely familiar.

Unless the writer and his attorney can find character names and chunks of dialogue from the script that exactly match the novel, he's got no case. At best the studio will throw him a few thou to go away.

This is why the standard WF take on The Benevolent Corporation just makes me smile.

We'll all just boycott Sony, that'll teach 'em!

Apply the logic:

Some corporations commit theft, therefore all corporations are bad.

Some people commit theft, therefore all people are ______.

Yeah, that's a big part of the problem here. CAA is pretty much the biggest agency in the world, and a writer as low on the career ladder as this guy was is just going to get lost there. It's happened to several good friends of mine.

:tantrum:

What the hell is wrong with you? Seriously? Why not just stay silent when all you have to contribute is bullshit?

Of course. Now replace "corporation" with "government."

The basic unit in both entities is "people."

Ray is right on this one. The guy has to prove two things, AFAIK: Access and similarity. IMO, the novelist can easily prove both. The plot elements aren't all that vague, from the sound of them, nor are they common. A protagonist who's a bike messenger amped up on adrenaline isn't exactly run of the mill. Unfortunately, the quoted lawyers are also correct. Unless you're very, very well known, you're not going to pull a Harlan Ellison.

No, you.

Finding the right agent is at least half the battle. Used to be, the agent was on the writer's side. Anyone breaking in today can find it as difficult to court an agency as it's traditionally been to get the attention of an editor or a story pitch at a studio.

I've been incredibly fortunate in that regard.

Another shit movie that may or may not have been stolen from another shit novel.

Fucking yawn.

I was all set to "A-HA!" this with the 1986 Kevin Bacon movie, "Quicksilver", but it turns out the plot to "Quicksilver" is quite a bit different than what is described here.

So I'll just have to gripe about Paramount, ripping "Babylon 5" off from JMS and airing it as "Star Trek: DS9"

I took a look at this:

The novel, Ultimate Rush, is available on Amazon.
The hero is a roller-blade messenger in San Francisco.
The villains are Chinese gangsters, who are dissatisfied recipients of a package.
The hero is aided by his girlfriend, Ho.


The movie, Premium Rush, is listed on IMDB.
The hero is a bike messenger in New York.
The villain is a policeman.
There is a girlfriend, Nima.

The hero is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun),
who has won awards for performances in (500) Days of Summer,
and Inception.

The screen writers are David Koepp and John Kamps.
Koepp has a lengthy list of writing credits,
including Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, and Spider-Man.

In the movie, the girlfriend is played by Jamie Chung; who was in Real World: something or other.

I don't know any more than that, and I don't know the law.

Hopefully, the facts will come out, and this will be resolved fairly.

If they could just incorporate a baby and two musical parents in love with each other...

It's implied in one of the character's back-story.

Regardless, it would get changed to a 300 foot tall indestructible robotic D.E.A. agent, a midget vampire and a one legged ex prizefighter with one more bout left in him.....straight out of Central Casting no doubt.

A criminal patriarch and his three sons.....I enjoyed this better when it was called The Godfather!

Wouldn't that be more like the Gayfather?

You tried to steal my joke!

I'm suing you!

When it gets to the point that law and justice are for sale (i.e. he who has the most money sways the court, and he who has little money can expect to lose, regardless of the merits of a case) then it's time to hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.

Discuss.

Name one moment in history when this has not been the case.

Looks boring to me, its the rare cop who isn't a villain.

Yeah, saw this movie 25 years ago an it had with Kevin Bacon in it