John August

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No one stole your idea

Rights and Copyright

I have very little patience for accusations that someone “stole my idea for a movie.” Or a TV show. Or an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

Such complaints are common. Sometimes, it becomes a copyright lawsuit. More often, it’s a campaign of whispers. As noted in the aforelinked post:

A while back, a screenwriting colleague was dealing with a guy who was claiming on message boards that a certain blockbuster was stolen from his script. The “proof?” One of the characters had the same name. Basically, the guy was arguing that the screenwriter had changed the plot, the setting, the character’s motivations — pretty much everything but this one character’s name. It’s hard to claim that a conspiracy is both thorough and lazy.

In almost all these cases, the question fails once you consider the silent evidence: if the script in question is just as similar to a dozen other unproduced scripts, it’s hard to claim infringement, legally or spiritually.

When these cases make it to court, studios will often do the back-of-envelope calculations and decide it’s more cost effective to settle than fight. Any case you put before a jury is a case you can lose. The plaintiff’s attorneys know this, so they will forego upfront fees in exchange for a piece of the settlement.

So I was heartened to see that last week, a studio decided to fight and won. The case involved a lawsuit over the Jane Fonda/Jennifer Lopez comedy Monster-in-Law. Recaps Eriq Gardner for THR’s law blog:

Not only did Gilbert [the plaintiff] lose, with the judge finding “vast differences in characters, plot, mood and theme” from her script and the film’s script, but her claims were deemed so unworthy and motivated by “bad faith” that the judge last month ordered Gilbert to pay the defendant’s legal tab.

That legal tab? $894,983.

Ouch.

I don’t know that the result will have much of a chilling effect on future litigants, but I hope it will embolden some studio lawyers to fight back.

These bogus claims of idea theft feed pernicious myths about Hollywood:

  1. That movie ideas have much worth independent of execution.
  2. That writers and writing are secondary to the idea.
  3. That big ideas emerge unique and fully-formed without antecedent.

Additionally, these lawsuits obscure the very real ways working screenwriters find their ideas used without compensation. When developing a feature based on some existing material, it’s become common for producers to meet with six or eight writers to hear their takes. These bake-offs almost inevitably lead to cross-pollination, which raises the real question of whether writers are being used as unpaid R&D.

It’s this kind of intellectual appropriation — not “what the movie is” but “how to do it” — that is a much bigger issue in modern Hollywood. But because it’s subtle and hard to document, it doesn’t lend itself to headlines.

Upgrading to the Air. Or not.

Geek Alert

For the past week, I’ve been debating getting the 13″ Macbook Air to replace my 13″ Macbook (Non-Air, Non-Pro), which is a couple of years old.

My main computer is in the office, so I only use the MacBook for travel. ((My iPad has taken over all the other light web surfing functions that my laptop used to perform.)) But lately, that’s been a lot. A few weeks in New York, three days in Austin, a blur of day/night in Beijing. I’ve been using it daily, and noticed it getting pokier and pokier.

The new Airs really are amazing to hold; it’s worth an Apple store visit just to admire the fit and finish.

The Air would actually have the same processor, so other than being thinner and lighter, it would be largely the same computer. But I didn’t like the keyboard as much when I tried it out in the store. And when I take my MacBook someplace, I’m mostly plopping it on a hotel desk, so it’s not especially crucial that it be lightweight.

I wasn’t eager to give up the optical drive or the ethernet connection. I often watch dailies and screeners on DVD, so it’s nice to have one always available. When I’m in a hotel room, I find it handy to share the wired internet connection with my iPad and iPhone using the Mac’s internet sharing feature. Without an ethernet port, that wouldn’t be an option. ((AirPort Express is another way to share a wired connection. But that means bringing an extra gizmo.))

In the end, I decided to keep my computer, upgrading the memory (to 4GB) and swapping the hard drive for an SSD (240GB). The process was remarkably straightforward — thank you tutorial videos — and the result feels like a new computer: snappy and quiet. Final Draft opens in one bounce, rather than five.

Plus, I still have my DVD drive and ethernet port.

All in, the upgrades ran me $580, including the special screwdrivers. The resulting computer isn’t as light as the Air ($1599) or as zippy as the newest MacBook Pros ($1499), but feels like a happy middle.

UPDATE: My friend Troy points out that I’d be getting a higher-resolution screen with the new MacBooks.

Less IMDb updated

News, Tools

Less IMDb IconWe pushed a minor update (1.0.8) to Less IMDb last night, which makes three requested changes:

  • Moves “Full cast and crew” link to the sidebar in movie pages, right below writer and director.
  • Places “Creator(s)” more prominently in TV series pages.
  • Makes “Season” and “Year” links visible in TV series pages.

If you have Less IMDb installed, it can update itself. Go to Safari > Preferences… > Extensions. Click to update, or choose “Install Updates Automatically” and never look at it again.

Ryan is working on a version for Chrome and Firefox. We hope to start testing it next week.

On Dogfooding, and scratching your own itch

Directors, Follow Up, Psych 101

Several readers have written in to ask whether we have plans for Chrome or Firefox versions of Less IMDb. We don’t — not because we have anything against those browsers. We just don’t use them nearly as much as Safari. We built the extension to address our own needs, and shared it with others because they might like it.

When you make something that you yourself use, that’s called dogfooding, a contraction of “eating your own dogfood.” That’s developer-speak, but it’s a mindset screenwriters would do well to appropriate.

Aspiring screenwriters will often throw a few loglines at me and ask which one they should write. My answer is always, “The one you would pay money to see.”

That’s dogfooding’s close cousin, scratching your own itch. You’re writing movies you wish existed.

Looking at successful filmmakers — in particular, writer-directors — it’s pretty clear who is doing this. Tarantino makes movies to fill a special shelf at his fantasy video store. Wes Anderson makes movies his own characters would dissect over canapes.

If you have more mainstream taste, great. Embrace that. Scratch your own itch. But forget about “commercial” or “high concept.” If you’re writing a movie you yourself wouldn’t buy a ticket to see, you’re wasting everyone’s time.