Many times when a film – particularly those by high profile film makers or from major studios – comes out, we read articles about individuals who claim that their ideas were stolen. These folks are often dismissed as crackpots, opportunists, and frauds.
The problem, of course, is that ideas have no legal protection under copyright law. It is the expression of those ideas that can be protected. In other words, if all or a portion of a film script is a word-for-word copy of someone else’s script, story, or novel, there could be grounds for a claim of copyright violation.
No, I’m not Joe Law. I’m not a lawyer. But I am married to someone who is troubled about a big studio film that is about to premiere. She is no crackpot, opportunist, or fraud.
Years ago, my wife wrote a script inspired by a chapter in Dracula, the seminal novel by Bram Stoker. At first, she put it in the form of a theater script. Then, for a New York University class on directing for film and video, she reformatted the script for filming purposes and had two actors perform a couple of scenes from it in front of the class. A good portion of her story takes place on a ship which Stoker called Demeter.
My wife believed in her script and when the opportunity came along, she made a video version. She scraped together some funds (this was long before online crowdsourcing), engaged professional lead actors and amateur supporting actors, secured various locations – including a merchant marine training ship! – and worked untold hours with a talented videographer/editor to realize her vision for her script. The result was the 30-minute video Black Sails, White Seas. The budgetary constraints and lack of personnel led to a couple of anachronisms within the video and the inability to do more. But my wife was pleased with her first effort to bring her ideas to life in a visual medium.
Due to various circumstances, including financial limitations and various obligations, she did not have a public viewing of the video, although everyone associated with its making received a copy.
A few days ago, press about the upcoming release of a movie called The Last Voyage of the Demeter started appearing. According to the film makers, it was inspired by a chapter in Stoker’s novel and takes place on the ship that carried Dracula’s coffin to England. When she found this out, my wife was so upset, she could not sleep. I had no idea of any of this – I had to drag it out of her.
She does not know what, if anything, she can and will do about this. She does plan to see the movie to see if it tracks her long-ago script in any meaningful way. She has found out that one of the co-writers comes from New York. Coincidence?
My wife has become uncharacteristically testy and distracted. I wish I had ideas on how to help her, but these are uncharted waters for me (yes, pun intended).
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ANTON CIRCLES HIS WORLD 