I was reading in the newspaper this morning about the screenwriter who is suing Disney, claiming that the whole Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise was based on his ideas.
It reminded me of recent courtroom activity where Dan Brown was alleged to have liberated ideas from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail for The Da Vinci Code, and of the woman who claimed that J.K. Rowling ripped off her ideas for Harry Potter from her work.
I guess I have a much bigger lawsuit when I announce that I was the originator of the whole lot, with my blockbuster combo novel-screenplay about a young sleight of hand magician named Harold Porter with a zigzag lightning bolt scar on his cheek who gets adopted by a pirate lady named Elizabeth Sparrow and their quest to resolve the mystery behind what Mona Lisa was smiling about.
My work was called: Harold Porter & The Tropical Pirates: The Case of the Mona Lisa Smile. And I wrote it the very year I was born.
Hmm, come to think of it, I can likely also sue the producers of that Julia Roberts film for borrowing my term, because I’m pretty sure I’m the very first person in history to use the term “Mona Lisa Smile.”
But I’ll wait to see how this lawsuit turns out before I start any activity on my lawsuit regarding the screenplay I’d written three years before that: The Return of Super Guy from Kryton and the Quest for the Holy Grail of Brian of Nazareth.
5 comments:
People are constantly on the prowl for a way to score a quick buck. The really tricky part is that there really are very few original ideas out there nowadays. Most peoples' free thoguht and imagination is shaped by the pop culture and literature that they soak up over the years. With out any real innovation we are subjected to the same old same old over and aover again. Given the muddines of intellectual properties, is it any wonder that people are out there trolling for the easy score?
I'll actually be screening Life of Brian at an Art gallery this Saturday.
i tried suing marvel comics for ripping off my cockroach man character and changing it to some silly spider. i mean really....they had to radiate the spider when we all know cockroaches would be the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust. just a pathetic imitation of my own genius......sigh.
Hehe, good luck with your lawsuits! ;)
I'm sorry I haven't been over here more, but you are just as funny as ever. I'll try to get over here more often.
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