Lee Goldberg

Can I Sue?

by

I got this email the other day:

If you’ve got
any time in your hectic sked to offer me advice I’d be grateful. As far as I know, you’re not a lawyer, but as a seasoned pro you may know!
Anyone that writes anything knows that ideas float around the ether waiting to be written.
Who hasn’t at least once, had that great , only to find out a week later  has just nailed a deal for the
same premise. That’s just the way it goes.

However… six years ago I wrote my first screenplay. It’s called XYZ, and it’s about an ex-astronaut who owns a farm/ranch in Montana. He builds his own rocket in a grain silo to launch himself into space.
Today I read that Billy Bob Thornton is to star in a movie called THE ASTRONAUT FARMER about… well you guessed it!There are no other plot points for me to see and compare yet.

I registered the screenplay electronically with ProtectRite in 1999. In the past few years I’ve entered the screenplay into a few competitions including Tribeca Films – for which I got a commendation, didn’t win of course.

So my question is this… let’s say this in-production screenplay bears a remarkable or even "uncanny" similarity to my finished work in structure and story. Do I have any recourse,  or is it just tough shit as I’m a still un-produced nobody without an agent?

Like you said, I’m not a lawyer. My guess is that
you’d have to prove that the screenwriter and producers had access to your screenplay and read it.
But I will say this, it’s not the world’s most original idea. There was even an
Andy Griffith TV movie with roughly the same concept and that later spawned a
short-lived TV series called SALVAGE ONE.

I think you sort of answered the question yourself in the first paragraph of your email… sometimes, people just get the same idea at the same time.

Many years ago, Bill and I thought we had a great idea for a spec script… a Russian cop who comes to the U.S. to find a bad guy and gets paired up with an LAPD detective. We called it RED HEAT. We were in the midst of writing it when we heard about…you guessed it… a movie going into production called RED HEAT starring Arnold as a Russian cop. This has happened to us many times during our career.

For a couple years now, Bill and I have been pitching a procedural series around town  about a special, multi-agency law enforcement team that goes after the most-wanted fugitives. This summer, TNT premiered WANTED, a series with the same basic notion. Do we think we were ripped off? No. There were probably a dozen guys out there pitching a variation of the same idea at the same time we were. That’s the entertainment business.

 

Room 222

by

Bill Rabkin and I are teaching another four-week, online course of  "Beginning Television Writing" for Writers University. For more information on the session, which begins Sept. 5, click here. I don’t know how the students feel about it, but we’ve been really enjoying the experience. This is our third or fourth time doing it and I’ve discovered that helping others learn how we do what we do has sharpened my own writing. In fact, I applied some advice we gave a student the other day (she was having trouble structuring her story)  to one of our own pitches and it made a big difference.

Harvey Weinstein has PANIC attack

by

Variety reports that The Weinstein Company has optioned author Jeff Abbott’s thriller PANIC, which just hit the shelves today.

Book, published by Dutton, follows young docu
filmmaker Evan Casher as he goes on the run from a dangerous spy ring after the
murder of his mother. He learns that most aspects of his life have been total
fabrications.

Abbott has written eight mystery and suspense novels, most recently 2003’s
"Cut and Run," the third volume in his Whit Mosley series.

Battle of the Network Stars

by

Variety reports that Paramount is launching a big-screen version of the cheesy 70s reality show "Battle of the Network Stars."
 

Etan
Cohen is writing the script, and Jimmy
Miller will produce through Mosaic. Barry Frank, who created
the show in 1978, will be exec producer.

Pic will revolve around a disgraced network exec who must claw his way back
to respectability by winning the contest. Concept was hatched by Cohen.

Original show bowed in the late ’70s, with teams of series stars from ABC,
NBC and CBS squaring off against one another in athletic events. Howard Cosell
presided over the proceedings as soberly as if he were hosting the Olympics.

New Editor at LA Times Book Review

by

Publisher’s Weekly reports that the LA Times has picked David L. Ulin to be the new editor of the Book Review.

Reached for comment, associate features editor Tim Rutten said the Times
had conducted a "very long and very exhaustive" search with about 25 serious
candidates. Rutten said the Times thought Ulin "had the right mix of
credentials" as a freelance book critic whose work has appeared in the book
review he will now edit along with NYTBR and The Atlantic Monthly.
He was also books editor at the weekly LA Reader.

"He has the kind of stature to take the book review to the next level," said
Rutten.

Let’s hope Ulin boots Eugen Weber and finds someone more qualified (and more readable!)  to review mysteries and crime novels.

“Rebus” Returning to TV

by

180305nrebusKen Stott is fast becoming the new John Thaw over in the UK.  He’s replacing the hopelessly miscast John Hannah as Inspector Rebus in the next set of TV movies based on Ian Rankin’s books. The movies are being written by Danny Boyle, who scripted some of the best Inspector Morse movies. Stott has  played cops before, most recently in the "Messiah" TV movies and as the leader of a sex crimes unit in five season of "The Vice."

He is, He says

by

Ever wonder what taking a novel-writing seminar is like? My brother Tod, the literary novelist, reveals all.

Sometimes I’ll sing a song or two because, well, when you get to sit in front of
the class it’s kinda freeing to know that if you wanna belt out, say, Total
Eclipse of the Heart or Can’t Hardly Wait or even a little something from the
Neil Diamond song book, you totally can. And then we’ll get back to talking
about your story, which may be really good, or really bad, or really mediocre
and, at the very least, you’ll know my thoughts and might be humming a song,
too.

I Was Wondering the Same Thing…

by

William Triplett writes in Variety today:

Is there something in the right-wing water that’s
causing conservative commentators to cross the boundaries of taste and
propriety?

Within the past six weeks, Robert Novak swore and stomped
off the CNN set; Tucker Carlson smiled and praised a fatal police
attack on Greenpeace protesters; and Rush Limbaugh trashed a grieving
mother camped outside President Bush’s vacation ranch as a phony. And on Monday, Christian televangelist Pat
Robertson, on "The 700 Club," said the U.S. should assassinate the
president of Venezuela, touching off a firestorm of criticism and
objections.

When Pat Robertston starts talking like Tony Soprano, you have to wonder what has happened to the Christian Right…

Chick Lit Bit

by

NY Times book critic Marilyn Stasio isn’t fond of "chick lit mysteries."

you can’t miss its gaudy manifestations — those slender volumes with cute
titles like ”Dating Dead Men” and ”Killer Heels” and covers in such juicy
colors you don’t know whether to read the flap copy or lick the jacket.

Slim stories. Joke titles. Juicy jacket art. Does a pattern begin to emerge?
For a category of mystery still relatively new to the market, the babe book has
already settled into some fairly narrow grooves. Even if you ignore the
generally deplorable level of the writing (which is surely an unintentional
aspect of the formula), these novels scrupulously observe all the basic
chick-lit conventions: the giddy girls in their glamorous jobs, the shopping
sprees and fashion makeovers, the gossipy friends, the disastrous dates and the
wry comic voice of a heroine so adorable she could be . . . you.

Book critic, blogger and industry observer Sarah Weinman thinks the mystery world will be buzzing over Stasio’s take on the genre. I don’t think so. The one thing these "chick lit" authors share in common is a strong sense of humor. I think they’ll shrug it off.  How about you?

The All-Important Rewrite

by

Screenwriting class is in session over at Paul Guyot’s blog, where today he is talking about the importance of rewriting. Lots of aspiring screenwriters don’t give much thought… or effort…to rewriting. They focus all of their attention on having a killer opening. Mistake.

Nobody seems to want to learn to be a great writer anymore. They just want to
learn how to get paid to do it.

But what few seem to grasp is that you
seriously increase your chances of getting paid for it if you’re really good at
it. And one of the best ways to "get good" is to understand rewriting, and know
that when you think you’ve done all you can, you can still do more.