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Yeah, so the ads have started rolling out for the new Amazon movie, "Red One." The movie where Santa goes missing and the folks at the North Pole have to hire a professional investigator to find him before Christmas. Sound familiar? It should, if you're on his blog. It's the plot to my story, "Lost Claus." I've talked about Lost Claus lots of time here. From the Pee-Wee version that got me my first job in Hollywood (I love how that implies I've had other jobs since then), to my attempt to adapt it for Prairie Home Companion, making Garrison Keillor's character, Guy Noir, the lead. Then there was the novelization, which I did to lock my story down into protectable form and the radio adaptation that got produced.
And my lead character, Nick Flebber, P.I., I've spun off into a slew of other tales, both prose and audio (You can check them out at The Nick Files Page).
I've been grabbing tweets (I said tweets) from the movie's Twitter feed and re-tweeting them with plugs for my book, so we'll see how long I can continue that or if it's even effective.
Now, do I think they stole my idea? Ideas aren't protectable. I have to wait to see the movie now, like everyone else, to see if there are any similarities in execution of that idea. Let's just say someone feels that certain people on the production team did possibly take a pitch and saw my script. But even if the plots are totally different, I take a hit. My screenplay isn't dead, but this is going to make it pointless for the time being, if it's a hit. A bigger hit if it's a flop.
This happened to me once before; I had script knocking around called "Hitler's Script." It was a story, inspired by true events, where a group of German filmmakers, during World War II, used the production of a Nazi propaganda film to escape Berlin. I started sending it around. Then my manager at the time asked me if I had a seen the Tarantino film, "Inglourious Basterds"? I hadn't. So I ran out and rented a copy (is is how these were once done). It was about World War II. It involved Nazis. It involved the German film industry. And that was it. But it was enough to derail my script. I wasn't able to start showing it around again for a while.
This is not a linear career I attempted, I get that. One job doesn't lead to another. There are no "promotions." It's all random. And there are so many different ways things can not happen. I'm the perpetual outsider without the moxie to work my way in. And speed bumps like this just annoy me all the more.
All I can say is, if you see the movie, Buy the book!
And my lead character, Nick Flebber, P.I., I've spun off into a slew of other tales, both prose and audio (You can check them out at The Nick Files Page).
I've been grabbing tweets (I said tweets) from the movie's Twitter feed and re-tweeting them with plugs for my book, so we'll see how long I can continue that or if it's even effective.
Now, do I think they stole my idea? Ideas aren't protectable. I have to wait to see the movie now, like everyone else, to see if there are any similarities in execution of that idea. Let's just say someone feels that certain people on the production team did possibly take a pitch and saw my script. But even if the plots are totally different, I take a hit. My screenplay isn't dead, but this is going to make it pointless for the time being, if it's a hit. A bigger hit if it's a flop.
This happened to me once before; I had script knocking around called "Hitler's Script." It was a story, inspired by true events, where a group of German filmmakers, during World War II, used the production of a Nazi propaganda film to escape Berlin. I started sending it around. Then my manager at the time asked me if I had a seen the Tarantino film, "Inglourious Basterds"? I hadn't. So I ran out and rented a copy (is is how these were once done). It was about World War II. It involved Nazis. It involved the German film industry. And that was it. But it was enough to derail my script. I wasn't able to start showing it around again for a while.
This is not a linear career I attempted, I get that. One job doesn't lead to another. There are no "promotions." It's all random. And there are so many different ways things can not happen. I'm the perpetual outsider without the moxie to work my way in. And speed bumps like this just annoy me all the more.
All I can say is, if you see the movie, Buy the book!
