I'll say.......NononononononoNO!

The Vimeo link for the film now requires a password. Man, what a shitshow.

[Note, pre-post, no edits: kinda drunk, and now succumbing to Ambien.]

As someone who didn't know it was similar to anything, watching the rough cut in a wee little edit bay, alone with and telling Shia my opinion for the piece in its rough-cut stage... I had a couple thoughts, yeah, but generally I was into it.

My read at the time certainly wasn't "you are ripping off a seminal piece of work that everybody fucking knows about." If anything, I thought it was kinda... whiny. And I gave Shia that credit because if anyone has earned the right to throw the occasional elbow at the film-crit establishment, he has. So, is it my fault for not knowing that another piece of pop culture has tackled this perspective before? Is it his fault for "stealing" it? Is it your fault for getting all up in Buzzfeed arms about him ripping off a comic I've never heard any of you talk about before? Or is it just a thing?

Shit like this can always seem a lot more "oh my god what a plagiarizing prick" in way-retrospect on the internet, but none of that reaction happens without the fanbase of one thing or another saying "hey, this was THIS FIRST" in shrill tones on an article somewhere. And as someone who has benefited personally from shitting on Surrogates for stealing its sci-fi tropes from other movies, and also been accused of stealing that observation from Cracked, and as someone who has been "stolen" from when it comes to opinions about The Phantom Menace in Red Letter Media reviews... you know what? Sometimes, different folks get to have the same feelings about a thing. And I'm right now calling you all out for jumping on the bandwagon.

Pussy-ass disclaimer: I haven't seen the thing he's ostensibly cribbing. So, yep, no credit to be had. All I can say, as an acquaintance of the man, is that he doesn't strike me as a piece of shit - and if anything he struck me as a creative guy with something to say. And I've never heard of this thing you guys have apparently all read and memorized.

He's chalking it up to "excitement and naiveté as an amateur filmmaker".  Not sure that's going to fly...

https://twitter.com/thecampaignbook

So basically he made a fanfilm.

Yeah, it's not that he's tackling "the same perspective" as another work. It's that he is LITERALLY using VERBATIM dialogue from someone else's work without giving that someone else the appropriate credit, making some changes here and there, and trying to pass it off as his own. That's plagiarism, straight up, and it's not cool.

Neither had I until it was pointed out that Shia plagiarized it. Which he did, flat out. Whether or not you've heard of it before is not relevant.

On Twitter he's trying to pass it off that he just didn't know better. As Trey says, for someone who's been in the business a long time, I don't think that balloon is gonna fly. I think he just thought it was obscure enough that no one would notice.

Well, now Patton Oswalt and other Twitterati have a hold of this one, so Shia's gonna be in internet jail for a bit.

I'd never heard of it either, but the first page of the comic is reproduced in the Buzzfeed article. Characters, setting, some shots, verbatim dialog... Yikes.

Sergio Leone and FW Murnau did the same thing. A decent check makes this all better.

Maybe.  Clowes is hit and miss with adaptations.  He was cool with Ghost Workd but I know he's blocked other stuff.  It's just so crazy because Shia has specifically referenced Clowes before in interviews.  Whole thing is just super disappointing.

Even in the fan film world, it's not like we pretended we came up with the shit ourselves. I mean, most fan films went so far as to credit Ben Burtt for creating the lightsaber sounds we hacked together.

EDIT: And just to be clear, I don't think Shia is a monster or whatever. But he did wrong and that needs to have consequences of SOME kind so he can't pretend not to know better next time.

Last edited by Dorkman (2013-12-17 07:50:33)

Yeah, I didn't get really pissed about it until after his half hearted, aw-shucks apology.  Of it was just similar I could forgive but it's so much more than that.  And he's a smart dude so plant me firmly in the "baffled," camp.

Last edited by Eddie (2013-12-17 07:58:05)

Yeah.  Patton bit the nail on the head.  Even if he had credited Clowes, maybe Clowes didn't WANT this adapted.  It's not Shia's place to do this without permission.  Again, no winners here.  Whole thing just sucks.