[Edit: Ah, my browser's cache of this thread didn't have page 2 or 3. You've all pointed out my above post a couple of times already. Sorry for the redundancy.]

I'm with everyone else. I like Shia, think he's a talented bloke and want to see good things happen for him. But unfortunately, he made a bad decision.

I'm not mad at him personally, but I'm surprised. And his apologies are nice and all, but at least one of them is plagiarized. Like, seriously?

Original copy: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index … 955AA5dgbh

Last edited by Aural Stimulation (2013-12-18 17:04:14)

Okay, I'm not convinced of the following, but it's been a wee thought in the back of my head for a couple days, and Doc's post makes the wee voice just a little louder:

I [almost] think what we're seeing here is an art piece - one that he's doing, if not with Clowes, with Clowes' awareness. And I [almost] think he's making a poorly-communicated statement about why piggybacking on someone else's art to prop yourself up is bad. [IE, he and Clowes colluded on a quest to make a point here, hence picking the thematically-related "film critics are just standing on the shoulders of actual artists to attract attention to themselves" Clowes story and rolling it out in such a way that it was a safe bet the world would do exactly what it did.]

Now, like I said, I don't actually think that yet, nor may I ever, but I have gotten a couple whiffs that smell from some of how this has played out.

If you put on your fun-time conspiracy goggles for a second and imagine this whole thing - film, release, internet blowback, incredulous commentary from the world - as a premeditated statement instead of a PR meltdown, it makes a kind of sense. We've been saying for days that it's not like he couldn't have predicted this. He absolutely should have known it would take the internet two seconds to realize he was cribbing Clowes. Well, for funsies, imagine if he did? What would be going on there?

Well, a comic book nobody otherwise cared about was very faithfully adapted to the screen and released to the massive publicity and benefit of its original creator, and aside from how much shit he's getting right now for the roll-out plan, the film itself has been widely lauded artistically and folks have been impressed by Boof's direction. Shia's been desperate to prove himself as a creative individual beyond Transformers for a long time, and it could make sense - to someone, in some universe - that a good way to embed that idea in people's heads is to be involved in a high profile prank with a beloved comic artist, making a point about artistic integrity, that he dropped on the world after stirring up the shit for a few days to get attention. And then what are we left with? Clowes got his name way out into the otherwise-wouldn't-have-heard-of-him-world with a well-received film adaptation of one of his forgotten stories that wouldn't have been adapted otherwise, Shia looks all clever-like and Jimmy Kimmel-ish for making the whole world think he was a giant doofus before he clonked them on the head with his point about... criticism and piggybacking, I guess ... and folks now associate him with Franco-y "artfag" cred and solid direction, instead of Transformers.

...

Do I believe any of that? Nnnnnnnnnnnot really, no, that's just retconning the world around me because I'm tired and bored. But I could see that being a thing, hamfisted or otherwise, a couple of high profile creative dudes came up with while smoking a bowl.

And it's not like the truth makes any sense either, shit.

With all the plagiarized apology tweets, I now see only two options: either Shia is a huge asshole and decided to troll the entire internet in a "Well, what are you gonna do?" way, or as Teague suggested, it's part of something bigger.

I don't really see how he could be so stupid that he'd keep making apologizes taken from somewhere else and hope people wouldn't notice. He'd have to be really, really stupid.

Indeed that. One point to the little orange dinosaur.

I know you're not actively trying to convince anyone of that theory, but I still don't buy it by a longshot.  Mostly because I am familiar enough with Dan Clowes to confidently say that this sort of high concept performance art is the complete inverse of his character. 

Also, and lets remind ourselves of this, this screened at Cannes almost 18 months ago.  If this was artist commentary, the moment to unveil The Prestige came and went.  The fact of the matter is, Shia has been accused of this before.  So as disappointing and sad as this is, Occam's razor says it's more in Shia's character to steal than it is for Dan Clowes to be the Jerry Lawler to Shia's Andy Kaufman.

One last thing.  This: 

  Dan wasn't exactly toiling in obscurity.  There's a reason why people like Patton Oswalt, Wil Wheaton, Diablo Cody and a mess of other artists we all like rushed to Clowes's defense: because he's been pretty damn influential to many.  As for him somehow being lucky to have something adapted, he's been there.  Ghost World and American Splendor were largely well received and Clowes is fairly savvy in knowing which of his works is adaptable and which is not.  Clowes has been quite comfortable in where his work stands and he certainly didn't need Shia doing this.

Worked pretty well for Joaquin Phoenix, remember him?

If it's a performance piece, I think the better analogy is Andy Kaufman, who made himself the "bad guy" so convincingly that a lot of his audience ended up legitimately disliking him.

But I don't think this is a "performance" either, it's just that the alternative seems just as crazy.  How is it possible that this guy, who's been working in showbiz at the highest levels since he was a damn kid, could think he could make a ripoff of somebody else's thing and get away with it?   

The only reason a ridiculous explanation sounds almost plausible is that so far there's no non-ridiculous explanation.

Heh, let's see if I can boil that down into an actual law... 

So, this is going well.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/171945 … date.jhtml

The thing that amazes (and angers) me about this whole thing is that Shia keeps apologizing for "forgetting" to credit Clowes, but still has yet to apologize for the act of plagiarism itself. I guess he seems to think that if only he had thrown in the credit of "based on" or "inspired by" and then included Daniel Clowes in the credits, then there's no harm, no foul. The problem is that wouldn't have solved the issue of Shia's name being erroneously listed in the writing credits and the fact that he was never given permission to legally adapt the material in the first place. Why is this not being addressed?

It would be like me stealing music originally composed by Teague and claiming I wrote it. Then, when everyone cries foul, I simply go, "Sorry, I forgot to add Teague's name to the credits of this piece. I fucked up," when the real issue is that I didn't ask Teague if I could have/use it and that I put my name anywhere near the "creator" credit. sure, maybe Teague originally wrote it for the piano but my deciding to perform it on a Moog does not then make me the sole composer.

Or we've caught our first replicant.

Well, does the adage "There is no such thing as bad press" apply here? I mean, Shia managed to get it to Cannes before this whole thing went down, and now it has create a furor that might not have happened.

Not saying that Shia was right by any means or that the law suit will not do harm. I'm just saying, that in this day and age where people can have short memories, it may work out better than we think.