borrowing ideas for eternity

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • borrowing ideas for eternity

    ok, stealing, blatant ripping off

    a line of poetry from a dead poet as uncredited dialogue
    a few words from another film used in yours
    a scene from another re-enacted in yours.

    how much is dangerous in the land of united lawyers of america?

  • #2
    shoot, i'm a new writer and i'm telling ya I'm recycling all sorts of stuff.

    Now I'm just a novice but I say go with it...just change it up a bit.

    Comment


    • #3
      stealin..er..borrowing

      TS Elliot used to do the same thing with Dante all the time, except he put the lines in different context.

      My last writing professor told me that you can get away with one or two lines in a piece but they had best be clever and fun.

      So, yeah, if you do it right the audience will know and think they're clever for seeing it. Do it wrong and you'll be a scene stealing hack.

      Comment


      • #4
        stealin..er..borrowing

        My last writing professor told me that you can get away with one or two lines in a piece but they had best be clever and fun.
        I don't agree that quoting someone else requires you to be clever or fun. Adding lines from another work can also give depth. If a character mutters "Do I dare eat a peach" it is very likely to go beyond a large portion of the audience, but those that know the lines and where they are from will have some additional knowledge of the character and motivation. Elliot is the master at this. If you read "The Wasteland" with the footnotes, and then try and read the relevant citations, you have your reading set for a good year.

        I don't see any functional difference between quoting a previous work, and using similies or metaphor. You are still required to make sensable use of the language. Witness "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". To most people, that is an intersting phrase, but it is part of a poem of Pope Alexander, "Eloisa to Abelard"...

        Some might be obscur, but, what the heck, Dennis Miller has built an entire persona on obscurities.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: stealin..er..borrowing....borrowing..i'll give it back

          i just don't wanna get sued. legally what is the "limit"? if any?

          Comment


          • #6
            A little tale

            I don't know all the ins and outs about what you can use - except if its out of copyright (the dead poet MAYBE) - then you can use all of it.

            *

            There's a VERY old tale about someone keeping the same incredibly long-lasting broom for years and years - and in all that time only having to replace the handle five times and the head 4 times.

            Some writer lifted it and put in a UK television soap - I never watch soaps but I know because I had more than one person telling me the joke afterwards - I'd heard it before (groan) but it was a big hit with them.

            So yeah it works - and people will think you're a fabulously witty and clever writer.

            I don't do it myself though as I want my work to be, well -- my work.

            Comment


            • #7
              Other point

              Your question (to yourself) should also be not only how much is legal but whether doing this will help your screenplay sell?

              In the example I gave, I remember thinking -- so -- the only thing THAT team of writers could come up with to get people talking wasn't even theirs. But they were on the inside so, no matter.

              I've never been in reader's shoes but had I been reading that in a spec the writer would've been on minus points and I'd have been wondering "... now exactly how much of this is lifted from somewhere else?"

              If the best line you can come up with at any point is someone else's - or worse, the best in your script is someone else's - then what does that say about you as a writer... and why would anyone want to buy?

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Other point

                Posted this a few threads down, but here it is again:

                T.S. Eliot:

                "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Other point

                  xtc wrote:
                  Your question (to yourself) should also be not only how much is legal but whether doing this will help your screenplay sell?

                  If the best line you can come up with at any point is someone else's - or worse, the best in your script is someone else's - then what does that say about you as a writer... and why would anyone want to buy?

                  1st paragraph: that isn't a question. i wouldn't be thinking about it in the first place if it didn't make the screenplay better. give me some credit here. of course i think it's important!

                  2nd paragraph: not the case. my best lines are mine (see #) and i am the judge of that in the end, not who tells me are the best because they have more money than me. and jeez outside of what the law says these so called "originators" certainly stole from others as well at some point. nothing is really original or yours to begin with - just the patent offices'. and your other rhetorical question - people buy ripped off crap all the freakin time (remember the machine called hollywood) XTC because they can make money from it, they know it from past experience - and it's not just film, tv and stage. the whole world is doing this and yes ibelieve it is only indecent when the remake or rip off sucks.

                  # anyhoo, i'm talking about unique one liners - they can barely be recognized i guess, but they only appear in my knowledge in this or that particular film or book.

                  i simply wanted to know current copyright law in the states. can't find a nice link, but if anyone knows an informative one i would be grateful.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    xtZ!

                    Z!

                    www.copyright.gov/

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      As long as what you're "blatantly ripping off" was written before 1923 it's copyright has expired.

                      Anything after that is between you and the lawyers.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        If you borrow from one source, you're paying tribute.

                        If you borrow from multiple sources, you're a plagiarist.

                        If you borrow from everywhere, you're a comedian.











                        Or something like that.





                        The trick is to make the audience aware, subtly, that you're aware that they're aware that this is from another source.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          agreed. robin williams has always been my fav.

                          how about you xtc?

                          Comment

                          Working...
                          X