Eckler vs. Hollywood
The hit Hollywood comedy Knocked Up opened this past weekend to rave reviews and big box office. The movie is about a couple dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, and whatever the film’s strengths, no one could dispute that its premise is an old and well-worn one.
Except Canadian author Rebecca Eckler, who thinks they stole it from her.
In a long article in the latest Maclean’s, Eckler argues that the movie’s writer-director, Judd Apatow, ripped off her 2004 memoir of the same name, and explains that she’s suing Apatow and Universal Studios. The piece isn’t available online, but here are some of Eckler’s smoking guns:
The movie Knocked Up features a woman named Alison who becomes pregnant after getting drunk. While she gets drunk going out celebrating a promotion at work, I got drunk, and knocked up, celebrating at my engagement party. Both my book and the movie feature one night of passion and the nine months that follow. Fine. Whatever. But what got me was the fact that “Alison” was an up-and-coming television reporter; in my book I was an up-and-coming newspaper reporter.
Also, Eckler had a friend with kids, and the Alison character has a sister with kids. And both book and movie have scenes with multiple pregnancy tests. And, a-ha, the father in the movie is a Jewish Canadian, just like the father of Eckler’s child. (And, um, also just like Seth Rogen, the actor who plays the film father.)
Maybe it’s just Quillblog, but this nonsense seems equivalent to one mystery writer suing another because both of their books open with mysterious murders, or because both of their cop heroes tend to buck departmental bureaucracy. A warning to comedy writers out there: if you’re working on a gag in which someone has to buy something embarrassing at the supermarket and the cashier calls for a price check on the store PA system, you better make sure Eckler hasn’t used that one – if she has, she’ll think you nicked it from her.
Oh, and in her Maclean’s piece Eckler refers to an infamous e-mail blowout between Apatow and another TV producer, Mark Brazill, implying that the dispute is evidence of Apatow’s thieving ways. Readers should probably check out the whole thing and decide for themselves, though.
Finally, on a completely unrelated note, the very same issue of Maclean’s has an article called “Courting trouble with misblurbs,” about an interesting legal development in the U.K.: “Misquote a critic to sell more tickets or books, and you could face jail time in Britain.”
Yeah even the Martini glass with the pacifier’s been done before. Hope that’s not the smoking gun.
I’m going to sue Alexander Payne and the novelist of Sideways for writing about and filming people who wax profound about pinot noir. My favourite kind of wine! Accident?
What a complete joke . . . a publicity stunt for her crummy little book, which nobody except ignoramuses liked, and her insipid Mommy Blogger column. And newspapers happily hire these twerpette hacks because society has steamrolled everyone’s brains. I’m just waiting for a 12-year-old to get a byline in the G&M entitled The Cell Phone Diaries. Please, someone attack me with a cheese grater and have done with me.
[…] throes of hubris could think that someone stole the plot of Knocked Up from them. Quill & Quire offers their own take on the [ahem] story: “A warning to comedy writers out there: if you’re working on a gag in which someone has to […]
The funniest thing that Eckler’s ever written.
There goes my script featuring an incredibly lucky, comparative talentless woman who achieves inexplicable success by probing the depths of self-centred indignation. I don’t want to get sued.
She does realize that you can’t copyright a title, right? You can trademark it — if it is a series, or has a line of products with it. (You can’t write a book on your own called ‘Chicken Soup for the … Soul,’ for example.)
Rebecca may have trademarked the term ‘Knocked Up,’ I suppose, in which case she would have a very strong case, but I think that’s highly unlikely.
This blogger is calling on the masses to “crowd source” and disprove all of Eckler’s delusional claims. Join in!
http://byekoolaidmoms.blogspot.com/2007/06/but-seriously-folks.html
I really don’t think Rebecca has a case in this lawsuit. However for all those people saying mean things about her…give it up!
You sound so bitter! Are you jealous because your book didn’t get publish or because you aren’t fabulous mommies with a
fabulous jobs? Sounds like it.
And just in case you are wondering, I have a Finance degree and graduated with a 3.6 GPA…oh yeah…I have the
cutest and sweestest baby in the whole world, a killer fashionsense and I am a size zero.
Just because you are a woman and choose to be a mother it doesn’t mean you have to give up your life, your body and
who you are….what kind of role model are you setting for your daughters!!!!
I read Knocked up, while I was pregnant, and I could not relate to the book at all!! She sounded like a spoiled brat!! I’m personally against elective c-sections for a first baby even though I had to have one when I had my baby. I wasn’t planning on it though. And for her to even think of suing because she thought someone stole her “idea” for a movie…give me a break!
Seattle Mommy seems almost like a bigger, stuck-up bitch than Eckler.