I did a 30-minute internet [radio interview](http://www.blogtalkradio.com/123-Film/2009/10/05/Profile-John-August–Screenwriter) this afternoon with Sam Heer, in which we talked about Go, The Nines, the Burton movies and screenwriting in general.
If you’ve heard other interviews with me, there will probably be nothing revelatory. But it’s amusing to hear how fast we both manage to speak. It really sounds like we’ve been artificially sped-up, but it’s just a lot of caffeine.
I’m currently writing a spec-pilot loosely based on a novel — not a best-seller, but one people have read. I plan on sending out queries to agents to try and get represented, but I don’t know if I need to ask permission by the author to use the ideas expressed in the novel.
The idea I’m borrowing is basically “the assistant works for the evil boss” and I don’t plan on using the same character names. I also intend on adding more characters and plots. But…and a big but, is I want to keep the title of the book as the title of the show. Seeing as nothing is really the same, I’m confused if I need to ask permission.
— Quentin
Essex, Iowa
There’s no gray area here. You are flat-out stealing, and brazenly at that. Stop.
You have a few options at this point. First and least defensibly, you can change so many of the details (and the title!) that the story feels like it’s “in the vein of” but not actually based on the book in question. National Treasure isn’t based on Dan Brown’s books, but it’s comfortably and legally within the same microgenre. It’s not the same story, but it’s the same kind of story.
In your case, there’s endless precedent for evil bosses. Do you own version. Don’t crib anything from the book at all.
A second choice is to actually get the rights. This feels like a longshot — why would a somewhat-successful author give an unproduced writer the right to adapt his book for TV? But it sometimes happens. I’ve [written about](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/book-optioned) how to do it.
A third choice is to simply acknowledge on the title page, “Based on the novel Title by This Author.” This doesn’t give you the right to make this pilot. You couldn’t sell it. You couldn’t produce it. But you could feel reasonably secure that no one would come after you, the same way legions of Buffy fan-fic writers don’t worry about Joss Whedon sending cease-and-desist orders. Particularly in television, there’s industry precedent for scripts that are simply writing samples. That’s what you’d have.
[Toby Wilkins](http://www.tobywilkins.com/) had emailed me about this weeks ago, but I just now got a chance to check it out.
SpeedCine indexes movies available through iTunes, Crackle, Hulu and Amazon VOD, letting you know where you can find any given title. For example, searching for the The Nines provides links for download through Amazon, iTunes and NetFlix.
Because most of these services are U.S.-only, it’s not much help to international users, unfortunately.
The site is still in beta, and while it’s really useful, I wish it provided better URLs for copy-and-pasting. Right now, SpeedCine gives you a jumble of letters after an ASP query. Here’s the listing for Go in SpeedCine:
http://www.speedcine.com/results.aspx?query=T0001274
and here it is on Crackle:
http://crackle.com/c/GO
That’s small enough to be easily Twittered, and feels permanent enough that I’d be comfortable putting it in a blog post.
But that’s a small quibble. SpeedCine is worth making your first stop when trying to find a movie online.
**Update March 2011: SpeedCine [has closed](http://my-life-as-a-blog.com/?tag=/SpeedCine).**
This terrific compilation clip by [FourFour](http://fourfour.typepad.com)’s Rich Juzwiak demonstrates what a hoary cliché it has become to explain why movie characters aren’t using their cell phones.
I plead guilty, having used the “signal goes away” variation as a major element in Part Three of The Nines. (I feel both disappointment and relief to have not made the cut.)
Unlike the [air duct cliché](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/air-vents-are-for-air), the cell phone problem can’t be solved by a simple vow of chastity. Cell phones are real things people use every day, so ignoring them is rarely an option for a movie set present day.
Don’t write movies in which characters would call for help. That’s probably the best advice I can offer.