John August

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Please take your finger out of your ear

Rant, Television

Along the lines of my gripes with cinematic [cell phone troubles](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/no-signal) and [air ducts](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/air-vents-are-for-air), Lou Lesko takes issue with another movie cliché:

> The high technology wireless radio devices that are concealed in the ear canals of the good guys for surreptitious communication work just fine without sticking your finger in your ear. And yet on NCIS Los Angeles last week –- in a pivotal scene where a guy is being shadowed -– there were all the protagonists, obvious as could be, looking like they forgot to take a Q-Tip to their ears for the last month.

For once, writers are off the hook. Nowhere in the scene description do we tell actors to poke their fingers in their ear canals.

Rather, it’s directors who are likely propping up this cliché, worried that the audience — particularly a CBS audience — won’t understand why characters are talking to invisible people.

Pitching Prince of Persia

Pitches, Prince of Persia, Projects

[Jordan Mechner](http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2009/10/prince-of-persia-movie-pitch-trailer/) has posted the game-footage trailer we used when we pitched the feature film version of Prince of Persia to the studios six years ago.

Most movie pitches don’t involve video, but with PoP, most of the studio executives weren’t familiar with the game at all, so it became an important way to introduce them to both the franchise and the world. As Jordan notes in his post, this trailer doesn’t really tell the story of the movie, but it does give a sense of the characters and style: the dashing prince’s acrobatics, the devoted priestess/princess, the dagger with its time-reversing slickness.

Jordan and I pitched seven studios over two days. Each time, the presentation was pretty much identical.

1. Introductions. Apologies for keeping us waiting. (1 minute)
2. John hyping Jordan’s prestigious videogame background. (1:00)
3. Play the video. (2:10)
4. Jordan describes the world of the Persian empire, using artwork. (:30)
5. John pitches Prince Dastan, using artwork of him. (:30)
6. John and Jordan alternate pitching story, introducing character/prop artwork as new things come up. (6:00)
7. Questions about story, tone and scale. “Somewhere between Pirates and Raiders. It’s not Lawrence of Arabia.”(3:00)
8. Promises that they’ll follow up. (1:00)

Altogether, we could get through the pitch in less than 20 minutes. Disney liked it, and sent us to Jerry Bruckheimer’s company, who bought it from Jordan. The film comes out next May.

Here’s the trailer we used for the pitch. The actual trailer for the movie is ridiculously good, and should be out before too long.

Prince of Persia movie pitch trailer (2003) from jordan mechner on Vimeo.

Can I use a book without permission?

Adaptation, Books, QandA, Rights and Copyright

questionmarkI’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.

“No signal” is the new air duct

Genres, Video, Words on the page

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.