Question: “Plagiarism in action lines?”
An open forum question from Peter:
Is it plagiarism to embed a phrase taken from public domain writing in an action line? And for that matter from anything else? We don’t footnote in screenplays so, what do you do? I don’t want to be a thief but sometimes when researching I just find a turn of phrase that I can’t improve on, you know? What’s the accepted practice? Just shut up and never mention it? Folks seeing a movie won’t ever read action lines…
Peter, I admire your honesty and integrity…
Two qualities Hollywood avoids whenever possible.
The quick answer to your question:
No, I would not consider that plagiarism.
What is my standard of judgment?
This risque side of dialogue from the movie Sea of Love:
TERRY
So the emcee asks, “What’s the most romantic place you’ve ever made love to your wife?” And this guy’s thinking, he’s got a brain like a pea, but he’s thinking, and he says, “In the butt!”
Granted probably not the most intellectual of foundations for jurisprudence…
But follow my logic and I think you’ll see my point.
This side of dialogue is taken from the public domain…
A rather infamous story about a male contestant on the TV show “The Wedding Game.”
Whether the incident actually happened or not, I don’t know.
But I heard this anecdote at least a dozen times before I saw Sea of Love.
[Actually I remember the punch line being, “That’d be the butt, Bob” — Bob as in “Wedding Game” show host Bob Ewbank].
So here are the facts:
(1) The line is taken from the public domain.
(2) It’s in dialogue, which means moviegoers actually heard it.
(3) The screenplay was written by Richard Price, one of the best novelists and screenwriters in contemporary America.
So if as prestigious a writer as Richard Price copped a line from the public domain…
And quite possibly from “The Wedding Game”…
And used it not as harmless scene description, but actual dialogue…
Then clearly you have latitude to do the same with your action lines.
A side note.
That line from Sea of Love is basically an aside at the beginning of a scene…
Something we overhear amongst a group of workers…
The guy telling the joke is named Terry, played by Michael Rooker.
Terry, it turns out, is the killer.
So this seemingly innocuous joke…
Is actually a tip that Terry is a bad guy.
Anyway I call this my “In The Butt” defense.
Feel free to use this in a court of law should you get sued for plagiarism.
UPDATE: Anonymous gave a passionate response in comments to this post. So let me amend my comments. My answer to the original question — as I noted in my own response to Anonymous — was based upon the realities of life on the ground in Hwood. For over 100 years, the movie industry has thrived in a culture of the “homage,” or as some cynics would suggest, theft of ideas. Something as tiny as a line of scene description, given the scope of this culture, strikes me as not reaching any practical Hollywood standard of plagiarism. That said, if asked if I would take a line in the public arena and copy it word for word into my own scene description? No. If I was inspired by it, I would play around with the phrase and try to make it my own. Or if it felt too close, I would come up with some other way of describing the scene. I may not think it is plagiarism by Hwood standards, but by my own creative standards, I trust I can do better than that.
BTW, Sea of Love screenwriter Richard Price not only usurped the line from “The Wedding Game,” the opening incident (as I recall) in the movie is a police sting — Al Pacino and John Goodman welcoming a bunch of criminals to a reception hall, where the criminals — having received prior notification — believe they are about to receive (again as I recall) tickets to a football game, only to be arrested for previous criminal activities. I would have to believe that this is based on an actual sting (highly publicized) that either cops or the FBI did that resulted in the arrest of dozens of criminals who had, until then, manage to skirt the law. So apparently yet another homage in the movie.
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