SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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Tess Gerritsen
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The Case of Tess Gerritsen
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Kim wrote: "Here's the authors own blog - http://www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-..."Good find, Kim. Thanks!
How very interesting! And even though she is one of my favourite authors I never knew about this book!
I saw that book in the remainder bin while I was in Australia and paged through it. I recall thinking it was nothing like the movie, so I wondered if they were distantly related or it was a coincidence that they shared a title. I didn't look closely enough to determine whether the plot and characters were the similar.If she is getting screwed out of money b the studios, that's not new. See Fatal Subtraction about Eddie Murphy and Paramount ripping off Art Buchwald to make Coming to America. It's also happened to me with Paramount, but I wasn't in a position to sue. As Harlan Ellison once remarked, "You need an agent in Hollywood, unless you enjoy getting mugged."
Trike wrote: "I saw that book in the remainder bin while I was in Australia and paged through it. I recall thinking it was nothing like the movie, so I wondered if they were distantly related or it was a coincid..."No, as I noted: that part's not new. It's the justification. It's that an entire legal ground is attempting to be set on the notion that: I can get all the rewards with none of the obligations so long as I come along after and buy up the person that DID commit to the obligations. I'm quite sure the agents are fighting quite as vigorously as the client.
Yeah, they will bend over backwards to not pay people, inventing new rationales to justify it.I think it took Universal something like 12 or 14 years to pay back investors for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, despite it being one of the most successful movies of all time. The crazy accounting gymnastics they went through just to keep from paying people who had actually made it possible to make the movie in the first place was insane.
It must be exhausting to be that petty. It's not even evil, it's just banal immaturity, but it's the way almost every corporation behaves.
*whistles* Twelve years. Unreal. You'd think such poor interactions with investors and creatives (that made the things possible in the first place) would bring about bad reputations, and bad reputations would cause some inherent hesitancy of others to follow suit...but as long as SOMEONE'S raking in the big bucks, I suppose, the system just keeps on keeping on. Banal immaturity. Good way of putting it.
That behavior is the key to why the most recent Writer's Guild strike was so contentious and angry. Writers are one of the cheapest creatives on the project and arguably one of the single most important, yet they're treated so shabbily most of the time.I was just reading last year how Marvel is treating its writers better than other studios do (even the mini-majors) and I was amazed all over again that in 20-freaking-14 we're still going out of way to praise production companies for behaving like decent partners.
Kim wrote: "Here's the authors own blog - http://www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-..."Wow that is f-d up.
All hail our corporate overlords.
that's crap that film made a mint. I hope she kicks their ass in court.
Don wrote: "that's crap that film made a mint. I hope she kicks their ass in court."Actually, tragically Don, quoting Tess herself here, "Yesterday, the court granted Warner Bros’s motion to dismiss my lawsuit against them." Appeals and/or revisals of the claim will be presented, but at present, the court seems to have simply accepted that new owners mean old stipulations don't apply.
imdb doesn't list her in the writing credits either.
This is bull. They will get away with it too just because of how much funds they have.
Between her books and Rizzoli & Isles, I'm sure she also has quite a bit of money. Whether or not the movie was profitable, Warner should have a bit of integrity.
Sarah wrote: "Between her books and Rizzoli & Isles, I'm sure she also has quite a bit of money. Whether or not the movie was profitable, Warner should have a bit of integrity."
I would say that, tragically, integrity rarely much factors into legal areas--or at least into corporate decision-making. But I suppose that's just being unnecessarily philosophic.
Basically, I would not want to be in her shoes. At all (At least at the moment. As you noted, otherwise, she's had a pretty decent run of things.).
Yeah, integrity and law aren't natural bedfellows and that's quite frustrating.
if the author was paid nothing by nobody then author was ripped off!! then author got jobbed on a "based on the novel by so and so" credit. author should be steamed.
Chris wrote: "Basically, I would not want to be in her shoes..."The point is that every author is in her shoes. If Warner gets away with it then, as she points out in her blog, every author who has or will ever sell movie rights to their books can be exploited in the same way. Someone buys the company that bought the book's rights and they can do whatever they like without honoring the original contract.
All the profit, none of the contractual obligations.
Plus, most authors wouldn't have her financial successes. If she can't win who can?It's also ridiculous in another way. One company can buy another and then spend the first five or ten years doing this and make a huge profit.
Micah wrote: "Chris wrote: "Basically, I would not want to be in her shoes..."The point is that every author is in her shoes. If Warner gets away with it then, as she points out in her blog, every author who h..."
Just have to hope appeal/re-evaluation treats the case better than the first stage did. That's the other part of legal; no matter who wins in the end, it's a long road to get there. Which is precisely the other reason, as you put it Sarah, "If she can't win, who can?"
So many cases are won and lost simply on the basis of running out/up resources and cost. Gerritsen is fortunate; she has resources. A company like Warner always has more; they aren't going to run out of resources, but for many authors, without resources or means, who might have needed the promise of that contract deal to sustain them, that company could in turn decimate them without ever even getting a definitive decision from the court.
Maddening. Utterly maddening.
I have to admit to some confusion concerning all of this. I've read the book and seen the movie, and aside from taking place in space and having the same title they have zero in common. The book is more like a modernized version of "The Andromeda Strain" while the movie is about trying to get home after a disastrous collision on a space station.However, if they're actually admitting to making the movie based on her book but claiming they don't have to pay her because it was from an obligation they weren't party to - that's just B.S.
It pains me to say it, but I guess I come down on the side of Warner. I really, really don't want to. The thought of a fellow scribbler missing out on a BIG payday because of some legal mumbo-jumbo breaks my heart.But I don't see a way around it. If Tess sold the rights (I'm assuming she sold all rights) and didn't make any provision for movie royalties, then I don't see how she can win.
I'm certainly no lawyer, but the point of law seems fairly clear to me. Am I missing something?
As I understand it, this is not a copyright claim but a claim that Warner failed to meet it's contractual obligations. Having said that, I would think that a contract violation would depend in part, an important part, on proving intellectual theft. If Tess Gerritsen can't prove intellectual theft, then where is the contract violation? Is Gravity the movie so similar to her book that the burden of proving intellectual theft can be made? And for me that's the rub. It's fun to beat up on a corporation, but if she can prove that the movie is based on the ideas in her book, when there are so many differences between book and movie, what's that mean to the average writer or independent small movie maker, when so many ideas are derivative?
Samuel wrote: "But I don't see a way around it. If Tess sold the rights (I'm assuming she sold all rights) and didn't make any provision for movie royalties, then I don't see how she can win.I'm certainly no lawyer, but the point of law seems fairly clear to me. Am I missing something?"
My understanding is she sold the rights to New Line in exchange for certain things (what exactly hasn't been said I don't think, but things like credit and payment are usual). Warner bought New Line. Warner is saying they have all the rights she sold to New Line, but are not obliged to honour the contract to provide the certain things. So they're basically cherry picking the contract. They're keeping the bit they wanted, which was the rights. But discarding the bit they didn't want, which was having to provide the agreed compensation.
If they win this case, it will mean contracts are no longer protection. A new owner can choose which parts of the contract they want to keep. So let's say I sign a contract with you to pay me $50 for first rights to a story, you have to list me as the author, and I get final say in edits (a pretty average short story contract). You then sell that contract to Bob. He can decide he gets first rights to the story, but will not list me as the author, pay me, or give me any say in editing. I will legally have no claim against him, because a precedent has been set that new owners can choose which clauses of contracts to honour.
It sets things up for the ultimate scam, as Bob could be an associate of yours, and you could keep selling each other contracts in order to avoid fulfilling any of your contractual obligations. That's why it's scary for authors, because what a contract says won't matter if it's sold.
Every contract I've ever seen (and signed) has a clause that says, if the contract is assignable to a third party, that such third party has to honor all the terms of the original contract. I'm amazed that any company would try to get away with what is it is alleged Warner Bros did here.
Did you know that she's currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Warner, the company that made the film? Not terribly unusual for authors in this day and age, but this one's an unusual case with potentially big legal ramifications for authors and the rights they have to actually profiting on their own work.
See, Tess originally signed the rights for Gravity over to New Line. New Line was bought by Warner. Warner went on to make the movie--but paid Tess nothing for it. Why? They say that by buying New Line, they had all of the rights to New Line's acquisitions, with none of the obligations that New Line itself had made to acquire those things. I.E. paying someone like Tess in the event they developed a movie from her work. Tess isn't even arguing their right to develop a movie on her work, she's arguing the fact that they're not paying her.
I wrote an article on the topic, but I'm genuinely interested in how the literary community's reacting to this, supposing they even realize it's going on. What do you all make of this?