Gary Gabelhouse said:
Hello All,
I read the long (and disjointed) article and had a hard time following or even finding the logic stream. I am a published author and am currently negotiating the sale of the motion picture and TV rights to my first novel, "Dreams of the N'dorobo."
From where I stand, Seagal and his associates successfully negotiated a contract with the author for the movie rights to his HIV/AIDS book. It is a standard to pay an agent fee (typically 15%) to anyone who ends up with a successful contract. That appears to have been what happened.
The only negative spin I could mine out of this article was this possibility . . .
The author's book was used in developing the storyline for The Patriot BEFORE they contacted the author. So, the book did inspire and directly impact the movie--but they hadn't purchased the rights. Sooooooo, somebody in Seagal's production company decides to, AFTER THE FACT, cover their base and buy the rights. I view this as "making good" on what would have otherwise been a litiguous act.
Just my perspective.
Gary Gabelhouse
www.gabelhouse.com
Hey, Gary. Congrats on the novel/negotiations.
I just skimmed through the article (will have to read it in detail later - you're right, it's horribly disjointed), but my impression so far is that it's a load of codswallop. I suppose it's possible after the fact that someone noticed a similarity between the two stories, but stuff like that happens all the time - how many times have we seen some wannabe author suing a studio because they "stole" his idea?
People having the same ideas (and sometimes even the same storyline) does happen, and it happens more often than you think. Sometimes it's from having read an article about something that got stuck in one's mind, but the source has been forgotten; sometimes, it's just one of those strange things that happen - two people get similar ideas for a story, and since most good storytellers know how to tell a story, the story being told ends up more or less parallel.
Sometimes it really is out and out intellectual theft (see Alex Haley and the issue surrounding his wholesale plundering of "The African" for "Roots").
In some cases, the concept of the story comes out of a book, but the resulting movie ends with up bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the original work (anyone read "Exit Wounds"? The only thing that survived the book, besides Orin Boyd, was the line "the cat wasn't dead"), so using that as an argument against "The Last Canadian" being the basis of The Patriot doesn't hold a lot of water.
At the moment, author Lois McMaster Bujold is, or was threatening to, sue Paramount for the way cloning was used in the last Star Trek movie, Nemesis, claiming she had intellectual property rights to the concept and execution of it (from the Miles Vorkosigan books that have nothing whatever to do with Star Trek), and that Paramount stole it from her.
She might just as well sue the folks that made Dolly the sheep (RIP).
I'll have to give the article a more thorough read so I can better assess the issue. It does remind me of that woman's website, the one who claimed JK Rowling stole her ideas for Harry Potter from her.
I'd understand the fuss if The Patriot was some blockbuster movie that made gamillions of dollars, but I mean, really.
-TD, sceptical
It took me several hours to read it but very interesting! Thanks 
