Explanation of Tatiana Siegel's coverage of the Melissa Barrera situation, pinned since some people asked for it: Lucky for you, I originally wrote a segment of this video that went into more detail but ended up cutting it for time. So here's a summary: Basically Barrera had been posting on social media in support of Palestine, and as a result was fired from the next Scream sequel by the production company Spyglass Media Group, who characterized her posts as antisemitic (of course this is semi-subjective but I sincerely believe that they weren't, and in fact Barrera had also posted in support of Jewish victims of 10/7 and highlighted the antisemitism of conflating all Jewish people with the actions of the Israeli gov.) Barerra's firing was pretty heavily criticized by fans, the general public, and many prominent industry figures, with 1,300 artists signing a letter in protest. But subsequently, our girl Tatiana Siegel wrote three different articles about this, all clearly biased against Barrera. First, there was a more general article about a couple prominent cases of people in the film industry being iced out for supporting Palestine/criticizing Israel, including Melissa Barrera (variety.com/2023/film/news/hollywood-divide-over-israel-melissa-barrera-1235804452/). There's some general biased framing in this one, mainly positioning any accusations or suspicions of antisemitism against pro-Palestine industry figures with the assumption that those suspicions are fact (“...the hostile rhetoric surrounding Israel,” “the lack of solidarity,” she says Barerra “floated an antisemitic trope” like it's indisputable, instead of one bad faith interpretation of her words), while treating the perspectives of pro-Palestine industry figures like subjective feelings or beliefs (“They believed she was being railroaded” they “feel a kinship with the Palestinian cause” they “believe Israel is the aggressor.”) It's also worth noting that Siegel interviewed FIVE pro-Israel industry people for the article, while only doing the same for ONE person who was pro-Palestine. Then Siegel was actually the one to break Spyglass Media's statement on Barrera's firing that called her antisemitic (variety.com/2023/film/news/scream-producers-explain-melissa-barrera-fired-antisemitism-1235804914/) I mostly just think it's a little convenient that Siegel happened to seek out this statement from Spyglass, and also the headline is pretty inflammatory. Her third and (so far) final article about it is from February 2nd: 'Melissa Barrera Incites More Controversy With New Social Media Posts, Sparking Heated Debate at WME' (variety.com/2024/film/news/melissa-barrera-controversy-social-media-posts-uproar-wme-1235894339/) This one is just outrageous. This is not neutral language! Absolutely nothing about Barrera's posts constituted "incitement", but if you're a journalist at a major publication you have the power to just say that and have people trust that it's true. Throughout the article she throws around terms like “incite” “controversy” “heated” “under fire” “incendiary” “explosive” “inflammatory rhetoric," it's incredibly opinionated language. What's more, the premise of this article is basically that Barrera's agency were considering dropping her. But from what I can tell, this was based entirely on unsubstantiated rumors. Nothing ever came of this, and Barrera is still with WME. Siegel just cites "sources" and "one insider." What a great journalist! Siegel was also behind the article about the "1,000 Jewish Creatives and Professionals" who "denounced" Jonathan Glazer's speech at the Oscars (variety.com/2024/film/news/jonathan-glazer-oscar-speech-zone-of-interest-open-letter-1235944880/). This was a laughable article about a laughable open letter that was literally just a google form that anyone could sign. The article originally included a link to this form, which is totally ethical and unbiased of course! Hilariously, the article was eventually updated to remove the link. I guess that one was a little too on the nose even for Variety. Similarly to Simon Stephenson's "plagiarism" case, this open letter was just not the kind of thing that should have been taken seriously by a legitimate journalist. I don't know what's going on with Siegel. She apparently is fairly well-regarded and has done some very high-profile reporting, but it seems like at the very least Israel is a massive ethical blind spot for her, and that she's not above distorting the facts of a story to get the maximum number of clicks or push her own personal opinions.
@@jane-mulcahyplease pin this in the comments or make a video, ive really been hoping to see a video that covers this topic thats not just 1-minute buzz-news coverage but actually thoughtful and researched
i can't believe the holdovers plagiarised breaking bad! a disheveled 50 year old teacher forced to spend time with a smart ass young person and eventually they learn to get along
God with this level of evidence I think we need to get the writers of Dead Poets Society on this case. I mean they're both movies about teachers at a prep school who help a student and then get fired.
EXACTLY there's even a bit in one of the Hemingson or Payne interviews where one of them mentions that part of the decision to set the film in 1970 was to distance it from Dead Poets Society. It's almost like when artists know their work isn't plagiarized, they're not afraid to mention influences or similar works!
You could also add Dune to the list for starring an attractive male main character who has curly hair, and is guided through a coming of age journey by his peers and parental figure.
Or that 2000s movie (cant remember the title) with Kevin Kline as a boarding school history teacher who develops an unlikely friendship with a disruptive student with daddy issues.
finally an artist with the bravery to ask, "if someone took my ship, and then replaced every single piece with a different piece that has a different form and function, would I be able to sue them for plagiarizing me?"
By Simon's logic, both The Holdovers, and especially Frisco, are actually plagiarized from _Mr Bean's Holiday_ (2007). Weird loner man accidentally ends up with smart-ass precocious boy on his trip to a seaside town. The two bond as they try to reunite Max with his parents. A kindly woman ends up joining them along the way. There's also a confrontation with the boy's father at the end. Is this maybe a disingenuous way to frame this movie and its tone? Yes, but Simon and Variety the newspaper would know all about that. This plagiarism accusation is particularly frustrating because the boarding school slice of life genre is a huge staple in English literature, especially children's lit. We still grow up on these books here in India and it's one of the reasons my mother so fell in love with The Holdovers. It made her so nostalgic. _Simon Stephenson_ did not invent the genre and its tropes!!! You're right though that Stephenson probably didn't make these claims maliciously but honestly I'm more annoyed at the people around him (agent, manager, etc) for not talking him out of taking this accusation public, and especially at Variety for reporting on it so dishonestly. I hope the misinformation and rumours doesn't affect David Hemingson's career either.
That's really one of the main issues with his claim, the boarding school setting is so essential to The Holdovers that it's not very convincing to say it ripped off a script that has nothing to do with boarding school. And yes Variety shouldn't be let off the hook here. Just flagrantly irresponsible reporting that enables unprofessional behavior like this
THANK YOU for making this video. Someone had to. And also, am I a terrible person for being glad that Frisco never got picked up?😭 Honestly, I’m sick of stories where a sick or disabled person has to teach an able-bodied man how to live. Not to mention the misogynistic undertones of the script
It's good to know there are still people brave enough to voice their concerns about the obvious similarities between a hospital and a school, they're basically the same place at the end of the day
Also following up with 'busy cafeteria' as if that isn't an inherent quality of buildings with large amounts of people in them for long periods of time, regardless of whether or not _The Holderovers_ 'transposed' (lol) the location. Military bases have cafeterias as well, do they count?
I love plagiarism lawsuits for acclaimed/successful movies, they're always so bonkers. I remember reading an interview from James Cameron where he said that after Avatar, a bunch of different random people tried to sue him claiming that he stole their ideas but he literally received the concept for Avatar from a dream (?) and had contemporaneously written it down so the lawsuits failed.
haha I didn't know about the dream detail, but I was originally planning to include some discussion of other major movie plagiarism cases in this video, so I did read about that one. it's especially crazy with Avatar because that movie is SO broad and archetypical (and kind of has no pretension about it). I think it was Lindsay Ellis who pointed out in one of her videos that Avatar, Pocahontas, and Dances With Wolves all basically have the same story
Cameron was successfully sued for The Terminator by sci-fi author Harlan Ellison, who claimed it was stolen from two episodes of The Outer Limits that Ellison wrote. Ellison was pretty sue-happy and I don't think there was much merit in it. But he now has a credit on the film, anyway
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 I read about that! I agree that it might not have been sound, because apparently Cameron still maintains that it wasn't true. I know the accused might lie, but I feel like it's telling that he's kept his story straight all these years. Sometimes it's just parallel thinking, even when the stories seem pretty similar
Yawn, bring on more videos about Degrassi: Next Generation or Next Class or maybe a deep dive into Beverly Hills 90210/Secret Life of the American teenager. 😢😮
Wow, a sick person dies so a healthy/abled person can learn to live? How original! But seriously, thank you for debunking this. This guy is reaching so hard, he's dislocated both shoulders.
Yeah that's not only a major difference that further debunks the idea that The Holdovers plagiarized Frisco, but also a difference in quality imo! In Holdovers, Angus is a fully realized character with agency, and Paul makes a personal sacrifice so that Angus can have a better future. In Frisco, Amy is almost like a manic pixie dream cancer patient, more of an object that exists to help Willis out of his funk. He doesn't really have to sacrifice or compromise at all; if anything the script vindicates him by portraying anyone opposed to him (usually a woman) as either a total idiot or a cruel harpy. Not my favorite type of story.
Sounds a bit like someone read the fault in our stars in early 2012 and got really inspired before realizing it had already been optioned for a movie adaptation
In one of his emails quoted in the Variety article he says "anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word ‘brazen.'" so I guess his friends are either equally deluded or humoring him to make him feel better
@@jane-mulcahy I can't imagine how painful it would be to humor this nonsense in person I think I'd just die lol. The supporting document has the same vibes as flat earth conspiracies.
Obviously the holdovers is based on my life, one time I stayed home over thanksgiving in college instead of spending time with family so I wouldn't have to pay for a plane ticket.
Don't think we didn't notice the blatant plagiarism of YMS's Kimba video in this video. Or are you gonna tell me that debunking plagiarism allegations is not a concept owned by a single person? Smh.
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash were the writers of Payne’s The Descendants as well as their directorial debut The Way Way Back: a coming of age movie about an introverted awkward kid and an older, shlubby, but lovable character as they both help one another, with a primary focus around the kid’s strained relationship with his parents. Alexander Payne must have received a copy of The Way Way Back and plagiarized it line for line, he worked with them before! It even ends with differences being settled and a car driving away!!! Tropes be damned!!! This video is fantastic, thank you so much for making it.
i also went down a rabbit hole on this!! i loved the holdovers and was initially upset when i had only read the one article, but the more i researched, the more obvious it was how biased it was
My opinion of Variety’s writer room just dropped a hell of a lot watching this. Not that I took the article that seriously, but they really published that piece, and THIS was the stuff behind it? Really????
I know! It makes you wonder if they even read the document in full before publishing the article. But if they did, that's kind of worse? Makes the article seem more intentionally dishonest.
@@redearth6267 It absolutely was not. People are fully capable of writing inaccurate, low quality, and fallacious articles, and have been since far before ai became a fun buzzword.
Thank you for making this. I literally lost my mind when all these "accusations" conveniently started coming out last month. It's actually ridiculous because the pages that some articles used to compare the two are so different in tone and dialogue alone,. you'd have to strain and oversimplify the plots to actually find similarities between them.
Last night I had a dream that there was a small group of people wearing baseball caps with “Dominic Sessa” written on them and I had to do a backflip to get pass them.
Sounds like someone got jealous that a better script got made into a film rather than his own lackluster one, AND was nominated for multiple awards and even got wins.
Could it possibly be that he claimed plagiarism to get more eyes on Frisco? Maybe nobody wanted it, so he thought if he compared it to a movie people liked, maybe someone would pick up his movie.
I mean it's possible! I tried not to speculate too much because as I said in the video, I think it's equally possible he thinks he's acting in good faith. But the timing and nature of his claims definitely beg a few questions. Unfortunately, if he was trying to get more eyes on Frisco, I don't think this is good publicity for it lol
One interesting theory I saw someone float is that he's doing it in hopes of settling for a "story by" credit, which would potentially net him an Oscar had it won. Note the timing of when the allegations came out, after all... RIGHT before the Oscars.
This reminds me of "The Lion King ripped off Kimba" controversy. YMS cited an essay in his video that claims that multiple characters in Kimba are counterparts for characters in The Lion King, but that's not how that works! At least those 2 have the bare minimum similarity of young lion from a noble background's dad dies. Like you say in regards to The Holdovers and the French film, that's more inspiration that it is straight up copying because there are wayyyy more differences beyond that point.
Yes the Kimba thing is definitely another big example of people taking a few misleading, cherry picked claims at face value without doing their own research. In general I feel like it's really reductive to look at movies/shows as just plot elements and character archetypes strung together, because obviously in practice two works with a couple of superficially similar characters and concepts can be completely different in execution. It's hard to buy plagiarism in fiction unless there's text word-for-word copied, or the narrative and characters are actually identical, which in both cases they obviously aren't.
Gotta say i really respect how sympathetic you were in this video. i think so many ppl would rly mocked or insulted this person but you really went out of your way to show that this was not coming from a place of maliciousness (hopefully that’s a word?)
What a poisonous precedent to push, that one can take ownership of storytelling beats in a loose order. I’m not a Joseph Campbell “there’s only one story” guy, but there are many well trodded structural pathways that can be used to find countless destinations. To try to put a wall up, on that open road, and claim ownership shows a vastly overinflated sense of self.
i can’t explain it but i love the way you talk and describe things! it’s so satisfying and lately i’ve been rebinging all your videos while doing work.
Coming out of the theatre after watching The Holdovers I talked to my friend about the similarities I saw between it and Igby Goes Down (2001). And both movies share similarities to The Catcher in the Rye. I think The Holdovers is just one of those movies that relies heavily on archetypes, which is not inherently a bad thing at all.
My Grade 10 English teacher showed us Igby Goes Down in class because he said it was the closest thing to a movie version of The Catcher in the Rye that he'd found.
Ugh I love that movie. I think that’s why the holdovers is so good though like it’s designed to be a classic Christmas movie, very unabashedly trope-y and sentimental… there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s why it’s so good!
Damn, i cant believe The Holdovers ripped off School of Rock. Truley an example of the academys bias against Jack Black that they nominated the copy instead of the original
This video was fascinating (I've been drinking)! I'm a big lurker on r/fauxmoi, and the folks there are usually pretty level-headed. However, a majority of comments on this specific article were very sympathetic to the claims of plagiarism. Thank you for taking the time to break the document down and compare each screenplay. This comparison really helps me articulate some of the thoughts I have around the recent accusations that Philosophy Tube stole Contra Points' whole aesthetic. I think the idea that "trans woman makes intellectual, aesthetic TH-cam essays" is not something that anyone can singularly claim ownership over, especially when considering the realities that come with exploring gender identity. Anyway, sorry for the tangent, this sounded great in my head before I typed it all out.
i imagine a lot of people on fauxmoi took these plagiarism accusations at face value without looking into them as there’s already been other allegations made against the director of the holdovers (the other accusations have nothing to do with plagiarism though). once people on there actually started looking at the “evidence” for the plagiarism accusations, there were a lot more people saying they’re bullshit
I keep getting recommended tweets about the ContraPoints/PT drama and it's so confusing because I really don't try to engage with that sort of thing since I like both of them... it seems like some stuff happened behind the scenes so who knows whether any of it was intentional, but I agree with you, you can't really pin down 'glamorous high production value video essay' as a style that belongs to any one person. I feel like the actual content and presentation of their videos are different enough that I don't really see why anyone feels the need to get mad about it
Totally agree with the idea that people just jumped to side with the initial accusations, but I'll note that the discussion of the full document framed this as damning evidence of plagiarism, however I'll admit I did not follow up on this story after the day it was published. I think Jane's video is just an important reminder that we're not all experts, or even qualified at all, to comment on particular topics. While it's valuable to be tuned in to news of any sort, we can't just accept the framing of anything, particularly when it comes to subjective topics (manufacturing consent and all that jazz).
@jane also totally agree with you agreeing with me! While I do engage with their content regularly, I personally do not give a fuck about any personal beef between the two.
When I finished watching The Holdovers there were a few movies it slightly reminded me of Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Scent of a Woman, then I quickly realised, well duh those are just really great tropes, setups and movie structures that appear a lot, they’re not plagiarism, they’re just really interesting story concepts that you see so much. 90% of the time someone claims ‘you ripped off something I did’ whether it’s a musical melody or a story, you could easily make the claim that its already been done before. Most of the plagiarism lawsuits around a certain musical melody/rhythm has already been used before, probably multiple times. So many of the tropes we like now have origins in other stories from hundreds of years into history and yet we still keep claiming ours is the original one. If The Holdovers is plagiarism than Star Wars is plagiarism, its that simple
I appreciate this video, and it is annoying how this kind of stuff goes viral with so little to back it up. But the thing that bugs me the most is that the “plagiarized” script was called Frisco, no one near or in San Francisco calls it that! I’m sure lots of people have similar little regional pet peeves, but that makes me bias against Stephenson immediately.
haha to be fair there is an exchange in the script where Willis says "nobody calls it Frisco" and Amy says that she calls it that because that's what the beat poets called it. but Simon Stephenson is also Scottish so you'd probably be right that he is not exactly a San Francisco expert
jane, i need you to know how obsessed i am with your videos. i've almost watched every video on your channel now, something i don't think i've done for any youtuber before, and i've only been following you for a month. you are so clear and concise with your summaries, you make hour long videos feel like a five hour video from one of the greats. your edits are minimal which leads to impeccable comedic timing -- the home cooking channel clip here had me in stitches. in fact, this video feels like one i am going to be coming back to over and over to watch again and again. will be backing you up like i'm paul and i'm willing to lose my job to see you succeed! 💛
I do think there are quite a few similarities between “The Holdovers” and the script for “Frisco”, but I also think that the plagiarism thing undermines what makes The Holdovers so special: the characters, the performances, the aesthetic. Yes, the story is kind of unoriginal, but it’s what they *do* with it that makes it special
Man, when that whole thing happened, I read the claims and all I could think was "if Malignant wasn't considered a plagiarism of Basket Case, how can this be anything?"
While watching The holdovers, I quickly noticed the similarity with DPS at the beginning because of the student teacher dynamic, but it was only a fleeting thought because the movies clearly had very different stories. I thought it could have been a subtle homage at most, I had no idea people were accusing the movie of plagiarism. Its ridiculous and such a shame because The holdovers was such a good movie.
This is a wonderfully thorough breakdown of a situation I don’t think I’d otherwise hear much about. I feel like I learned so much. You continue to be one of my favorite essayists/creators on YT. Thanks for your hard work!
this reminds me of when i fist saw the holdovers and we got angus's dad reveal and i thought "oh like in degrassi" and honestly, that's a little bit your fault.
😭 that's what's so crazy about claiming this about The Holdovers specifically, I liked the movie but it's admittedly pretty formulaic and covers a lot of well trodden ground.
I think your end point is really the whole thing. He became convinced his work was stolen, so worked backwards to prove it. Evidently felt very emotional about the whole situation so even as the links got more and more tenuous he probably didn’t even notice. A grifter would’ve been more coherent, stuck to the superficial similarities. A misguided person who genuinely felt so wronged they were unable to be self critical? You get this.
Yep, same movie I was thinking of, but then again thats a remake of an Italian film, and also the sort of archetype/trope/story-structure you’ll see in a lot of media. Hell, think of the Lone Wolf & Cub trope and how much thats been used in movies, the old gruff man and the younger kid is nothing new
my favorite part of the holdovers was when vivica a fox hit paul giamatti over the back of the head with a printed out copy of the frisco screenplay and said "looks like you chose... the wrong transposition"
I think some people confuse plagiarism and inspiration. If you steal something more or less word for word then yes, it's plagiarism. However, if you create something in the same vein as the thing that inspired you but with enough difference from that thing... it's not plagiarism. Look at Indiana Jones. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were inspired by early 20th century adventure serials and books when they created the first Indy movie and they in turn inspired countless others to create something similar (Uncharted, Tomb Raider etc.). Noone can sue b.c. of that since there is enough difference between the projects. You can't claim ownership of a genre or a general synopsis. Even if you could, Simon Stephenson certanly didn't invent the "Odd-couple" genre. It's been around since at least the Vaudeville days, probably even longer. Movies like The Odd Couple, Driving Miss Daisy, Up, Breaking Bad, The Way Way Back etc. all have that same premise: "Two people who, at first glance, have very little in common are forced to spend time together. Initially they hate each other because they only see the differences between and negative behaviour in each other. Gradually they learn to accept each other and realize they have more in common then they first thought and from inital hostility springs a beautiful friendship." There is no way Stephenson can claim he invented that. He also didn't invent genres like the road trip or the trope of " a dying person teaches a still healthy (but cynical) person how to live". It's all been done many times before. Even if Alexander Payne DID read the Frisco script before they started writing the Holdovers it's clear that he, at most, was inspired to do a odd couple comedy drama. They didn't plagiarize.
This is the first I've seen from your channel but super happy to see someone has made a video about this! I felt like I was going crazy when the article originally came out and everyone was acting so disappointed in the holdovers when all the similarities are like...screenwriting 101 plot devices and tropes lol
Apart from anything else, why would the *director* read a screenplay he liked and then risk legal action by paying and working with another writer to rewrite the script he liked? Why not just option the script he liked? If Stevenson had evidence that Hemingson had read his script, that would have been far more damning. But accusing Payne is just nonsensical.
When I’m in a causing feverish excitement every time it pops up competition and my opponent is new Jane Mulcahy video about something I know nothing about
The saddest/most fucked up thing about this is that I fully believe that Stephenson is being 100% honest and believes that he's been ripped off. I don't think his actions make sense through any other lens, there's no way he stands to gain personally from negative attention this receives and he's probably torpedoed whatever career he might've had. I can only conclude that he thinks of himself as an unappreciated talent, the little guy trying to make it in a tough world with nothing but his skill, while people who he sees as his equals or lessers squat on the position he thinks should rightfully belong to him. And it can be really hard and really soul-crushing to do work, put it out there and not see any of the success you think you deserve. But the way that he's gone about trying to remedy this perceived injustice reveals the actual reason that his writing has never been appreciated by those "established creatives": it sucks, and he's not a good writer. Like, the snippets he shows of his own writing are terrible, but even the ways that he tries to put creative flourishes on the case he's making are awkward and embarrassing, it reads like a forum post. Claiming in the conclusion that he was ripped off on an "Industrial Scale" is so, so painfully revealing. He doesn't know what an industrial scale is or at least hasn't really thought about how it functions as a metaphor in this situation, and he couldn't think of a better way to phrase it, it's the kind of stupid malapropism that wouldn't survive a second draft if it was written in earnest. And fundamentally, the whole premise he's laying out shows that he doesn't understand what he's doing when he's writing: That genre work and art in general is always, unavoidably built upon and rearranged from things that came before. Every creative knows that, except apparently this guy. Which again, is probably why his shitty screenplay never got made.
Ok I probably should've finished the video before writing this because I didn't know he currently has a film adaption of his book in the works, which just makes the whole situation even crazier. He actually stands to lose a lot by making this idiotic stand and he apparently didn't have anyone around him to point this out or look closely at what he was doing and say "hey man, maybe don't"? It's just pure ego at that point. Like, he's somehow managed to succeed in the thing he set out to do and he STILL has this pure confidence and sureness that he's brilliant and he's been wronged because there's a really tenuous connection between some shit he wrote and a much better work that everyone liked.
I know!! I agree that what I've seen of his writing is not very compelling. And yet he's successful! Adapting his own book for Edgar Wright?! As an aspiring screenwriter myself (😔) most people work so hard and never make it in the industry, and even many of the ones that do get their scripts produced still can't make a living off of it. I can't imagine having a pretty successful screenwriting career and potentially nuking it all for this ridiculous petty nonsense? And yeah who knows who he's surrounding himself with, because in the article he says 'everyone I've shown this case to calls it "brazen"' which makes me think he's either surrounded by yes men or his friends are humoring him to make him feel better.
TH-cam randomly recommended me this video and I was like "what holdovers plagerism claims?" So I googled it and found the exact Variety article, read it, and thought damn, maybe these scripts are very similar. Luckily I came back to your video and found a more fair and nuance presentation of the facts. This is your first video I've ever seen but I'm definitely going to watch more because you're work is awesome!
That one would definitely make the top 3 at least. One that I didn't mention is "sneaking to asylum vs. sneaking to Valerie's room", which is comparing Angus attempting to sneak out of a movie theater to catch a cab to go visit his father in the psychiatric hospital to Willis sneaking out of his and Amy's shared hotel room to go visit Valerie, the supposed Mary analog, at her hotel room so that they can have sex. Does he think just the concept of sneaking off to go do something makes this plagiarism? I would say visiting one's sick father and going to have a hookup are pretty different actions, but don't tell Simon Stephenson I said that.
@@jane-mulcahy i can't believe stephenson forgot to mention in the document that payne also stole from his movie luca, when luca sneaks away from his family to be a human.
between this accusation and recent ones in the music industry (no one understands something being similar vs sampling/interpolation) society's ability to understand anything critically is going downhill fast.
Yes so many bs accusations of plagiarism in the music industry. There are only so many chord progressions!! But let's be real the 'plagiarism by transposition' argument is just begging to be used in a terrible music lawsuit lmao
@@jane-mulcahy yeah... plagiarism is a real problem (ai hi) but the plague of lawsuits like these take advantage of the ignorance of outsiders unfamiliar with an art's form, structure and conventions to sue their way into money and credit at the expense of other artists :( really suspicious of corporations, labels and managers engaging in these practices at the expense of art... you just know these generative @1 companies aka the real plagiarizers will try to copyright every melody if we're not careful shutting down this shit :(((
I was immediately suspicious of this Stephenson guy the moment I saw he had abbreviated San Francisco as "frisco". Everyone from northern california knows to watch out for those people, lmaoooo
the main similarities between frisco and the holdovers are that they're formulaic and remind me of robin williams films. but robin williams star vehicles didn't invent heartwarming films about intergenerational friendships or a character getting fired after doing something to help children/a child he supervises so being similar to robin williams films isn't plagiarism
I can’t believe how manipulated I was by that Variety article. Wow. Finally just watched the movie after the TH-cam algorithm brought your video to me. Loved the movie, and appreciate the work you put into this video! Well done!
I hadn't come across this channel before and I am very impressed. This video is researched in its facts leading to clear conclusions and a firm but reasonable and compassionate interpretation. I take my hat off!
This is not on topic but have you ever seen Mermaids (1990)? I watched it the other night on vacation with my sister and yes we went into it thinking it was like aquamarine. Boy we’re we wrong. Letterboxd reviews prove to me we’re not the only people that fell for it. Someone called it “getting mer-made.” The plot is genuinely insane ( insaneee ) and it was directed by 3 different men throughout the filming process and you can tell. The 2nd director quit when he got in a fight w Cher and Winona Ryder. You can tell the first two wanted it to be a dark drama and the third had an eye for camp. You really should check this one out if you haven’t yet
I'm afraid I've only started noticing this stuff recently, and only really when it comes to this one writer! I'm definitely going to be keeping my eyes open from here on out though
You've probably heard about the similar situation with James Wan's Malignant, and that one's a real nightmare because the guy has a better case than Stephenson (his specific idea of combining Basket Case and The Dark Half with a possession story is unique and is definitely central to Wan's movie), but the way he talks about it makes him come across as a crackpot. He's very active in reddit conversations on the subject and has a habit of replying to reasonable questions and arguments with complete non sequiturs, like he's trying to deflect. Then, aside from the fact that you can't legally copyright an idea, it's impossible to compare the two screenplays since he refuses to make his original script available out of fear that it could be stolen, even though his whole point is supposed to be that it was already stolen.
Oh wow, I have heard about that but haven't gotten around to watching the guy's video he made about it (I also still haven't seen Malignant). I won't judge too much without having seen all the evidence, but I think at the very least you have to make both screenplays available if you want to make your case to the public, especially if you're being audacious about it. Otherwise it just makes it seem like he has something to hide.
@@jane-mulcahy Now I'm obsessing over this again, so I double-checked and found the first ten pages of the guy's original script on his squarespace page, and they DO NOT help his case at all.
@@hurgenflerg2133 he somehow found my tweet about this video and replied with his video asking me to look into it... maybe I should check it out but I probably wouldn't make a video on it unless something really caught my attention
@@jane-mulcahy I think it's worth looking into just because of the mess of it all, even if it doesn't end up being something you want to make a video about.
I’d watched that screenwriter’s videos on the case and came away from it pretty convinced, but that just goes to show that stuff like this can be presented in super biased ways!!! Kinda disappointed in myself for not looking into it further.
The Variety article was incredibly misleading. Nowhere in it did it show a comparison of the two scripts side-by-side. When people actually went through the effort and posted the scripts side-by-side, they looked nothing alike. All you could really pull were vague similarities, and like a few other commenters have pointed out, by that logic, both scripts might as well have plagiarized Dead Poet's Society! An absolutely ridiculous claim from the start.
IMO (*as a lawyer*, blech) most people have a really, really poor understanding of the difference between influence and copyright infringement & between honest mistakes and plagiarism. And this includes lawyers and judges, most of whom don't understand the creative process *at all*. Also intellectual property is a broken concept, thanks for reading.
Thanks for making this video! It seems like too many terminally online people with their own agendas tried to give some validity to claims so easy to disprove.
the teen in the holdovers is not precocious!! he's a moody, troubled teen, not exceptional in school and not inspiring in any particular way. He's rather ordinary. He and the teacher bond because they spend time together and they get to know each other and part as friends.
The fact that he uses the word evidence three times in his closing paragraph demonstrates his ability as a writer. And the ridiculously clichéd subject of frisco just proves why he shouldn't be a writer.
This drama reminds me of the allegations that the omegaverse novelist Addison Cain made against Zoe Ellis (iykyk). Better check your inbox for any unhinged e-mails demanding a retraction.
Yes! It was hard not to be reminded of Lindsay Ellis's video on that drama while making this. That was the first time I heard of the scenes a faire doctrine
I also went through Stephenson's claims and perused through both screenplays. I encourage anyone interested enough to do so, just to see for yourself how much of a reach the entire claim is lol
I’d love to hear about the Melissa Barrera story as well please.
Explanation of Tatiana Siegel's coverage of the Melissa Barrera situation, pinned since some people asked for it:
Lucky for you, I originally wrote a segment of this video that went into more detail but ended up cutting it for time. So here's a summary:
Basically Barrera had been posting on social media in support of Palestine, and as a result was fired from the next Scream sequel by the production company Spyglass Media Group, who characterized her posts as antisemitic (of course this is semi-subjective but I sincerely believe that they weren't, and in fact Barrera had also posted in support of Jewish victims of 10/7 and highlighted the antisemitism of conflating all Jewish people with the actions of the Israeli gov.) Barerra's firing was pretty heavily criticized by fans, the general public, and many prominent industry figures, with 1,300 artists signing a letter in protest. But subsequently, our girl Tatiana Siegel wrote three different articles about this, all clearly biased against Barrera.
First, there was a more general article about a couple prominent cases of people in the film industry being iced out for supporting Palestine/criticizing Israel, including Melissa Barrera (variety.com/2023/film/news/hollywood-divide-over-israel-melissa-barrera-1235804452/). There's some general biased framing in this one, mainly positioning any accusations or suspicions of antisemitism against pro-Palestine industry figures with the assumption that those suspicions are fact (“...the hostile rhetoric surrounding Israel,” “the lack of solidarity,” she says Barerra “floated an antisemitic trope” like it's indisputable, instead of one bad faith interpretation of her words), while treating the perspectives of pro-Palestine industry figures like subjective feelings or beliefs (“They believed she was being railroaded” they “feel a kinship with the Palestinian cause” they “believe Israel is the aggressor.”) It's also worth noting that Siegel interviewed FIVE pro-Israel industry people for the article, while only doing the same for ONE person who was pro-Palestine.
Then Siegel was actually the one to break Spyglass Media's statement on Barrera's firing that called her antisemitic (variety.com/2023/film/news/scream-producers-explain-melissa-barrera-fired-antisemitism-1235804914/) I mostly just think it's a little convenient that Siegel happened to seek out this statement from Spyglass, and also the headline is pretty inflammatory.
Her third and (so far) final article about it is from February 2nd: 'Melissa Barrera Incites More Controversy With New Social Media Posts, Sparking Heated Debate at WME' (variety.com/2024/film/news/melissa-barrera-controversy-social-media-posts-uproar-wme-1235894339/) This one is just outrageous. This is not neutral language! Absolutely nothing about Barrera's posts constituted "incitement", but if you're a journalist at a major publication you have the power to just say that and have people trust that it's true. Throughout the article she throws around terms like “incite” “controversy” “heated” “under fire” “incendiary” “explosive” “inflammatory rhetoric," it's incredibly opinionated language. What's more, the premise of this article is basically that Barrera's agency were considering dropping her. But from what I can tell, this was based entirely on unsubstantiated rumors. Nothing ever came of this, and Barrera is still with WME. Siegel just cites "sources" and "one insider." What a great journalist!
Siegel was also behind the article about the "1,000 Jewish Creatives and Professionals" who "denounced" Jonathan Glazer's speech at the Oscars (variety.com/2024/film/news/jonathan-glazer-oscar-speech-zone-of-interest-open-letter-1235944880/). This was a laughable article about a laughable open letter that was literally just a google form that anyone could sign. The article originally included a link to this form, which is totally ethical and unbiased of course! Hilariously, the article was eventually updated to remove the link. I guess that one was a little too on the nose even for Variety. Similarly to Simon Stephenson's "plagiarism" case, this open letter was just not the kind of thing that should have been taken seriously by a legitimate journalist.
I don't know what's going on with Siegel. She apparently is fairly well-regarded and has done some very high-profile reporting, but it seems like at the very least Israel is a massive ethical blind spot for her, and that she's not above distorting the facts of a story to get the maximum number of clicks or push her own personal opinions.
@@jane-mulcahyYou should pin this comment too. I think many people would be interested!
@@jane-mulcahy I think this is a good material for a video.
@@jane-mulcahyplease pin this in the comments or make a video, ive really been hoping to see a video that covers this topic thats not just 1-minute buzz-news coverage but actually thoughtful and researched
i can't believe the holdovers plagiarised breaking bad! a disheveled 50 year old teacher forced to spend time with a smart ass young person and eventually they learn to get along
your pfp is so awesome
he also loses his job and pursues his dream (cooking meth)
This is the moment Paul Hunham became Heisenberg. Bravo, Vince!
This is the exact moment when Angus became Mr. Tully
God with this level of evidence I think we need to get the writers of Dead Poets Society on this case. I mean they're both movies about teachers at a prep school who help a student and then get fired.
EXACTLY there's even a bit in one of the Hemingson or Payne interviews where one of them mentions that part of the decision to set the film in 1970 was to distance it from Dead Poets Society. It's almost like when artists know their work isn't plagiarized, they're not afraid to mention influences or similar works!
You could also add Dune to the list for starring an attractive male main character who has curly hair, and is guided through a coming of age journey by his peers and parental figure.
Or that 2000s movie (cant remember the title) with Kevin Kline as a boarding school history teacher who develops an unlikely friendship with a disruptive student with daddy issues.
@@nenoman3855the emperor club is what it called
finally an artist with the bravery to ask, "if someone took my ship, and then replaced every single piece with a different piece that has a different form and function, would I be able to sue them for plagiarizing me?"
Frisco of Theseus
Dammit that was MY ship of theseus joke! You thief!
As a teacher of ancient civilisations, Paul Hunnam would approve of this joke
By Simon's logic, both The Holdovers, and especially Frisco, are actually plagiarized from _Mr Bean's Holiday_ (2007). Weird loner man accidentally ends up with smart-ass precocious boy on his trip to a seaside town. The two bond as they try to reunite Max with his parents. A kindly woman ends up joining them along the way. There's also a confrontation with the boy's father at the end. Is this maybe a disingenuous way to frame this movie and its tone? Yes, but Simon and Variety the newspaper would know all about that.
This plagiarism accusation is particularly frustrating because the boarding school slice of life genre is a huge staple in English literature, especially children's lit. We still grow up on these books here in India and it's one of the reasons my mother so fell in love with The Holdovers. It made her so nostalgic. _Simon Stephenson_ did not invent the genre and its tropes!!!
You're right though that Stephenson probably didn't make these claims maliciously but honestly I'm more annoyed at the people around him (agent, manager, etc) for not talking him out of taking this accusation public, and especially at Variety for reporting on it so dishonestly. I hope the misinformation and rumours doesn't affect David Hemingson's career either.
That's really one of the main issues with his claim, the boarding school setting is so essential to The Holdovers that it's not very convincing to say it ripped off a script that has nothing to do with boarding school. And yes Variety shouldn't be let off the hook here. Just flagrantly irresponsible reporting that enables unprofessional behavior like this
This is my favorite comment. Much love to mr beans holiday
A movie about a cancer child inspiring and changing a curmudgeonly adult’s world via spending time together? Groundbreaking
Oh, I think I've seen this one!
THANK YOU for making this video. Someone had to. And also, am I a terrible person for being glad that Frisco never got picked up?😭 Honestly, I’m sick of stories where a sick or disabled person has to teach an able-bodied man how to live. Not to mention the misogynistic undertones of the script
It's good to know there are still people brave enough to voice their concerns about the obvious similarities between a hospital and a school, they're basically the same place at the end of the day
A hospital and a school are both BUILDINGS, with PEOPLE inside, sometimes constituted of both adults AND children. Check mate.
Also following up with 'busy cafeteria' as if that isn't an inherent quality of buildings with large amounts of people in them for long periods of time, regardless of whether or not _The Holderovers_ 'transposed' (lol) the location. Military bases have cafeterias as well, do they count?
I love plagiarism lawsuits for acclaimed/successful movies, they're always so bonkers. I remember reading an interview from James Cameron where he said that after Avatar, a bunch of different random people tried to sue him claiming that he stole their ideas but he literally received the concept for Avatar from a dream (?) and had contemporaneously written it down so the lawsuits failed.
haha I didn't know about the dream detail, but I was originally planning to include some discussion of other major movie plagiarism cases in this video, so I did read about that one. it's especially crazy with Avatar because that movie is SO broad and archetypical (and kind of has no pretension about it). I think it was Lindsay Ellis who pointed out in one of her videos that Avatar, Pocahontas, and Dances With Wolves all basically have the same story
@@jane-mulcahyAvatar borrows SO MUCH from “Dances With Wolves” that it was reffered to as “Dances With Smurfs” for years after it came out 😂
@@jane-mulcahyI think that was Jenny Nicholson not Lindsay but either way she wasn’t wrong
Cameron was successfully sued for The Terminator by sci-fi author Harlan Ellison, who claimed it was stolen from two episodes of The Outer Limits that Ellison wrote. Ellison was pretty sue-happy and I don't think there was much merit in it. But he now has a credit on the film, anyway
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 I read about that! I agree that it might not have been sound, because apparently Cameron still maintains that it wasn't true. I know the accused might lie, but I feel like it's telling that he's kept his story straight all these years. Sometimes it's just parallel thinking, even when the stories seem pretty similar
New Jane video? About a topic I somehow haven’t heard anything about? Thrilled. Ecstatic. Thriving. Thank you for this!!! Can’t wait to watch.
Yawn, bring on more videos about Degrassi: Next Generation or Next Class or maybe a deep dive into Beverly Hills 90210/Secret Life of the American teenager. 😢😮
Wow, a sick person dies so a healthy/abled person can learn to live? How original!
But seriously, thank you for debunking this. This guy is reaching so hard, he's dislocated both shoulders.
Yeah that's not only a major difference that further debunks the idea that The Holdovers plagiarized Frisco, but also a difference in quality imo! In Holdovers, Angus is a fully realized character with agency, and Paul makes a personal sacrifice so that Angus can have a better future. In Frisco, Amy is almost like a manic pixie dream cancer patient, more of an object that exists to help Willis out of his funk.
He doesn't really have to sacrifice or compromise at all; if anything the script vindicates him by portraying anyone opposed to him (usually a woman) as either a total idiot or a cruel harpy. Not my favorite type of story.
@@jane-mulcahyevery little bit of story we read from frisco genuinely sounds like such a bad movie 😭 the quality diff is craaazy
Sounds a bit like someone read the fault in our stars in early 2012 and got really inspired before realizing it had already been optioned for a movie adaptation
@@ruby95100 Certain parties might even say they read TFIOS and plagiarized it, lol
Now I’m just worried this guy has no friends because how did no one close to him tell him that this was a bad idea?
In one of his emails quoted in the Variety article he says "anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word ‘brazen.'" so I guess his friends are either equally deluded or humoring him to make him feel better
@@jane-mulcahy I can't imagine how painful it would be to humor this nonsense in person I think I'd just die lol. The supporting document has the same vibes as flat earth conspiracies.
The 'laid out with a space between them' claim fucking sent me. Might as well accuse them of using the same font
Obviously the holdovers is based on my life, one time I stayed home over thanksgiving in college instead of spending time with family so I wouldn't have to pay for a plane ticket.
somebody call the plagiarism police!!!
This reaffirms my belief that you can’t trust a person who uses “Frisco” as a shorthand for SF.
Its funny that in the side-by-side lists, the billboard and cognac bottle were assigned to the wrong movies.
Yeah he does that a couple of times! Kinda feels like he was feverishly putting it together as fast as possible to send to the WGA
Don't think we didn't notice the blatant plagiarism of YMS's Kimba video in this video. Or are you gonna tell me that debunking plagiarism allegations is not a concept owned by a single person? Smh.
Please, I was obviously plagiarizing Lindsay Ellis's omegaverse plagiarism lawsuit video
thank you for making this video 😭 ive already seen so many people who haven’t read the document get misled from only reading the headline
I've seen the narrative that Holdovers was plagiarized a bunch on my twitter feed. Can't believe it was so easily debunked. Hope more people see this!
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash were the writers of Payne’s The Descendants as well as their directorial debut The Way Way Back: a coming of age movie about an introverted awkward kid and an older, shlubby, but lovable character as they both help one another, with a primary focus around the kid’s strained relationship with his parents.
Alexander Payne must have received a copy of The Way Way Back and plagiarized it line for line, he worked with them before! It even ends with differences being settled and a car driving away!!! Tropes be damned!!!
This video is fantastic, thank you so much for making it.
i also went down a rabbit hole on this!! i loved the holdovers and was initially upset when i had only read the one article, but the more i researched, the more obvious it was how biased it was
Jane, thanks for inventing TH-cam! That was nice of you.
you are so welcome. anyone else who has ever made a youtube video is copying me ❤️
With the billboard and cognac bottle it seems like Stephenson wants to copyright symbolism which is insane Jane thank you so much for this breakdown
My opinion of Variety’s writer room just dropped a hell of a lot watching this. Not that I took the article that seriously, but they really published that piece, and THIS was the stuff behind it? Really????
I know! It makes you wonder if they even read the document in full before publishing the article. But if they did, that's kind of worse? Makes the article seem more intentionally dishonest.
Maybe it was ai
@@redearth6267 It absolutely was not. People are fully capable of writing inaccurate, low quality, and fallacious articles, and have been since far before ai became a fun buzzword.
The "what is it exactly that we're looking at here" clip took me OUT
Thank you for making this. I literally lost my mind when all these "accusations" conveniently started coming out last month. It's actually ridiculous because the pages that some articles used to compare the two are so different in tone and dialogue alone,. you'd have to strain and oversimplify the plots to actually find similarities between them.
Last night I had a dream that there was a small group of people wearing baseball caps with “Dominic Sessa” written on them and I had to do a backflip to get pass them.
Sounds like someone got jealous that a better script got made into a film rather than his own lackluster one, AND was nominated for multiple awards and even got wins.
Could it possibly be that he claimed plagiarism to get more eyes on Frisco? Maybe nobody wanted it, so he thought if he compared it to a movie people liked, maybe someone would pick up his movie.
I mean it's possible! I tried not to speculate too much because as I said in the video, I think it's equally possible he thinks he's acting in good faith. But the timing and nature of his claims definitely beg a few questions. Unfortunately, if he was trying to get more eyes on Frisco, I don't think this is good publicity for it lol
One interesting theory I saw someone float is that he's doing it in hopes of settling for a "story by" credit, which would potentially net him an Oscar had it won. Note the timing of when the allegations came out, after all... RIGHT before the Oscars.
You can't copyright the idea of going on a road trip in a movie. There's hundreds of movies that do that.
Two movies having slightly similar stories? Now that's completly unheard of! We better call the cops
literally have not heard of any allegations at all but my ass is seated and listening!
This reminds me of "The Lion King ripped off Kimba" controversy. YMS cited an essay in his video that claims that multiple characters in Kimba are counterparts for characters in The Lion King, but that's not how that works! At least those 2 have the bare minimum similarity of young lion from a noble background's dad dies. Like you say in regards to The Holdovers and the French film, that's more inspiration that it is straight up copying because there are wayyyy more differences beyond that point.
Yes the Kimba thing is definitely another big example of people taking a few misleading, cherry picked claims at face value without doing their own research. In general I feel like it's really reductive to look at movies/shows as just plot elements and character archetypes strung together, because obviously in practice two works with a couple of superficially similar characters and concepts can be completely different in execution. It's hard to buy plagiarism in fiction unless there's text word-for-word copied, or the narrative and characters are actually identical, which in both cases they obviously aren't.
Gotta say i really respect how sympathetic you were in this video. i think so many ppl would rly mocked or insulted this person but you really went out of your way to show that this was not coming from a place of maliciousness (hopefully that’s a word?)
What a poisonous precedent to push, that one can take ownership of storytelling beats in a loose order. I’m not a Joseph Campbell “there’s only one story” guy, but there are many well trodded structural pathways that can be used to find countless destinations. To try to put a wall up, on that open road, and claim ownership shows a vastly overinflated sense of self.
i can’t explain it but i love the way you talk and describe things! it’s so satisfying and lately i’ve been rebinging all your videos while doing work.
Coming out of the theatre after watching The Holdovers I talked to my friend about the similarities I saw between it and Igby Goes Down (2001). And both movies share similarities to The Catcher in the Rye. I think The Holdovers is just one of those movies that relies heavily on archetypes, which is not inherently a bad thing at all.
My Grade 10 English teacher showed us Igby Goes Down in class because he said it was the closest thing to a movie version of The Catcher in the Rye that he'd found.
Ugh I love that movie. I think that’s why the holdovers is so good though like it’s designed to be a classic Christmas movie, very unabashedly trope-y and sentimental… there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s why it’s so good!
Damn, i cant believe The Holdovers ripped off School of Rock. Truley an example of the academys bias against Jack Black that they nominated the copy instead of the original
This video was fascinating (I've been drinking)! I'm a big lurker on r/fauxmoi, and the folks there are usually pretty level-headed. However, a majority of comments on this specific article were very sympathetic to the claims of plagiarism. Thank you for taking the time to break the document down and compare each screenplay. This comparison really helps me articulate some of the thoughts I have around the recent accusations that Philosophy Tube stole Contra Points' whole aesthetic. I think the idea that "trans woman makes intellectual, aesthetic TH-cam essays" is not something that anyone can singularly claim ownership over, especially when considering the realities that come with exploring gender identity. Anyway, sorry for the tangent, this sounded great in my head before I typed it all out.
i imagine a lot of people on fauxmoi took these plagiarism accusations at face value without looking into them as there’s already been other allegations made against the director of the holdovers (the other accusations have nothing to do with plagiarism though). once people on there actually started looking at the “evidence” for the plagiarism accusations, there were a lot more people saying they’re bullshit
I keep getting recommended tweets about the ContraPoints/PT drama and it's so confusing because I really don't try to engage with that sort of thing since I like both of them... it seems like some stuff happened behind the scenes so who knows whether any of it was intentional, but I agree with you, you can't really pin down 'glamorous high production value video essay' as a style that belongs to any one person. I feel like the actual content and presentation of their videos are different enough that I don't really see why anyone feels the need to get mad about it
Totally agree with the idea that people just jumped to side with the initial accusations, but I'll note that the discussion of the full document framed this as damning evidence of plagiarism, however I'll admit I did not follow up on this story after the day it was published. I think Jane's video is just an important reminder that we're not all experts, or even qualified at all, to comment on particular topics. While it's valuable to be tuned in to news of any sort, we can't just accept the framing of anything, particularly when it comes to subjective topics (manufacturing consent and all that jazz).
@jane also totally agree with you agreeing with me! While I do engage with their content regularly, I personally do not give a fuck about any personal beef between the two.
“Each one is a type of hall” haahahahaahahaha my jaw DROPPED. Thank you for bringing this incredible drama to my attention. This was just scrumptious
When I finished watching The Holdovers there were a few movies it slightly reminded me of Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Scent of a Woman, then I quickly realised, well duh those are just really great tropes, setups and movie structures that appear a lot, they’re not plagiarism, they’re just really interesting story concepts that you see so much. 90% of the time someone claims ‘you ripped off something I did’ whether it’s a musical melody or a story, you could easily make the claim that its already been done before. Most of the plagiarism lawsuits around a certain musical melody/rhythm has already been used before, probably multiple times. So many of the tropes we like now have origins in other stories from hundreds of years into history and yet we still keep claiming ours is the original one. If The Holdovers is plagiarism than Star Wars is plagiarism, its that simple
as a story, frisco sounds significantly less charming in my personal opinion
What the HELL. I had a teacher once, I'm pretty sure he drank fluids and was dissatisfied with his life. Anyone have LegalEagle's number?
I appreciate this video, and it is annoying how this kind of stuff goes viral with so little to back it up. But the thing that bugs me the most is that the “plagiarized” script was called Frisco, no one near or in San Francisco calls it that! I’m sure lots of people have similar little regional pet peeves, but that makes me bias against Stephenson immediately.
haha to be fair there is an exchange in the script where Willis says "nobody calls it Frisco" and Amy says that she calls it that because that's what the beat poets called it. but Simon Stephenson is also Scottish so you'd probably be right that he is not exactly a San Francisco expert
jane, i need you to know how obsessed i am with your videos. i've almost watched every video on your channel now, something i don't think i've done for any youtuber before, and i've only been following you for a month. you are so clear and concise with your summaries, you make hour long videos feel like a five hour video from one of the greats. your edits are minimal which leads to impeccable comedic timing -- the home cooking channel clip here had me in stitches. in fact, this video feels like one i am going to be coming back to over and over to watch again and again. will be backing you up like i'm paul and i'm willing to lose my job to see you succeed! 💛
I do think there are quite a few similarities between “The Holdovers” and the script for “Frisco”, but I also think that the plagiarism thing undermines what makes The Holdovers so special: the characters, the performances, the aesthetic. Yes, the story is kind of unoriginal, but it’s what they *do* with it that makes it special
Transposing this comment to transpose your video into the algorithm!
boosting by transposition 🫡
I’ve previously had the idea to comment on videos and am accusing your comment of plagiarism.
Man, when that whole thing happened, I read the claims and all I could think was "if Malignant wasn't considered a plagiarism of Basket Case, how can this be anything?"
While watching The holdovers, I quickly noticed the similarity with DPS at the beginning because of the student teacher dynamic, but it was only a fleeting thought because the movies clearly had very different stories. I thought it could have been a subtle homage at most, I had no idea people were accusing the movie of plagiarism. Its ridiculous and such a shame because The holdovers was such a good movie.
This is a wonderfully thorough breakdown of a situation I don’t think I’d otherwise hear much about. I feel like I learned so much. You continue to be one of my favorite essayists/creators on YT. Thanks for your hard work!
Is someone gonna tell him about Gigli and fundamentals of caring? Sounds more similar to his movie
okay I haven't seen Fundamentals of Caring but I just read the plot summary... WAY more comparable to Frisco lolol. and yet, still not plagiarism!
The whole point is that Hunham was falsely accused of plagiarism & the perpetrator of the plagiarism falsely passed himself off as the victim.
this reminds me of when i fist saw the holdovers and we got angus's dad reveal and i thought "oh like in degrassi" and honestly, that's a little bit your fault.
😭 that's what's so crazy about claiming this about The Holdovers specifically, I liked the movie but it's admittedly pretty formulaic and covers a lot of well trodden ground.
I needed that laugh thank you
Bro is trying the copyright the concept of symbolism in film 😭😭
I think your end point is really the whole thing. He became convinced his work was stolen, so worked backwards to prove it. Evidently felt very emotional about the whole situation so even as the links got more and more tenuous he probably didn’t even notice. A grifter would’ve been more coherent, stuck to the superficial similarities. A misguided person who genuinely felt so wronged they were unable to be self critical? You get this.
Holdovers was closer to Scent of a Woman than anything I could think of.
Yep, same movie I was thinking of, but then again thats a remake of an Italian film, and also the sort of archetype/trope/story-structure you’ll see in a lot of media. Hell, think of the Lone Wolf & Cub trope and how much thats been used in movies, the old gruff man and the younger kid is nothing new
This is more about the state of journalism these days, rather than plagiarism.
Man who’s only seen one movie: I’m getting a real frisco vibe from this 🤔🤔
Love all of your work (idk why, I've never watched a single show you've reviewed). This video was very timely and I appreciate your perspective.
If I call my mom, is this guy gonna sue me?
No, he'll just complain to the writers' guild and then leak his own complaints to the press.
@@wtfaiwpodcast I can survive that.
Stuck in a building during winter? Pretty sure this movie ripped off The Shining too.
This is wild. I can't believe a story about this disingenuous plagiarism claim was published. Thanks for your analysis!
I appreciate that very brief Cursed reference. That one is for true intellectuals
my favorite part of the holdovers was when vivica a fox hit paul giamatti over the back of the head with a printed out copy of the frisco screenplay and said "looks like you chose... the wrong transposition"
I think some people confuse plagiarism and inspiration. If you steal something more or less word for word then yes, it's plagiarism. However, if you create something in the same vein as the thing that inspired you but with enough difference from that thing... it's not plagiarism. Look at Indiana Jones. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were inspired by early 20th century adventure serials and books when they created the first Indy movie and they in turn inspired countless others to create something similar (Uncharted, Tomb Raider etc.). Noone can sue b.c. of that since there is enough difference between the projects. You can't claim ownership of a genre or a general synopsis. Even if you could, Simon Stephenson certanly didn't invent the "Odd-couple" genre. It's been around since at least the Vaudeville days, probably even longer. Movies like The Odd Couple, Driving Miss Daisy, Up, Breaking Bad, The Way Way Back etc. all have that same premise: "Two people who, at first glance, have very little in common are forced to spend time together. Initially they hate each other because they only see the differences between and negative behaviour in each other. Gradually they learn to accept each other and realize they have more in common then they first thought and from inital hostility springs a beautiful friendship." There is no way Stephenson can claim he invented that. He also didn't invent genres like the road trip or the trope of " a dying person teaches a still healthy (but cynical) person how to live". It's all been done many times before. Even if Alexander Payne DID read the Frisco script before they started writing the Holdovers it's clear that he, at most, was inspired to do a odd couple comedy drama. They didn't plagiarize.
This is so insane, like psychiatric intervention needed INSANE
This is the first I've seen from your channel but super happy to see someone has made a video about this! I felt like I was going crazy when the article originally came out and everyone was acting so disappointed in the holdovers when all the similarities are like...screenwriting 101 plot devices and tropes lol
I hadn’t heard of the holdovers until now, and while this is irrelevant what a lovely movie my neighborhood even makes an appearance, how delightful
Apart from anything else, why would the *director* read a screenplay he liked and then risk legal action by paying and working with another writer to rewrite the script he liked? Why not just option the script he liked? If Stevenson had evidence that Hemingson had read his script, that would have been far more damning. But accusing Payne is just nonsensical.
Umm The Holdovers had words, like the Frisco script, checkmate :P but seriously amazing essay
When I’m in a causing feverish excitement every time it pops up competition and my opponent is new Jane Mulcahy video about something I know nothing about
Just letting you know - your sources Google Doc is not set to public view at the moment and redirects to an "Access Denied" page!
oops my bad! should be fixed now
The saddest/most fucked up thing about this is that I fully believe that Stephenson is being 100% honest and believes that he's been ripped off. I don't think his actions make sense through any other lens, there's no way he stands to gain personally from negative attention this receives and he's probably torpedoed whatever career he might've had. I can only conclude that he thinks of himself as an unappreciated talent, the little guy trying to make it in a tough world with nothing but his skill, while people who he sees as his equals or lessers squat on the position he thinks should rightfully belong to him. And it can be really hard and really soul-crushing to do work, put it out there and not see any of the success you think you deserve. But the way that he's gone about trying to remedy this perceived injustice reveals the actual reason that his writing has never been appreciated by those "established creatives": it sucks, and he's not a good writer. Like, the snippets he shows of his own writing are terrible, but even the ways that he tries to put creative flourishes on the case he's making are awkward and embarrassing, it reads like a forum post. Claiming in the conclusion that he was ripped off on an "Industrial Scale" is so, so painfully revealing. He doesn't know what an industrial scale is or at least hasn't really thought about how it functions as a metaphor in this situation, and he couldn't think of a better way to phrase it, it's the kind of stupid malapropism that wouldn't survive a second draft if it was written in earnest. And fundamentally, the whole premise he's laying out shows that he doesn't understand what he's doing when he's writing: That genre work and art in general is always, unavoidably built upon and rearranged from things that came before. Every creative knows that, except apparently this guy. Which again, is probably why his shitty screenplay never got made.
Ok I probably should've finished the video before writing this because I didn't know he currently has a film adaption of his book in the works, which just makes the whole situation even crazier. He actually stands to lose a lot by making this idiotic stand and he apparently didn't have anyone around him to point this out or look closely at what he was doing and say "hey man, maybe don't"? It's just pure ego at that point. Like, he's somehow managed to succeed in the thing he set out to do and he STILL has this pure confidence and sureness that he's brilliant and he's been wronged because there's a really tenuous connection between some shit he wrote and a much better work that everyone liked.
I know!! I agree that what I've seen of his writing is not very compelling. And yet he's successful! Adapting his own book for Edgar Wright?! As an aspiring screenwriter myself (😔) most people work so hard and never make it in the industry, and even many of the ones that do get their scripts produced still can't make a living off of it. I can't imagine having a pretty successful screenwriting career and potentially nuking it all for this ridiculous petty nonsense? And yeah who knows who he's surrounding himself with, because in the article he says 'everyone I've shown this case to calls it "brazen"' which makes me think he's either surrounded by yes men or his friends are humoring him to make him feel better.
TH-cam randomly recommended me this video and I was like "what holdovers plagerism claims?" So I googled it and found the exact Variety article, read it, and thought damn, maybe these scripts are very similar. Luckily I came back to your video and found a more fair and nuance presentation of the facts. This is your first video I've ever seen but I'm definitely going to watch more because you're work is awesome!
i need a follow up video of you ranking accusations in order of silliness. i hope gift of christmas cookies vs twenty dollars to put in sock wins!
That one would definitely make the top 3 at least. One that I didn't mention is "sneaking to asylum vs. sneaking to Valerie's room", which is comparing Angus attempting to sneak out of a movie theater to catch a cab to go visit his father in the psychiatric hospital to Willis sneaking out of his and Amy's shared hotel room to go visit Valerie, the supposed Mary analog, at her hotel room so that they can have sex. Does he think just the concept of sneaking off to go do something makes this plagiarism? I would say visiting one's sick father and going to have a hookup are pretty different actions, but don't tell Simon Stephenson I said that.
@@jane-mulcahy i can't believe stephenson forgot to mention in the document that payne also stole from his movie luca, when luca sneaks away from his family to be a human.
I smelled BS from the start. I love the movie but it isn't like an original idea. It's the filmmaking and the performances that made it what it is.
between this accusation and recent ones in the music industry (no one understands something being similar vs sampling/interpolation) society's ability to understand anything critically is going downhill fast.
Yes so many bs accusations of plagiarism in the music industry. There are only so many chord progressions!! But let's be real the 'plagiarism by transposition' argument is just begging to be used in a terrible music lawsuit lmao
@@jane-mulcahy yeah... plagiarism is a real problem (ai hi) but the plague of lawsuits like these take advantage of the ignorance of outsiders unfamiliar with an art's form, structure and conventions to sue their way into money and credit at the expense of other artists :( really suspicious of corporations, labels and managers engaging in these practices at the expense of art... you just know these generative @1 companies aka the real plagiarizers will try to copyright every melody if we're not careful shutting down this shit :(((
I was immediately suspicious of this Stephenson guy the moment I saw he had abbreviated San Francisco as "frisco". Everyone from northern california knows to watch out for those people, lmaoooo
This is such an incredible walkthrough of the facts. Kudos.
I think you’ve plagiarized by transposition hbomberguy’s Plagiarism and You(tube) here, Jane
no no no you're mistaken, my youtube video is actually inspired by an obscure french youtube video from 1935!
the main similarities between frisco and the holdovers are that they're formulaic and remind me of robin williams films. but robin williams star vehicles didn't invent heartwarming films about intergenerational friendships or a character getting fired after doing something to help children/a child he supervises so being similar to robin williams films isn't plagiarism
I can’t believe how manipulated I was by that Variety article. Wow. Finally just watched the movie after the TH-cam algorithm brought your video to me. Loved the movie, and appreciate the work you put into this video! Well done!
I hadn't come across this channel before and I am very impressed. This video is researched in its facts leading to clear conclusions and a firm but reasonable and compassionate interpretation. I take my hat off!
This is not on topic but have you ever seen Mermaids (1990)? I watched it the other night on vacation with my sister and yes we went into it thinking it was like aquamarine. Boy we’re we wrong. Letterboxd reviews prove to me we’re not the only people that fell for it. Someone called it “getting mer-made.” The plot is genuinely insane ( insaneee ) and it was directed by 3 different men throughout the filming process and you can tell. The 2nd director quit when he got in a fight w Cher and Winona Ryder. You can tell the first two wanted it to be a dark drama and the third had an eye for camp. You really should check this one out if you haven’t yet
i loved mary and davine joy in the role, so the allegation that she served the same function as a love interest steams my rice
lol I like "steams my rice." my dad has occasionally said "fries my potatoes"
Personally I would love a deep dive into ethical media journalism
I'm afraid I've only started noticing this stuff recently, and only really when it comes to this one writer! I'm definitely going to be keeping my eyes open from here on out though
Holdovers reminds me of Goodbye Mr. Chips
You've probably heard about the similar situation with James Wan's Malignant, and that one's a real nightmare because the guy has a better case than Stephenson (his specific idea of combining Basket Case and The Dark Half with a possession story is unique and is definitely central to Wan's movie), but the way he talks about it makes him come across as a crackpot. He's very active in reddit conversations on the subject and has a habit of replying to reasonable questions and arguments with complete non sequiturs, like he's trying to deflect. Then, aside from the fact that you can't legally copyright an idea, it's impossible to compare the two screenplays since he refuses to make his original script available out of fear that it could be stolen, even though his whole point is supposed to be that it was already stolen.
Oh wow, I have heard about that but haven't gotten around to watching the guy's video he made about it (I also still haven't seen Malignant). I won't judge too much without having seen all the evidence, but I think at the very least you have to make both screenplays available if you want to make your case to the public, especially if you're being audacious about it. Otherwise it just makes it seem like he has something to hide.
@@jane-mulcahy Now I'm obsessing over this again, so I double-checked and found the first ten pages of the guy's original script on his squarespace page, and they DO NOT help his case at all.
@@hurgenflerg2133 he somehow found my tweet about this video and replied with his video asking me to look into it... maybe I should check it out but I probably wouldn't make a video on it unless something really caught my attention
@@jane-mulcahy I think it's worth looking into just because of the mess of it all, even if it doesn't end up being something you want to make a video about.
I’d watched that screenwriter’s videos on the case and came away from it pretty convinced, but that just goes to show that stuff like this can be presented in super biased ways!!! Kinda disappointed in myself for not looking into it further.
The Variety article was incredibly misleading. Nowhere in it did it show a comparison of the two scripts side-by-side. When people actually went through the effort and posted the scripts side-by-side, they looked nothing alike. All you could really pull were vague similarities, and like a few other commenters have pointed out, by that logic, both scripts might as well have plagiarized Dead Poet's Society! An absolutely ridiculous claim from the start.
IMO (*as a lawyer*, blech) most people have a really, really poor understanding of the difference between influence and copyright infringement & between honest mistakes and plagiarism. And this includes lawyers and judges, most of whom don't understand the creative process *at all*. Also intellectual property is a broken concept, thanks for reading.
Thanks for making this video! It seems like too many terminally online people with their own agendas tried to give some validity to claims so easy to disprove.
there is nothing less surprising than you watching an entire French film simply to fact check 😂
😂 it was only like an hour long!
Gonna tell people the Beat Generation is my favorite ancient civilization from now on
the teen in the holdovers is not precocious!! he's a moody, troubled teen, not exceptional in school and not inspiring in any particular way. He's rather ordinary. He and the teacher bond because they spend time together and they get to know each other and part as friends.
I think God should sue Neil Gaiman for plagiarizing the bible in Good Omens
The fact that he uses the word evidence three times in his closing paragraph demonstrates his ability as a writer. And the ridiculously clichéd subject of frisco just proves why he shouldn't be a writer.
For me it was "the resequenced Frisco sequences" and "where it has been resequenced to"
wow i managed to get home EXACTLY to watch your new video. feeling very lucky
This drama reminds me of the allegations that the omegaverse novelist Addison Cain made against Zoe Ellis (iykyk). Better check your inbox for any unhinged e-mails demanding a retraction.
Yes! It was hard not to be reminded of Lindsay Ellis's video on that drama while making this. That was the first time I heard of the scenes a faire doctrine
This video has strong Big Joel vibes. I love it
I also went through Stephenson's claims and perused through both screenplays. I encourage anyone interested enough to do so, just to see for yourself how much of a reach the entire claim is lol