We live in a society where success, hard work, and genuine creativity are looked down upon. Whenever anyone does something exceptional, a line of jealous, no-goodniks line up behind to try and tear them down. Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up is a massive critical and box office hit, so of course the rats are crawling out of the woodwork to pull the rug out from under him and take credit for it.
In this case, the rat is Canadian author Rebecca Eckler, who is suing Universal claiming Judd stole his movie from her book which no one has ever heard of, also called “Knocked Up.” Her book is the story of "an up-and-coming newspaper reporter who gets drunk and knocked up after celebrating at her engagement party."
Basically, what Eckler is claiming is that she now owns getting drunk and pregnant. Apparently, she thinks she’s the first person to ever write anything about it. Give me a break. She also insists that Judd’s pitch for the film even used a picture similar to the cover of her book, a martini glass with a pacifier around the stem.
The genius in both of Judd Apatow’s movies, The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, is that they take a shared, common experience and bring them to life on screen using a fresh, realistic, hilarious approach. The movies are about experiences common to everyone, so of course there have been hundreds of books, television shows, and even other movies made on the same subject. That’s sort of the point in what he does.
Besides, if you’ve watched any of the production diaries for The 40 Year-Old Virgin, you know that at least half of any Apatow movie is completely improvised. It’s not all in the script, he and his actors come up with much of it on the set, making it impossible for Apatow to really plagiarize anything from anyone since most of it happens naturally as his team works out their characters and come up with gags in front of the camera.
Frankly, I hate that I’m forced to even give asinine lawsuits like this one publicity. Unfortunately, the bloated blog community loves to latch on to these things and join in pulling down whoever it is that’s unfairly under fire. For every person like me who stands on principle and refuses to cover it, there’s ten who gleefully hop on the lawsuit bandwagon and cheer the would-be sucker-fish on as he or she tries to ruin the genius of someone else. So here I am, telling all of you, that this is a bunch of crap.
The Hollywood Reporter indicates that she learned of Judd's project and the alleged similarities between it and her book before the movie hit theaters, while pitching a script based on her book. However, it's interesting to note that she waited until after the movie was a bonafied financial success to sue him. I think it's obvious that her motives here aren't exactly pure.
Judd has released a statement about the lawsuit to TMZ which says, “Anyone who reads the book and sees the movie will instantly know that they are two very different stories about a common experience.” If you have half a brain, you don’t even need to read the book to figure that out. I plan on hitting the theater this weekend for a third viewing of Knocked Up, just to throw Apatow and the idea of rewarding the exceptional some support.
