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Pixar/Disney in "Monsters Inc" Ownership Scuffle
blamanj writes "According to a SF Chronicle story this morning, Pixar has been sued by artist Stanley Mouse. Mouse created a movie treatment titled "Excuse My Dust", which was set in "Monster City," where the animated monster characters worked for the "Monster Corporation of America." One of the characters was a a green, wisecracking, ambulatory eyeball. Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000, and discussed Mouse's work."
If the above article is indeed factual, the irony presented is simply amazing. Here Disney is, along with the big movie buisness, lobbying for laws that stop consumers from performing the same act performed here.Does anyone else see somethign wrong with this?
Please stop it before I laugh myself into a heart attack, please stop it!
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
Ideas are not worth anything. Can I sue Disney if my grandfather had an idea a 100 years ago about creating a cartoon on mischievous mouse?
All I can say is that this lawsuit doesn't show much knowledge of the process involved in making a movie like Monsters inc. According to this Mouse fella, somebody from Pixar paid him a visit in 2000. Monsters inc came out in 2001. There is no way that this movie could have been done that quickly. It is a 4-5 year process. The modeling and storyboards would have been complete by late 1999 for sure. This story should have a pretty short lifespan once the facts come out although I admit it is pretty funny for Disney to be sued by a guy named mouse!
Which would make this rather irrelevant since M.I. would have to have been pitched in 1997 to be released in 2001.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
The story in Atlantis doesn't have much to do with Nadia. The technology does, but both are blatantly inspired from Jules Verne, hence the common points. Atlantis is more inspired from Jules Verne in practice, including "A journey to the center of the earth" and "Twenty thousand leages under the sea".
OG.
Mouse did a lot of work for the Grateful Dead back in the day. The Europe '72 cover art was his. He also won a Grammy for the cover art for one of Steve Miller's albums. Mouse's original work goes for a pretty penny these days and I doubt he is hurting for cash. He may well believe he has a legit complaint. Bio...
As to the ambulatory eyeball, variations of that (usually a flying eyeball) were a common theme in hippie art of the '60s. The motif goes back to Ancient Egypt and are a hot rod staple. Maybe if you combine the eyeball with a Monsters, Inc motif, Mouse would have something, but the monster eyeball alone isn't enough.
FreeSpeech.org
Yes, but Mouse's exact claim is that somebody from Pixar/Disney visited him in 2000 and saw the work. If the movie was already in development before that meeting then he has no case. Him declaring in court that his work has been around for 40 years is not going to mean much if he can't prove that somebody at Pixar was aware of it.
Disney renowned for its original work? Even assuming you managed to miss all the listings of public domain works that Disney has done, a few seconds of though would show that Disny produces almost no original story lines. The last one they did was Lilo and Stitch. Just off the top of my head here's a list of public domain works they used that the above lists missed:
Aladdin
Beauty and the Beast
Little Mermaid
Hunchback of Notre Dame
A Christmas Carol (Mickey's Christmas Carol)
Note that these last three were originally copyrighted works that entered the public domain when their copyright expired. Something that Disney capitalizes on all the time, yet has paid congress to protect itself from. Ok, I could have written that a little better, but you get the idea.
... which he could very well claim was the impetus for the visit: Pixar's working on a movie that could be interpreted to infringe upon Mouse's old idea, so they send someone to check up upon it, but he decides it's irrelevant--and Stan doesn't.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Personally I think Disney should do more dark animation. They need to expose their Evil side in a more constructive fashion.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
5-Informative:)))) bwahahahaha
It's really a lark. I love the slashdot moderation
system. It gives me endless laughter. This guy
is randomly spouting pure bullshit that he pulls
directly from whole cloth like Athena giving Zeus
head. But it's okay to slander Stanley Mouse,
who was doing this stuff in the 1960s already
(not 2000) without ever bothering to read the
article or get any grazing tangential familiarity
with the facts -- in fact, its +5 Information!
Thank you M. Lemkebeth, you trully restored my
faith in suffering humanity. I never met a
stranger whose kindness I did not suffer lightly.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I think it is desirable for different creators to reuse characters and ideas from other works. Companies and individuals other than Paramound should be able to create Star Trek fiction and movies. Anybody should be able to sell Darth Vader dolls. Etc. That's the way storytelling has worked until the 20th century.
However, the ostensible reason for the draconian copyright laws we have is to protect the creative people. Individual artists like Stanley Mouse are far and few between, but when they come up, I think companies should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law when they violate the copyright laws they themselves lobbied for (and probably bribed for). If Pixar is guilty, they should have to pay a large fraction of their proceeds to Mouse as punitive damages.
Can't anybody here tell the difference between Pixar and Disney?
Two different companies. One headed by Slashdot hero Steve Jobs, the other headed by Slashdot villian Michael Eisner. One makes the films, the other releases them.
Pixar is the one accused of stealing this idea, not Disney.
But what the hey, let's just bash Disney, cause it's more fun!
You think it looks dumb when Congress tries to understand the internet? I think it looks dumb when slashdotters try to understand Hollywood.