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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."
They're the real monsters out there
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse have discovered their real father, Stanley Mouse...
// zyqqh
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!
...it had to happen.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
That was a great episode!
And at the end Itchy and Scratchy studios got out of their financial difficulties by suing the U.S Postal Service...
This just proves my theory that we are really living in a cartoon, broadcast to aliens for enjoyment. Why else would we keep running into these ridiculous situations?
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
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?
Disney's version wasn't an eyeball -- it was a talking testicle!
This suit is frivolous!
Oh, man... all this time I thought that Mickey and Minnie weren't actually related, or were perhaps cousins at the most. I mean, he gives her flowers, right?
So are they like these ones you hear about on the news that fall in love and then find out that they're long-lost siblings? Or have they known all along... eeewwww!
I'm glad I'm an only child.
Oh, crap.
[shuffles through drawers for wife's birth certificate]
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You mean this episode. But here's a real-life example.
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!
The problem with these sorts of lawsuits is that writers, artists, etc are exposed to the same sorts of ideas (memes, if you like) and so similar stuff tends to pop up at the same time. (Like two simultaneous major movies about asteroids hitting earth a couple of years ago, etc.) Sure, sometimes it's a ripoff, sometimes it's coincidence.
..." title and all.)
The "Toy Story 2" DVD had a "sneak preview" of "Monsters, Inc" featuring Mike and Sully. The file date on the disc is Sept. 14, 2000. That clip was likely in production and preproduction for a long time before that. In time for an artist visiting Mouse to be heavily influenced by what he saw there? Maybe, but I'm doubtful.
And regarding "[t]he lawsuit claims that Disney and Pixar also appropriated the "buddy" relationship theme from Mouse's work" -- oh, please, like there's never been a prior "buddy" movie? Abbott and Costello? Hope and Crosby? Laurel and Hardy? Hello? You want to see a rip off of that (in particular, Hope and Crosby), see Dreamworks' "The Road To El Dorado". (Actually I'd call that more a tribute to, what with the "Road To
Not that I'm sorry to see Disney get a taste of their own medicine, but really...
-- Alastair
Stanley Mouse has got to be one of the best album cover artists. Back in the days of records he did covers for Journey, The Grateful Dead and Steve Miller among others.
It's a shame now that the packaging for CD's generally is pretty boring.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
...you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Minnie and Mickey are in divorce court...
Judge: Let me get this straight Mickey - you want a divorce because Minnie is crazy??
Mickey: Wait a minute... I didn't say she was crazy. I said she was fucking Goofy!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
...the animated monster characters worked for the "Monster Corporation of America." One of the characters was a a green, wisecracking, ambulatory eyeball.
;-)
Anyone else see the reference to Steve Ballmer here?
-- Wibble
Disney will just countersue the poor guy and take away his name.
Gosh, I hope I'm joking.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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
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
It is not so uncommon for someone to look at something and think nothing of it, forget it, then sometime later remember it but in terms of it being some idea they came up with. Forgetting where they first saw it.
It is called Innocent Plagerism. And although it is still wrong, this common human error of doing such, especially when you are probably seeing a number of such ideas and script or treatments, is taken into consideration. It may not stop restitution but can help draw the line between criminal intent and innocent error. And that can mean alot to the one in error, such as respect,...
One of the methods of copyright takes such possibilities into consideration. Thru the writers guild you can copyright such work and it is filed away without anybody seeing the content. The only way to bring it out as proof is by court order. This helps to serve establishing ownership prior to anyone seeing the work.
Note the apparent lack of such a mechanism in regards to the Patent office. Something about timeline of what is done and published and the amount of potential time another has to come along and claim a patent to it. Of course there is the fundamental issue of inventor/authorship of patent subject matter.
Oh wait, the application of copyright methods can address that problem, in regards to proving inventorship/authorship/etc..
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Pixar is being sued, not Disney. Disney is and always has been little more than a distributor for Pixar's movies. They offer minimal creative input on the stories and take a chunk of the money from the resultant toy market, but that's about the limit of Disney's involvement in things.
The difference is easy to remember if you adhere to the following formula: 100% of Pixar's current output is great, while 95% of Disney's current output is crap.*
(* "Lilo & Stitch" is the notable exception, which is funny because the more I watch it, the more it reminds me of a Pixar film instead of a Disney one.)