Deleted Screenplay Fails To Make Money

mytrip writes to mention the confusing case of screenwriter Nicholas Boyd, who tried to strike it rich by suing SBC, and got more than he bargained for. When an SBC technician accidentally deleted the aspiring screenwriter's work, he brought a lawsuit against the company claiming that a million dollar deal was in the works. Reality disagrees somewhat with his assertions. From the article: "The jury apparently didn't believe the German witness' testimony that a $2.7 million deal was in the works. Jurors found that Boyd could recover out-of-pocket damages of only $60,000 and said that he was responsible for 55 percent of the fault resulting in the deletion of the screenplays ... Both SBC and Boyd appealed. The California state appeals court (second district) eliminated the punitive damages, upheld the compensatory damages--but said Boyd must pay for SBC's legal fees for the appeal, which could easily be in the range of his $27,000 compensatory damages award."

Comments

Backups

[lxadu99]

Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to a few writers about backups. I used to work as a tech at a retail chain, and the number of people who didn't know what a backup was unbelievable.

Re:Backups

[alshithead]

It won't serve as a wakeup call to anyone. Anyone who isn't already backing up their work won't start until the same thing happens to them. He wrote the stuff, if he can't recreate three screenplays from memory then he's screwed. It's not like it was three huge, thoroughly researched sci-fi or historical fiction novels.

The First Rule

[shidarin'ou]

The First Rule of screenwriting is to back up everything on multiple formats, in multiple places.

As this idiot can now attest, you never know what will happen to one location, one computer or even one draft- especially when the stakes are between zero dollars and 2.7 million.

What would he have done had his apartment been destroyed by fire? Sue the complex for the same thing? What would he have done had a random computer virus deleted or overwrote the files, sued the virus protection company whose software he declined to keep up to date?

Nothing to see here but idiocy at work.

No Brainer

[Ohreally_factor]

If there actually was a $2.7 million deal in the works, it would have been worth the money for an immediate forsenic recovery, or failing that, replacing the HD and setting it aside for later forsenic recovery. Notwithstanding SBC's negligence, this was really not much more than a frivolous nuisance suit.

The question is, was his lawyer working on contingency or by the hour? If the later, he's probably lost a fair amount.

I call Bullshit

[im_thatoneguy]

Let me get this straight: a writer is closing in on a multimillion dollar deal with a production company to buy his screenplay. And I'm supposed to believe they signed on without ever receiving a copy!

When you submit a screenplay to an interested party, the first thing they usually do is start photocopying it. Dozens even hundreds of times depending on how far through the process the screenplay makes it. When someone buys a screenplay, they usually run it past dozens of individuals before it's even looked at by someone with decision making power.

Many of the modern screenplay formatting rules have come from the need to photocopy it with as little degradation as possible.

The good news is. It shouldn't take him more than a a day or two to rewrite it. Once you know your story and characters, and have worked on the screenplay in your head for a number of years it shouldn't take you more than a couple of days. Besides who buys a screenplay and doesn't do a rewrite?

God I have like 20 copies of several screenplays from college just lieing around in a box in my closet. I can't believe somebody would never print off, backup or email a copy of his screenplay over the course of time it took to write it.

Re:I call Bullshit

[Ohreally_factor]

#2 virtually never happens. Seriously, I've worked in this town for 23 years. You have as good a chance of winning the lotto as you do of slipping your spec script over the transom and getting a deal.



The Long Kiss Goodnight was written by a veteran screenwriter, someone with a track record. Look at his credits: All the Lethal Weapon movies, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero.

Bottom line: I can't imagine a situation where any studio would offer, or even mention $2 million without having script in hand.

Bottom line: I can easily imagine a situation where a producer options a script for a $1 with the contractual promise of some huge sum going to the writer from the net profits, without every laying eyes on the script. I'm sure this happens 50 times a day. (OK, probably an exaggeration, but I'm sure you've heard the jokes about screenwriters and the jokes about producers.)

There was no studio involved in the deal. It was a German producer. Want to be a producer? It's easy. Just say you are. Printing business cards is entirely optional. Want to be a German producer? Travel to Germany and say you're a producer.

Anyway, Boyd's story is implausible, but not for the reasons you cite. Come kick around L.A. for a few years and try and sell those scripts. It's a disgusting slimy business, but at least it's not the music business. We have that at least.

Re:I call Bullshit

[Ohreally_factor]

Courier has more to do with the days when scripts were typewritten, i.e., before word processing. I'm just saying.

Anyway, I've got a screenwriting style manual around somewhere from the 50s. Same conventions as now. Little has changed, other than the used of our modern labor saving devices. (Can you imagine the number of typists the studios hired before the copy machine?)

I'm not calling you a liar. There might be one or two examples you can give of which I'm unaware. If anything, this might save you from possible embarrassment from people whose opinion you care about (i.e., not slashdot). =)

As far as standard practice of reputable production companies vis-a-vis copies of a screenplay floating around out there, I agree. But this business is rife with non-reputable production companies, hustlers and con men. And then there are the sleazy types.

Obligatory Soviet Russia

[megaditto]

Best way to preserve your writings is to print out the hard copy.

And no, Manuscripts do not burn

Court system stacked against the little guy

[br00tus]

Whether or not it was wise of him to sue, SBC screwed up and he is going to get nothing for it. You hear a lot about tort reform from politicians, but the tort reform always seems to strip the little guy of recourse to the courts, and does nothing about the people who really abuse the courts, the corporations. Although now that they're passing laws giving jail time for copying MP3's, it won't even be abusing civil courts soon, now it will be criminal courts.

I ran a website once which was "Web 2.0" before they had a name for it - like Myspace, Geocities, Ebay and whatnot, the public had a lot of input into site content, and if anyone complained about something illegal, I almost always removed it. Anyhow, I got flooded with legal letters, some of them quite ridiculous - Blizzard sent me a letter about some supposed DMCA violation - someone made a hack that let people play Starcraft on non-Battle.net servers. I couldn't afford a court case and those troubles though so I took it down. These are the people who really abuse the court system, the headlines of corporate newspapers always bemoan how it's a travesty the average Joe can sue a big corporation though.

Re:Court system stacked against the little guy

[Kohath]

Whether or not it was wise of him to sue, SBC screwed up and he is going to get nothing for it.

Let me be the first to say it: Good.

He got awarded damages. He probably could have settled with SBC to begin with and been fairly compensated for the problem. But he decided to play the litigation lottery, hoping to turn his poor planning and subsequent misfortune into a huge jackpot. I'm glad he lost.

Every time one of these people wins, things get more expensive for everyone. Fewer products and services are available to purchase and fewer people are employed producing them. More time is spent complying with CYA rules and less is spent actually supplying value to customers. Somewhere a guy stays an extra hour at work filling out forms instead of going home and playing games with his kids. Somewhere else a working mom gets a 10% smaller annual bonus, even though she did a good job. All so one guy and his lawyers can get a huge payout for a simple mistake that was 55% his fault anyway. That doesn't sound like justice to me.

But it didn't happen this time. Good.

Re:German witness?

[Anonymous Coward]

In which case the SBC technician should be commended by all for putting a halt to another Uwe Boll atrocity.

Is there no common sense anymore?

[Mike Kelly]

Burgess Forensics said the reason was that 4,134 files were saved to the hard drive after the screenplays were deleted--overwriting the unused space that could have otherwise been recovered. (Additions included Napster and RealPlayer and their related media files.)

If he dropped a hard-copy on the sidewalk and could only find a few pages when he came back the next day, isn't that his own fault? He should have unplugged the computer and taken it to an expert immediately! I guess he was having too much fun with his new broadband to notice that his "multi-million dollar" script was missing. /sarcasm

Dishonest?

[OverflowingBitBucket]

So he had scripts that might be worth $2.7m. And he kept the only copies of it on a laptop. And no printouts. Because a writer wouldn't want to print out his work in progress from time to time to proofread it. And no set of prior versions to revert to. What about the person offering $2.7m. Did they have at least part of a copy? That's a lot of money for something sight unseen. So he gives the laptop containing the one and only copy of a script potentially worth $2.7m to a techie? And when the techie says the files aren't needed and tries to delete the files, the writer doesn't immediately rip the damn thing out of his hands?

What's this guy do for fun, leave his sole copy of a million-dollar script sitting on the roof of his car when he gets it repaired and sues the mechanics if they lose it? Seriously.

I don't know about you, but the second someone suggests something I have is worth $2.7m, I go home, I get about 20 CDs, I burn copies of them and the backups. I buy a cheap safe and store some in there. I buy a lockbox, drop three copies in it, and store it at a trusted friends place. I conceal extra copies around my house or office in case I'm targeted. I print out what I have, and prior versions as proof that I developed the script should its ownership ever come into doubt. Some of those printouts go offsite.

Methinks the writer may have been just a teency, teency bit dishonest here. Maybe SBC and AT&T should have been hit for the costs of data recovery, but not much more. The vast majority of the fault was due to the writer.

Nothing adds up

[Zadaz]

It seems like the correct outcome has been reached in this case (Fired the guy who deleted his stuff and paid for data recovery.)

Everything about this guys sounds like a money grubbing loser. He had previously never made a penny on his screenplays (Or, apparently from any writing at all, ever.) and yet he claims that the lost screenplays were for "far better" movies than "Gladiator," "Schindler's List" and "Ben Hur."

Now comes the amount... $2.7 million dollars? It's been a while since I've been a professional writer, but $2.7 mil is a stupidly outrageous amount for unknown writer with unproven properties and a small movie company. Even being generous and accounting that it's for three screen plays, $900,000 per screenplay is still stupid money.

Also they didn't delete the guys brain. Screenplays don't really have that much text in them. They are usually around a hundred pages with a couple hundred words a page. If the writer is familiar with the characters, plot, etc, they should be able to rewrite a whole screenplay in under a week. At least good enough for a first draft. (And if I was interested enough to pay $900K for a screenplay, I'd happily wait a week or three for a screenplay.)

Thirdly, Who the hell is Aurora Media. I can't find any information on these guys. Seems nowadays if you have the ability to produce movie scripts you pay millions of dollars for, your company should have -one- hit on Google.

Seems that if there was actually $2.7 million worth of interest by Aurora Media then either:
1) There should be a printed contract somewhere.
2) (As many people pointed out) They should have a copy of the screenplays somewhere.
3) They should be the ones suing SBC (Or perhaps the schmo.)

Omg.. Im screwed. not

[TechGranny]

Techgranny doesn't know about backups and stuff. TechGranny needs to learn. :)

Seriously though, even though he should have had backups, its impossible to say something would make money for sure. Lots of "sure bets" lose money.

Also, the accidental deletion did not delete his brain did it? I mean its not like his premise characters and story were deleted along with the data.

I call BS. Peace.

This reminds me...

[The MAZZTer]

...of the story about the guy who found a incredible way to compress his files to nothing: he deleted them.

When he needed one, he would undelete the file he needed.

This worked fine until his hard drive started filling more and wrote over deleted files.

I bet this guy did something similar, thought his Recycle Bin was a place to store his files.