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.

Re:Backups

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"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."

I'm impressed you guys actually think he didn't have a backup. If there was a million dollar deal in the works, surely he had sent the script to somebody to read and say "we might be interested".

Re:Backups

[Wavicle]

I'm impressed you guys actually think he didn't have a backup. If there was a million dollar deal in the works, surely he had sent the script to somebody to read and say "we might be interested".

I suspect the jury thought much as you do. They completely dismissed his attempt at compensation for the $2.4M deal that was supposedly in progress. The money they awarded him was for the time it took him to research and write the screenplays. And they found him mostly at fault for the permanent loss.

I strongly disagree with the jury however. I find him 95% at fault for not taking the computer THAT DAY to a service place and asking them to recover the files. The guy added over 4000 files AFTER the deletion. He was looking for a payout from the beginning. He knew he had no chance of selling them.

Contractual proof?

[headkase]

Just goes to show that verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on.

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.

Re:The First Rule

[rjstanford]

I thought that the first rule of screenwriting was, "Never talk about screenwriting." Actually, empirical evidence suggests that the first rule of screenwriting is ... always talk about screenwriting. To everyone. All the time. Incessently. But that's beside the point (and probably mispelled).

German witness?

[SteeldrivingJon]

Was it by chance Uwe Boll?

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.

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.

Re:No Brainer

[im_thatoneguy]

It actually does say in the article that he did eventually get a forensic recovery of the data. But he didn't set aside the hard drive and the files were overwritten by Napster and other data.

Does this mean that the entertainment industry can say that it lost another $2.7m to napster?

Re:No Brainer

[prockcore]

If there actually was a $2.7 million deal in the works, it would have been worth the money for an immediate forsenic recovery,

If there actually was a $2.7 million deal in the works, his business partners would've had copies of the screenplay. The deal is always for the rights, never for the actual manuscript itself.

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

[jbreckman]

Typically, there are two ways of selling a screenplay.

You described way #1. You pitch an idea and they work out some sort of deal for your idea.

Way #2 is called writing it on "spec". That involves actually writing the full screenplay without having a deal in place, and then shopping it around to studios to see if anyone wants to buy it. Obviously this way is considerably more risky.

The difference is in the pay. Way #1 pays well, but not NEARLY as well as way #2 pays. There is a huge risk to studios in way #1, and in way #2, they KNOW what they are getting. Plus, if you can get two studios interested, you can get them into a bidding war. (I believe "The Long Kiss Goodnight" sold for about $4 million in this situation)

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

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

[1u3hr]

I only write short stories for the interweb, and even losing a day or two of work (much less a whole novel) would be devastating....He could redo it, maybe even come up with something better. But it would never be the same.

Scripts are always rewritten, often dozens of times, by several writers, committees, the producers, the director, the actors. What ends up being shot can be unrecognisable from the original script. Hollywood is full of stories of sometimes great writers who were lured there and were paid huge amounts to do a script treatment; then more to rewrite a dozen times; then it was handed over to a hack who completely rewrote it; then the financing fell through and it was shelved. If redoing a day's work would devastate you, don't even think about Hollywood.

Re:I call Bullshit

[skribe]

but at least it's not the music business.

Yeah, in the music business you can at least try busking to pay for your cigarettes.

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.

Clarification Required

[slashbob22]

If Aurora Media had offered a contract (pending funding) then they must have seen the screenplays. Even if they were hardcopy Boyd would not have lost his material, sure he may have had to retype it though. I don't see how he can claim that because this overzealous technician deleted everything that where were NO backups of it anywhere. Could someone explain this to me, is there a screenwriter's code I don't know about?

Obligatory Soviet Russia

[megaditto]

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

And no, Manuscripts do not burn

Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia

[qbwiz]

I thought you were supposed to upload your important stuff on ftp, and let the world mirror it.

Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia

[Ohreally_factor]

Which you would need to do anyway to register it with the WGA. Oh, wait, my bad. You can now register your screenplay online in whatever file format you wish.

The fee for non-members is $20. The fee for members is $10. Registration lasts for 5 years, and then may be renewed. Protecting your copyrights and getting a back up thrown in!

Seems like a no brainer if you're a screenwriter.

Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia

[miro f]

[blockquote]Which you would need to do anyway to register it with the WGA.

[...]

Seems like a no brainer if you're a screenwriter.[/blockquote]

I don't know if I'd want to register my screenplay with Windows Genuine Advantage. It might decide that my screenplay is not my own and delete it from their records...

Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia

[miro f]

note to kiddies: preview your post before submitting...

Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

People have to want to mirror it.

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.

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

Get lots of $$$ quick ;)

[megaditto]

If you also lose your screenplay, you can still make tons of $$$:

Keep pressing key '4' while holding down Shift

______________
Just couldn't resist ;(

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.

Re:Dishonest?

[OverflowingBitBucket]

I'm sure when the tech guy came to set up his DSL, he wasn't thinking, "Oh man, I got to make sure my files are secure." I can't imagine that anyone would have this thought first and foremost every living second.

A previously unpaid writer who (basis of lawsuit) thinks that he may be coming into $2.7m soon due to his writing probably does have the scripts foremost in his mind. Unless of course he was distracted at that very moment wondering where the best place would be to procure some good coke and hookers. This isn't a matter of hindsight or forbidden techie knowledge. Hindsight is when you lose a couple of weeks work due to a destructive virus that you forgot to back up. Techie knowledge is knowing about regular backups and that computers can be unreliable. Having one copy of a (potentially) incredibly valuable script in a single location and mysteriously having no recent printouts to OCR or any backups of any sort (hard or soft) anywhere isn't just something you attribute to lacking hindsight or tech knowledge. That's just plain gross negligence or stupidity on his part. The point of my post is that he certainly wasn't acting consistently with someone who seriously believed that he was about to come into a healthy chunk of change.

Oh, and your comment on deleting from the recycle bin (assuming Windows) necessarily being malicious seems flawed. There may have been insufficient space on the drive and so the techie could have (stupidly) permanently deleted the file to make space.

The techie, assuming the charges are true, was a twit. And don't trust techies with valuable data- even if they are good they need to know that something is valuable and to protect it. That's as far as I can agree with you, I'm afraid. The rest, not so.

Screenplays don't make that much money

[zymano]

Screenplay for Panicroom with Jodie Foster was bought for $5 million but the writer had really good credibility.(i read somewhere) Very rare that this happen. Hardly any ever get a million.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0462895/

He's working on Indiana Jones 4 by the way.

This guy doesn't even have any history of writing.

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.)

Re:And in Other News...

[Tablizer]

Today, I did not clean the dust out of my power supply. Nor did I unplug my computer during an electrical storm. I'm livin' La Vida Loca!!!

Me neither, and so far everything is just fi

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.

i've already backed up my screenplay

[circletimessquare]

i've already backed up my screenplay on the intarweb using a patented methodology i call "astroturf steganography":

1. i broke my screenplay up into paragraph fragments

2. i used a script to comment spam these fragments into random blogs with a unique identifying string, namely "I'm making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NY [griefmovie.com]"

3. when i want to recover, i simply do a google search on "I'm making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NY [griefmovie.com]"

voila: instant backup ;-)

oops... i've just given my script away for free to anyone who reads this comment

dang

well, maybe i can sue you under DRM for breaching my cryptographic techniques to access copyrighted material

for reading this comment, you owe me $3,500

awesome!

Re:1910?

[robogun]

The most common technologies were Mimeograph or carbon paper.

Re:I'll keep track of my own data, thank you.

[dynamo52]

You did... y'know... read the article, right? A little bit?

The document was stored on his own PC, not an SBC server. That does not make him not an idiot but you aren't coming off all that bright right now either.

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.

Re:Why would I cut an obvious idiot slack?

[shidarin'ou]

As someone who works in Hollywood and with screenwriters, and counts many of them as friends, I can tell you that this guy was an idiot, and he's probably not a real screenwriter (IE, he just moved to Hollywood and is just starting out).

Every screenwriter I know- even the most tech backwards ones- are so incredibly anal about backups that it drives me mad. You'd think there'd be a reasonable limit on the amount of CDs or floppies they mail to their friends for safekeeping- some even out of the state incase of a statewide disaster.

The techbackwards ones- rather than burn to CD or floppy or zip or upload to file servers actually print out copies and mail the copies out, or leave them in old places at places they used to work at or go to school. Know that no one ever goes behind the orange box in the storeroom? PERFECT PLACE FOR A SCREENPLACE ARCHIVE!

So, these were probably his first screenplays, and he hasn't learned how to write screenplays yet (apparently), it wouldn't even surprise me if they were Word documents- from the facts we know about I can easily make the reasonable assumption that his work is shit, because no one makes even a D movie screenplay their first time around, and no wannabe screenwriter is in Hollywood for more than 3 weeks without becoming obsessed with backups.

And one more thing, if there was a bright center of money control in the universe known as Hollywood- the real creative people are on the planet furthest from- so simply by you have "money" and "creative" within two sentences of each other I can also deduce that you were likely no where near the real creative people.

Actually the company is Avrora Media

[bruce_the_loon]

The writer of the article buggered up.

According to IMDB, An American Werewolf in Paris had Avrora Media involved, not Aurora Media.

www.avroramedia.com