How many of you know someone or heard of someone that had a one night stand or basically got pregnant and didn’t intend to and then tried to make it work with their partner? Since I live a life and only associate with people that are pure and decent I am not familiar with this situation (that is unless you count that one time in college when a mother almost ran over me, but that is a story only for close friends), but I am sure many of you can tell me at least one story. One person I now know can tell me this story would be Canada’s own Rebecca Eckler. In fact, this chick told anyone that would listen read when she published “Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be” in March of 2005.
Why do I bring this up? Well, Miss Eckler who is a regular author for Canada’s Macleans Magazine wrote an article titled “Is that my baby on the screen?” and that headline carries the tagline “The Canadian author of ‘Knocked Up’ on why she’s suing Judd Apatow and Universal over Apatow’s new movie”.
Besides the fact that the title of her book and the title of Knocked Up are similar exactly the same, Eckler may actually have reason to sue despite my little goof in paragraph one, but I must stress may… Let’s look a little closer.
First off she says once her book was published in the States it got some attention from major newspapers and then people began calling about turning it into a movie or television show. Following that she says she got a phone call from an un-named LA producer who asked her:
He then tells her to get a lawyer. She then talks about how she became obsessed with Apatow, Googled him and found out about his little e-mail exchange with “That ’70s Show” creator Mark Brazil in which he was actually accused of stealing a story idea. This didn’t help ease Eckler into thinking Apatow hadn’t stolen from her.
Next come the main reasons Eckler thinks Apatow ripped off her book:
The movie Knocked Up features a woman named Alison who becomes pregnant after getting drunk. While she gets drunk going out celebrating a promotion at work, I got drunk, and knocked up, celebrating at my engagement party. Both my book and the movie feature one night of passion and the nine months that follow. Fine. Whatever. But what got me was the fact that “Alison” was an up-and-coming television reporter; in my book I was an up-and-coming newspaper reporter.
There were other similarities that hit close to home. In my book, I have a best-friend- with-screaming-children named Ronnie, who I go to often for advice. In the movie version, Alison has a sister, named Debbie, with screaming children, who is her sounding board. Both “Alison” and I did numerous pregnancy tests. What also got my back up was that Ben, the man who gets Alison knocked up, is not only Jewish, but from Canada, like my man. (I still can’t figure out why the fact that someone was Canadian would add value to any movie.) And then there’s this one scene in the screenplay and movie, where Alison and Ben are having sex. Ben stops. Ben, in the screenplay, says, “My dick is like, four inches away from its head. What if it kicked on purpose ’cause it didn’t like it?” I actually wrote in my book about a joke I once heard, “A man and his pregnant wife had regular sex throughout her pregnancy. When their son was born, the father held him in his arms. The baby looked up at his new father and, without warning, punched him. ‘See?’ said the baby. ‘Now you know what it feels like to be bonked in the face.'”
The fact that gets the most attention here is the last part and I have to tell Rebecca that is one of the oldest jokes and you would be hard pressed to find many people that haven’t heard a certain version of the same joke. Also, getting drunk and having a one nighter while partying isn’t so coincidental and an E! Entertainment television reporter and a newspaper reporter are NOT the same thing.
The only thing I read there that sounds remotely fishy is the fact that Rogen’s character is Jewish and from Canada. However, and Eckler even mentions this in her article, Seth is Jewish and from Canada! He has even been featured in the Jewish Journal. Seems to me word is out on that fact.
One of the greatest lines is yet to come in her article however: “The L.A. lawyer took me on as a client, telling me I had a good case…” Hardy, har, har, har… There are so many things to poke fun at in that 16 word sentence it isn’t even funny. What she should have said was, “Any lawyer would have taken my case, Lord knows an L.A. one would. When he told me I had a good case that wasn’t much of a surprise either.”
She then talks about how her L.A. lawyer dumped her and I begin to feel sad for her all while wanting to tell her to just forget about it, she knows what she is up against. Knowing how women are she confirms the result of such a dilemma as she says she has lost 10 pounds and the word “cry” is used following this paragraph:
Before my lawyer dumped me, we did get a response back from the lawyers representing Universal Studios and Judd Apatow, basically telling us to go screw ourselves, and that the martini glass logo that appears on the book (and on their screenplay) would not appear in the movie. The response from Universal was, by far, the nastiest letter I have ever seen, as, I suppose, it needed to be. They have great lawyers.
That last sentence does tell me she has a sense of humor and she also knows what she is up against as she says her trial date is looking like March 11, 2008 and she gives us this list:
- Being a writer, especially a Canadian one, without access to an unlimited bank account, sucks.
- Copyright infringement is highly technical and difficult to prove.
- Universal / Apatow know they have resources I do not have, and that every time they simply do not return my lawyer’s phone call, it costs me money.
I honestly don’t see her winning this one. If it matters to her or anyone else I didn’t particularly think Knocked Up was any good, it had some funny lines, but overall it wasn’t funny. It really wasn’t funny to someone like me who is single, dating (ha, sort of) and scared of having kids. Where is the number to that doctor anyway? Time to get a vasectomy.
To read Eckler’s complete article click here and if you are interested in learning a bit more about Rebecca check out her blog here. Oh, and you can buy the book here.
