Rick Reilly interview from Gelf Magazine

About the Radio story. Josh Peter did write a piece on him before the Sports Illustrated story, and it was damn good, probably the best thing I read in that section growing up in Anderson (and much better than the SI piece, I might add). But this makes the case for this being an interesting topic. Was Josh's story the "original" story? My dad, who has lived in that area for a lot of his life, said he remembered a piece on Radio in the late 1970s.

 

DD, Oh no I meant to type "coach didn't want.."

What's interesting here is that a movie studio buys rights, crosses all the legal t's and dots the i's.

But if it's done for TV under the auspices of "journalism," nobody has to pay anybody anything, and your shit just gets ripped off.

 

A little inside scoop on the Louisville band member whose dad pushes him in a wheelchair. It was first written in The Courier-Journal by a guy I know well -- my dad. He's a metro columnist at the C-J. The interesting thing to me was that before pursuing it, Reilly emailed him telling him he'd done a nice job with it and asking, "Mind if I take a crack at it?"

Reilly, of course, didn't have to do that. Just because somebody writes a story doesn't close the book on it. But I thought it was a nice courtesy.

 

why isn't this defined as plagiarism?

where are the plagiarism moralists on these rip-offs - the ones who demand ron borges be fired for accidentally using a block of generic information that appeared in another paper.

i don't get the double standard.

 

Rick Reilly is a d-bag. He's seriously angry about ESPN winning Emmys by "stealing" columns he wrote? It's funny that he's not feeling so bad about winning all those Sports Writer of the Year awards by stealing story ideas from small town papers and other non-national outlets.

What an a-hole.

 

I really don't get the whole ownership of non-fiction stories thing. I think when it comes to film rights, the studio will pick the most "definitive" take on something, and that somehow protects them from every other claim. But that leaves a lot of gray area, to be sure.

 

In effect, there really is no ownership of non-fiction. Film will buy rights to the story whose source makes it easier for them to sell the idea to investors/producers, and from a source that may be able to help in regard to publicity. That's why they generally buy from the Times or SI rather than Podunk Press. But if they can't get the rights for the price they want, they'll either buy it from someone else... turn it into fiction, or just do it anyway and dare you to sue.

Generally speaking, $$ for film rights really aren't that big, unless a major studio a/o star gets involved. Made for TV/Cable rights, a la Lifetime, are often under six figures. As author of the story, you also have virtually no say - or leverage - in the final product. They can and do change almost everything. See "Fever Pitch."

The best possible situation is to sell the rights, then have the option lapse with no movie even made, then sell the rights again, then have the option lapse, etc. It's like going to the ATM over and over.

 

Oh wow that's really interesting. Great explanation.

A former colleague at one of my old stations wrote a freelance article for the Washington Post about a young, single confirmed bachelorette daughter planning her mom's wedding. Real cute story. Anyway, one of the major studios picked it up. I don't think the movie's been made, but this reporter got paid. Nice....

 

A great question with a twisted answer.

The writer owns the writing, but not the story itself. You can sell the rights to your book, for example, but you have no rights to the individual or events you wrote about.* So when a writer or publication says, 'Hey, that's our story!'....techinically, it is not. The words you put together are yours....the characters and events are not. Any third party can re-report it without a nod in your direction, cheesy and cheap as that might be.

So why would a production company buy the rights to a book when they could go to the individual(s) featured in the story? Because it's easier. There's already been a granting of rights, the subjects consented to the interviews, the writer can warrant that he or she has the right to tell the story. The research and general framework has already been neatly laid out in one package.

And of course, after they buy the rights to your story for very little money, including a small consulting fee (translated into, 'we really are not going to want your help but just in case, leave us your number), they change the title, the characters, the events, the beginning, the middle, the end, the location, and the jokes....but you still get that moment where it says 'BASED ON THE BOOK (or story) BY DOUBLE DOWN, and that's still pretty cool.

*(Note: there's a more complicated answer to all of this, regarding those people who told you their life stories and what obligations you have to them, if any, but it's boring and long. Happy to elaborate if anyone wants to know.)