Being one that can appreciate the important of copyright and giving credit where credit is due, I always get a laugh out of when the news reports the coincidental nature of two different works, particularly when one work is strikingly similar to another's. Sort of like the Offspring's Why Don't You Get a Job and the Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. For Fox's new show, New Amsterdam (premiering in January 2008), CNN reports that it bears an uncanny resemblance to the plot and character in a Pete Hamill book. See Author suspicious of similar character on TV. (Update 2/19/08: This CNN link is dead, but I've put some new ones in the comment to this entry).
As the article reports, the author is simply laughing it off, and I can only hope that Fox or the show's producers at least give him a little credit or a piece of the small pie this show is likely to bring in. Speaking of which...
I think the whole New Amsterdam show, based on this CNN article and a couple of webpages that appear to give it positive reviews sans substantive evaluation, seems very similar to the old Highlander tv series. Immortal person, fighting for honor, looking for love, that sort of thing - why not just turn him into a vampire. Or make it a comedy instead. Regardless, because it appears that creativity in Hollywood seems to consist of recycling old ideas and lazily creating sequels, I think I will simply pass on this show when it finally does air. Absent some sort of incredible previews or reviews, I would suspect that many will do the same. Perhaps, however, it will be picked up on the Sci-Fi channel or Spike instead, and die its slow death there.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Fox's New Amsterdam show mirrors a book without any credit
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3 comments:
The author really can't do much more than laugh it off. A guy named Conner, who's immortal and living in New York... Is that "Forever" or Highlander?
I agree - and if anything, he benefits from it, so what does it matter? Your point made me laugh though - thanks.
Because the CNN link is no longer active, and there isn't really any online documentation of it, here are two other links.
Wikipedia: New Amsterdam (TV) series
Newsvine: Author suspicious of similar character on TV (citing the CNN article and providing the first two paragraphs of it).
Nerdlaw.com (quoting the article and Hamill as saying "I said, 'Holy jeez, talk about Freudian typos,' " Hamill recalled. "Hey, maybe this will sell the novel: 'You've seen the knockoff, now try the book.' Who knows?").
SyFy Portal (providing what seems to be a mirror of Michael Hinman's August 30, 2007 article which appears to be the same thing as the CNN article).
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