Everybody does it. What are Hollywood screenwriters and producers if not a sleek band of rapacious idea-highwaymen and -women, constantly on the prowl for the unpillaged concept, the unpludered notion?

Now it's your turn.

Yes, you, too, can join this elite cadre of concept-ninja, and obtain ideas the old-fashioned way; rip them off.

Come, and follow me into this den of thieves, where we will stealthily observe their guarded and closely-held methods.

Thumb Your Nose at John Law

Let's discuss those hairsplitting legalities, for those of you unfamiliar with them.

Copyright law, as you may know, is the writer's friend. It prevents others from making money from our sweat and blood, unless we, the diligent scribes, get our freakin' cut. Business is business, right?

However, copyright law only goes so far, and then, like the edge of a tall cliff with a particularly nasty drop-off, abruptly stops. This point is clearly demarcated; for your benefit and elucidation, copyright law says that it only protects the manifestation of an idea, not the idea itself. In other words, a screenplay is protected, but not a 25-words-or-less logline.

A perfect example of this is the excessive Hollywood copy-cat-ism of the last several years. In 1998, two movies were released in a row by different studios about large spatial bodies about to obliterate life on earth ("Armageddon" and "Deep Impact"), and previous to that, in 1997, two movies released in a row were about volcanic eruptions ("Volcano" and "Dante's Peak"). When will it stop? It won't. Because stealing is fun -- and can be very profitable.

Ideas Grow on Trees

A great source for ideas is your local newspaper. Truth is, after all, stranger than fiction.

"Top Gun," for example, was based upon a magazine article, and the writer of that article, and probably the magazine, were presumably paid a fee for its use. But hey, why pay for something you can get for free?

The trick in using public source material for your script is that facts surrounding an incident need to be public knowledge of the kind easily gleaned from standard sources, such as newspapers and television. Thus, dramatizations of real events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial and the Long Island Lolita shooting, can be made (and were) without any payments to the individuals involved. If you utilize private information gleaned from inside sources, such as friends or family members of people enmeshed in a newsworthy event, then this type of personal detail typically cannot be used without permission of the parties involved. This is why any script dealing with public figures absolutely needs to be run past a lawyer, which any studio or production entity involved in such a project automatically does so. And if anybody knows how to legally steal things, it's a lawyer.

A better way to go, rather than worrying about purchase of rights and legal hassles, is to incorporate elements of public stories into your own work. Such petty theft you might call "idea shoplifting." Using actual events or elements from them is a great technique to jumpstart your mown creative process.

In issue #13 of John Marr's "Murder Can Be Fun" magazine (the "Death at Disneyland" issue), he describes a fringe pulp author of the 1920's through 40's, Harry Keeler, who used an advanced form of this technique to create his own brand of wacky mystery novel. Over the years, Keeler collected a massive archive of article clippings. To begin a novel, he would randomly pull items from his files. He would then devise a convoluted plot that involved every one of the elements discussed in the articles. As a result, his stories were a fairly loopy brand of unique fiction.

A similar, ultra-referential technique is Quentin Tarantino's mainstay, although French semioticians refer to it as bricolage (French for "robbing someone blind"), which is defined as a postmodern pastiche of cultural, artistic, and cinematic ideas. But what do they know? Remember, they think Jerry Lewis is funny.

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