Syriana Not Really That Ripped Off: Judge

Funny buggers, original thoughts. As soon as you have one, no matter what it is, someone's already maximised on something similar, leaving you seething because they brain-stole your idea and got rich from it.

That's the precise reason we can't watch Short Circuit - a man telling a Jew joke to a funny robot on a hill at dusk was our idea, dammit, our idea - and that's the reason that Stephanie Vergniault won't be watching Syriana anytime soon. A Paris court yesterday decided that Syriana was not a rip-off of one of her screenplays, after she claimed it was. But, c'mon, we've all wanted to see George Clooney put on loads of weight and get beaten up at one point or another, right?

When something becomes a success, people will always feel put out because it's similar to an idea that they once had. In the crazy media circles we move in we once met a man who claims he invented the idea of Alan Titchmarsh walking along a river talking to yokels. And that's just Alan Titchmarsh. Power the claim up a few notches and replace Alan Titchmarsh with a fat beardy George Clooney and you've got what's been happening between French screenwriter Stephanie Vergniault and the Oscar-winning movie Syriana.

A Paris court has ruled that there is not enough evidence that Syriana - a movie about oil and that - unlawfully plagarised sections of Stephanie Vergniault's screenplay Oversight, meaning that Vergniault won't be getting the two million euro payout that she wanted for the perceived rip-off.

Syriana - written by Traffic writer Stephen Gaghan - was based on the autobiography of CIA officer Robert Baer, a book which Stephanie Vergniault had also read, although she claims that the inspiration for Syriana was her script and not the Baer book. As a result, Stephanie Vergniault has been ordered to pay 3,500 euros in court costs to Warner Brothers and Section Eight, George Clooney's production company.

In a way, it's a relief that the judge ruled in favour of Syriana over Stephanie Vergniault. Because one person having the idea to write an overlong, confused, agonisingly earnest screenplay about Very Important Things in an unnecessarily self-satisfied way is bad enough - two having the same idea just blows our mind.

Read more:

French writer loses Syriana case - BBC

[story by Stuart Heritage]