Steven Soderbergh Turns Raiders of the Lost Ark Into Silent B&W Fan Film, No One Sues

A long time ago, I was a young aspiring filmmaker and wanted to learn - really learn - how to make good films. So I went to a family friend who had some connections in the entertainment business and asked him what to do. He said "watch a lot of films."

So I did. And I became a colossal movie nerd. And even though the filmmaking part of my life is over, I still watch movies to learn from them. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

The other day, Steven Soderbergh, one of the most interesting mainstream filmmakers working today, posted on his blog a version of Raiders of the Lost Ark that he recut into a silent B+W film as an exercise to learn about film staging from Steven Spielberg, a "filmmaker [who] forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day." He also replaced the classic John Williams score with the score from The Social Network, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to strip away everything familiar about the film and "aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect." For Soderbergh, staging is important because it "refers to how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated...I value the ability to stage something well because when it’s done well its pleasures are huge, and most people don’t do it well, which indicates it must not be easy to master."

In other words, "I operate under the theory a movie should work with the sound off, and under that theory, staging becomes paramount."

As a movie nerd, I love that Soderbergh did this. As a lawyer, I'm cool with it too. In his blog post, Soderbergh strikes a defensive, almost sheepish, tone, saying that he's aware he's not allowed to recut Raiders, but did it anyway as a learning exercise. This hedging caught me off guard a bit, since it stands in opposition to the confidence he displays in the rest of the piece. Nevertheless, if I was his attorney, I'd tell him not to worry; as far as I'm concerned, this is a classic fair use scenario. I've spoken about the pitfalls of relying on a fair use defense in the past. My chief concern is that it's not a cut and dried thing. You have to weigh different factors based on the particulars of your case. To complicate matters, fair use is an "affirmative defense" which means you have to wait until you're sued for copyright infringement in order to assert it. It's a tough legal doctrine to use and even tougher to use well.

That doesn't mean you always need to ground the flight before it takes off, however. There are some pretty useful questions you can ask ahead of time to gauge whether using someone else's work without their permission is a risk you want to take. For starters, understand that the issue is less "what" are you doing to the already copyrighted work than "why" and "to what end?" If you're trying to make money from it or impinge on the owner's right to profit from it, that's the kind of thing a court would smack you for. But if you're using the work to inform and educate, or if your use says something critical about the work, those are the classic fair uses scenarios. In this case, that's exactly what Soderbergh is doing. He recut the film in order to say something about a crucial aspect of filmmaking. The fact that he's using Raiders to comment and teach is critical to the analysis, and it helps douse a potential lawsuit before it ever arises.

Don't forget the politics of this either. It's doubtful that Paramount (the film's copyright holder) or Spielberg would want to drag him through a legal proceeding. Soderbergh is a respected and beloved filmmaker, still at the height of his power (The Knick, anyone?). He's a potential collaborator and some of his movies made real money - i.e. the Oceans Trilogy. That's not a gift horse you look in the mouth. And let's be honest, this is precisely the kind of nerding around that Spielberg would probably appreciate.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is my all-time favorite film and Steven Soderbergh relied on fair use to recut it and show us just how great it is. In some alternate universe where I'm still 19-years old, I'm over the moon excited to watch and learn from it. Hell, 34-year old me still is.

Star Wars, George Lucas, and How Copyright Term Limits Can Affect The Death of The Author

May is an important month for Star Wars fans. Episode IV, A New Hope premiered on May 25, 1977, ushering in the age of the summer blockbuster. This past Sunday was May 4th, affectionately known by fans as Star Wars Day basically so they can all walk around saying "May the Fourth be with you" with impunity. This year, May has taken on extra significance; just last week, Disney released a picture of the cast for the new Star Wars film, Episode VII to be directed by J.J. Abrams and starring a bunch of exciting young actors like Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Lupita Nyong'o. It will also feature the original trilogy cast members, including notorious grump, Harrison Ford.

It's all very exciting and even though I've never been a big Star Wars fan, I've been thinking a lot lately about poor old George Lucas. His reputation never recovered from the terrible prequel trilogy and the much hated "Special Editions" of the original films. I have to believe it was the fierce and unrelenting backlash that finally convinced him to sell Lucasfilm to Disney. While he is publicly staying involved with the new films as an elder statesman, it's pretty clear he's washed his hands of the whole thing. And why not? The fan community all but called for his head on a pike after Lucas made those changes to the original films, often with terrible CGI, and some of which altered the thematic tenor of the story (i.e. making Greedo shoot first).

Of course, Lucas had the right to do anything he wanted to those films, including turning Boba Fett into a New Zealander for some reason. The copyrights, and all rights of revision, were his. As far as the law is concerned, that's all that matters. The fans, on the other hand, saw Star Wars as theirs, and many of them used ugly phrases like "George Lucas raped my childhood" to illustrate their feelings on the matter. But I think beneath all that unhinged terror, there's a legitimate argument to be made that after a work is published to the world, the work is no longer the sole property of the artist. And while that concept is not codified in our laws, maybe it should be.

I recently wrote a blog post stating that indefinite copyrights may not be such a bad thing. My argument echoed that of George R.R. Martin, who believes that the creator and his or her heirs are the best people to maintain the integrity of the work over time. I think he has a point... a point that is unfortunately undercut by creators like Lucas who monkey around with their works after they've been released. So how do you codify it? Well, shortening copyright terms would be one way to go. [Yes, that old chestnut. You didn't think I was done harping on it, did you?]

Right now, individual copyrights last for life of the author plus 70 years, resulting in upwards of 170 years of protection. What message does that much protection send? That the copyright owner has complete control over his work for several generations, regardless of the effects of the work on the culture at large. By shortening copyright terms to something like a flat 75 years, Congress would send a very public message to artists and creators that after a certain period of time, the art no longer belongs solely to them; it belongs to the people. And lest you call me a socialist, remember that progress for the betterment of society was one of the original purposes behind copyright protection. While Lucas had the legal right to change his films, he made those changes without much regard for the cultural impact those movies had. The way our copyright law is written today, he shouldn't have to. But the law can't exist in a vaccuum, separated neatly from the realities of life. Star Wars had an immense impact on countless people; you can't just ignore that. Remember that Lucas is hardly the first franchise creator whose ownership interest was outstripped by the fanbase. J.R.R. Tolkien rewrote huge portions of The Hobbit long after it had been published so it would better fit in with the darker tone of Lord of the Rings. His publisher had to step in and prevent him from rewriting it entirely, afraid that The Hobbit's fanbase would be turned off by changes to the upbeat tale.

I'm a strong believer in the death of the author, and I think that altering the length of copyright ownership is a logical extension of that. But if I'm being honest, I'm not as sure as I once was on the merits of shortening copyrights. For every George R.R. Martin who convinces me that creators should have indefinite control of their work, there's a George Lucas who clearly demonstrates that taking the work away from the author may actually protect the art. Luckily, I have this space where I can exercise those uncertainties. What do you guys think?