Scooping Oliver Stone: artist's appropriation trumps would-be blockbuster
Chris Moukarbel Untitled 2006 DVD projection [still from installation]. Image coutesy of James Wagner.
Paramount Pictures is twisting its knickers over this story, which demonstrates one reason why fair use is important and must be bolstered: copyright holders (whether they be artists or movie studios) must not be encouraged to squelch criticism of their work/product through the threat of copyright infringement suits. The very existence of criticism relies on the principle of fair use. So does dissent, democracy, etc.
via Artnet, 7/18/06:
WEEKEND UPDATE
by Walter Robinson
[...] The summer's other art-film sensation comes to us from the world of Hollywood movies. The story broke first in magazines like Entertainment Weekly and Premiere, which reported that Paramount Pictures had filed suit against Yale art school grad Chris Moukarbel for copyright infringement. The artist had used a purloined script to make a brief home-video version of a scene from Oliver Stone's forthcoming wannabe blockbuster, World Trade Center, and released it on the web. Moukarbel used Stone's dialogue, but shot his film in his living room using student actors and props scrounged from the street.
Manhattan movie houses are already showing the trailer for Stone's film, which opens Aug. 9 and stars Nicolas Cage and actor Michael Peña as two Port Authority cops who were trapped in the wreckage of the World Trade Center for 22 hours. Stone's footage is faintly ridiculous, with the hammy Cage emoting while pretending to be pinned under a pile of bricks, in a latter-day version of Ace in the Hole, the 1951 Kirk Douglas mine-collapse tale.
Moukarbel's film is now nowhere to be seen -- he has been enjoined from showing it by a Washington, D.C. federal court, at the request of Paramount -- but outtakes from his production are on view, legally, in an exhibition at Wallspace gallery on West 27th Street in Chelsea. The scant 11 minutes of footage show a young man in some kind of uniform, a flag patch on his jacket shoulder, covered with dirt and dust and lying in what seems to be a dark, rubble-strewn basement. There's no dialogue; the actor is prepping for his scenes, and the bits of footage are random and unedited.
Through some kind of weird esthetic inversion, the outtakes from Moukarbel's film have more emotional authenticity than the scene from Stone’s phony movie.
Moukarbel's film seems to be a fairly straightforward copyright violation, [oh, really?] but his "fair use" excuse is one of political commentary -- the artist is objecting to the appropriation of the 9/11 tragedy for profit by Stone and Paramount, which have already begun the film's $40-million marketing campaign. Earlier this month, Gerry Rich, Paramount's worldwide marketing chief (who contributed an affidavit to the suit against Moukarbel), solemnly told the New York Times how carefully the studio was promoting its new product. He has brilliantly gained worldwide hype for World Trade Center by providing advance screenings of the movie for New York City police and firefighters. [...]
via James Wagner, July 8, 2006 :
Moukarbel's reference is Oliver Stone's $60 milliion about-to-be-released film, "World Trade Center". The artist [in this context I think the noun's reference is clear] originally filmed a 12-minute video, "World TradeCenter 2006", based on a bootleg copy of Stone's script, but Paramount Pictures was able to persuade a court to issue a restraining order on the piece. What is being shown in the gallery this month is a work created from footage shot in the process of making the proscribed video. We see and hear two actors in position [trapped in debris beneath one of the towers] for their roles and conversing in character or addressing the director who remains off-camera.
Moukarbel speaks in an article which appears in today's NYTimes:
"I'm interested in memorial and the way Hollywood represents historical events," Mr. Moukarbel said in an interview yesterday, the day after his new video was shown as part of the group exhibition "Data Mining" at Wallspace, a Manhattan gallery. "Through their access and budget they're able to affect a lot of people's ideas about an event and also affect policy. I was deliberately using their script and pre-empting their release to make a statement about power."
"My film was offered free on the Internet," he said of "World Trade Center 2006." "It cost $1,000 to produce. We're at a place now where technology allows the democratization of storytelling."
It's a terrific piece with an awesome pedigree conveniently provided by the agents of power it addresses. At the opening two nights ago the gallery provided, in addition to the informational plaque attached to the wall outside the darkened viewing room, the complete text of the first video and a copy of the restraining order itself.
More from the NYTimes article:
Janine Foeller, the co-owner and co-director of Wallspace, said the curator Joe Scanlan had intended to put Mr. Moukarbel's first 9/11 video in the show. ''We're happy and willing to show Chris's work,'' Ms. Foeller said. ''It's taken on another life of sorts.''
Mr. Moukarbel admits that, for the first video, he used a bootleg script. Mr. Stone's film focuses on the ordeal of two Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officers, Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, who survived the World Trade Center collapse.
In March, Mr. Moukarbel created a Web site, pointsofdeparture.net, for the video. Other sites, including filmthreat.com, began to take notice. The question in cyberspace was whether his first video was valid commentary or a rip-off of Mr. Stone and the movie studio. Many e-mail postings sided with Mr. Moukarbel.
''I would have been bummed if they hadn't noticed,'' Mr. Moukarbel said of the executives at Paramount. ''But I didn't expect to be sued.''
More via John Menick's blog:
Chris Moukarbel Responds to Paramount Suit
June 26, 2006 1:30 PM
Filed under: Copyright
Today, Chris Moukarbel responded to a previous post concerning Paramount's lawsuit against him.
As he points out, the press only seems to be able to understand his work in the context of commercial filmmaking, and, like Paramount, isn't interested in knowing that Moukarbel is working in a tradition of contemporary art in which appropriation is a form of criticism. (In case you're the one person reading a contemporary art blog who doesn't know what I'm talking about, try looking into Guy Debord, Bruce Conner, Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, et al.)
Chris's response:
More at Witte de With center for contemporary art, Rotterdam.
Hi John,
I want to thank you for your interest. Due to the pending litigation I've been prevented from making statements in the press. The lawsuit story was leaked by Paramount and really only reflects their perspective. There are many inaccuracies that I haven't been able to address and still cannot. I'm a sculptor and video artist living in NYC and this was the first film I made. It was a conceptual project based on critiquing Hollywood's authority to memorialize an historic event. I can't comment on my understanding of 'Fair-use for the purpose of commentary' in copyright law but I can say that I'm not a commercial filmmaker and I never profited from this work
Posted by: chris moukarbel | June 25, 2006 10:21 PM