Get Your Own Ideas, Pal!
Truly original ideas are rare. Most of us creative types find inspiration in what's come before, imprinting our own style and world-view onto what's already been done.
Truly original ideas are rare. Most of us creative types find inspiration in what's come before, imprinting our own style and world-view onto what's already been done. And that's okay. From the innocuous mention in Moby Dick of Captain Ahab being married, author Sena Jeter Naslund penned Ahab's Wife, one of the most beautiful, unique works I've ever read. Just as one example.
But there's a line, isn't there. A line my wife and I witnessed crossed not too long ago.
While on the prowl for a good scary movie, for we do love a good scary movie, something comparable to Sinister or The Shrine, I found The Sacrament. With Eli Roth (Hostel) listed as producer, it seemed promising. And yet...it wasn't but a few minutes into the movie that pangs of familiarity struck. A group of journalists travel to a religious commune that is lead by a charismatic man in sunglasses who is called only Father. (Played brilliantly by Gene Jones, I should add.) The setting of the commune, which was more like a compound secured by armed guards, reminded me of images I had seen while doing research for a novel I'm writing involving a cult. In my studies I learned about the likes of Mother Ann Lee and the Shakers, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones and the People's...wait! That's it! That's where I saw those images, from photographs of Jonestown in Guyana, South America.
As the movie continued I felt I was watching a documentary on Jones and the People's Temple. It was all there. One room shacks in the middle of a tropical forest. A gathering area with covered picnic tables. Machine-gun toting security. The articulate leader in sunglasses spewing twisted prophecies. The mass suicide by drinking grape Flavor Aid laced with cyanide, children being forced to drink first. Some of Father's dialogue was verbatim to some things Jones was recorded saying during the suicidal ceremony. In their attempt to escape, the reporters are shot at, one of them killed. And Father, just like Jim Jones, takes his own life with a bullet to the head.
An online review of the movie states: "The film's plot borrows heavily from the real life events of the Jonestown Massacre of 1978."
Borrows heavily? How about flat-out rips off! Sure, make a movie about a cult and its demented leader, but put some kind of original thought into it! Did the filmmakers think no one would remember what happened in Guyana? I don't think there was the tag, "Based on a True Story," or anything like that at the beginning of the movie. It was shot in the Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity found footage technique, so maybe we were supposed to think it was a documentation of the events of 1978...no, wait, that couldn't be it, they were carrying cell phones.
The line has been flirted with many times. Dan Brown did it when he "borrowed heavily" from Holy Blood, Holy Grail for The Da Vinci Code. But I've never thought of someone plagiarizing real life. Until now.