I’m only “a little upset” by the fact that the author of the book, Citizen Spielberg, developed his ideas based on what I wrote on my website without giving me credit.
Fortunately, I was more interested in annoying Steven Spielberg (and by default getting him taken as a serious film maker by the film elite) than I was interested in getting credit or making money.
Intellectual theft has always been an issue when it comes to the Internet. While the idea of the forum was to allow thinking people to share ideas, many have harvested it for their own uses (including me) without fully crediting the people who did the hard work in the first place.
Fear of theft has never been my problem since I believe that everything I do is part of a progression. Citizen Spielberg advances many of my ideas but also is a snap shot of where I was three years ago, not today. I’ve always been of the theory that I can out-create anyone simply because each day I learn more about craft and so if someone steals an idea I already had, I’m already well beyond where they are.
While I’m still a child when it comes to film, I am learning more and more. I use Spielberg as a model partly because his work is the compolation of the masters, and so I believe if I can learn as much about his craft, I am getting the benefit of his hard-earned lessons as well.
My ego, of course, gets bruised since I like getting credit for what I do, as would anyone.
But again, I create so much in volume that I know I can repeat what I create, and create additional things when people who steal are stuck with only what they steal, never learning the basic lessons or making the basic mistakes that allows them to create the pieces again.
Yes, I am jealous, too, since the good professor got the cooperation of DreamWorks and others, while I largely operate in a vacuum. But as John Lennon once pointed out, we all have access to the art. In his case, anyone could listen to the music, in this case, I see the same films that any professor does and only need to put together the pieces in my head to form theories.
Fortunately, Citizen Spielberg is a great primer on Spielberg and one that I can take credit for motivating – with or without credit. So in the end, I have helped advance the art and that’s all that really matters.
Read Citizen Spielberg. You can bet I am and I’ll be generating new ideas out of it.
Hey professor, what comes around goes around, if you know what I mean?