Spielberg Lawsuit Pits Author vs. Auteur

Nine years ago, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, submitted a copy of a friend’s manuscript about a true-life revolt on the Spanish slave ship “L’Amistad” to Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment for consideration as a movie.

Amblin executives met with the book’s author, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and a week later took a pass on the project, informing her, “It was too big for a feature film and better suited for a miniseries.”

Flash forward to November 1996. Spielberg announces that the first movie he’ll direct for his new DreamWorks movie studio will be “Amistad,” a story about a true-life revolt on a Spanish slave ship. The movie will hit theaters in December.

The announcement shocked Chase-Riboud, an acclaimed author and poet who last week filed a $10-million copyright-infringement suit against the fledgling studio of Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, alleging the Oscar-winning director’s upcoming period drama was pirated from her 1989 historical novel, “Echo of Lions.”

Both Chase-Riboud’s book and “Amistad” recount the story of a kidnapped slave named Joseph Cinque who led a mutiny with 53 fellow Africans off the coast of Cuba in 1839. Arrested and charged with murder and piracy by the U.S. government, Cinque and his cohorts ultimately won their freedom in what essentially became the first civil-rights case in America.

In telling the story through Cinque’s eyes, Chase-Riboud’s novel blends fiction and historical fact.

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DreamWorks attorney Bert Fields called the author’s suit “a nowhere claim,” arguing, “What is portrayed in the film is based on historical fact, not on her book, and you can’t own or monopolize a piece of American history.”

DreamWorks says its movie is based on an idea pitched to Spielberg about 18 months ago by actress-director-choreographer Debbie Allen and extensive historical research on the Amistad rebellion.

Chase-Riboud’s lawyer, Pierce O’Donnell, concedes that while nobody can copyright history, the fictional elements in the author’s work are protectable.

“My client wrote a historical novel, spent three years researching it, and it’s a unique story that they copied from beginning to end.”

Hollywood is littered with suits by writers claiming that others ripped off their movie ideas. O’Donnell gets hundreds of such calls a year but says “maybe only 10% have some merit.”

At the same time, O’Donnell contends, “plagiarism is a cancer on Hollywood.” O’Donnell recalled the case he tried eight years ago on behalf of his Pulitzer Prize-winning client Art Buchwald, who sued Paramount Pictures over the Eddie Murphy film “Coming to America.” Chase-Riboud’s suit “involves another prominent writer being victimized,” he said.

He said he finds this case “far more compelling because [Buchwald] only wrote a 2 1/2-page treatment [which the court decided ‘Coming to America’ was based on], and this is a 400-page novel.” O’Donnell said this is the first such case he’s taken on contingency since Buchwald’s.

O’Donnell claims “Amistad” cribbed “the structure and flow” of Chase-Riboud’s story and the “fictitious characters, incidents and relationships that were the creative genius of my client.”

Some years ago, the author won a copyright-infringement suit involving her first historical novel, “Sally Hemings,” about the illicit relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave. Three years after its publication, someone wrote a play on the same subject called “Dusky Sally,” which a Pennsylvania court enjoined the playwright from distributing, producing or selling rights to until he signed a license agreement with Chase-Riboud.

Fields suggests that Chase-Riboud is “obviously trying to make a living off suing people over her books.” The lawyer said the author, as an African American, “should be proud of this picture. . . . Instead of supporting a project which is based on the work of leading black historians, she’s attacking it in order to grab money for herself. It’s a sorry sight.”

According to Deborah Newmyer, one of the top development executives at Amblin, who met with Chase-Riboud in 1988, Spielberg never laid eyes on the book.

“I have absolutely no recollection of giving Steven the book, and I would have remembered,” Newmyer told the Los Angeles Times this week. It was Newmyer who wrote Chase-Riboud the rejection letter--an exhibit in the suit to prove that Amblin executives had access to the material.

O’Donnell says it is irrelevant that Spielberg never read the manuscript since top executives at his company had direct access to the material.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims “Amblin never returned Chase-Riboud’s manuscript” nor the finished copy of the published book that the company was subsequently sent.

Chase-Riboud states in her suit that years after meeting with the company, an early version of the shooting script for “Amistad” surfaced at DreamWorks titled “The Other Lion,” which she points out has a similar title to her book “Echo of Lions.”

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The author alleges this was just one of many “overwhelming” and “striking” similarities between her work and the shooting script for “Amistad,” which DreamWorks gave Chase-Riboud at her request for comparison.

According to the suit, “Nearly every aspect of DreamWorks’ ‘Amistad,’ from the title of an earlier version of the screenplay to its final montage, contains themes, dialogue, characters, relationships, plot and scenes that were originally created by Chase-Riboud for ‘Echo of Lions’ and have no basis in the historical record.”

Chase-Riboud charges that DreamWorks’ “misappropriated” literary inventions of hers, including one of the main characters, a fictional prosperous, middle-aged black printer living in New England, and the relationship between Cinque and John Quincy Adams. The author claims that although Adams defended Cinque before the Supreme Court, there’s no evidence the two ever met face to face or discussed the case.

Without “Echo of Lions,” Chase-Riboud claims “there would be no ‘Amistad’ movie.”

DreamWorks, of course, claims otherwise.

First, “Echos of Lions” is not the only book ever published about the Amistad uprising. Even the author acknowledges that there are six other historical works on the subject.

Fields says DreamWorks became interested in pursuing a project about Amistad when Allen came to the company about a year and a half ago with the movie idea, which she had researched and apparently shopped around Hollywood for years. Allen is credited as a producer on “Amistad” and has a small role in the film.

In addition to working with Allen, Fields said DreamWorks hired its own team of distinguished black historians and screenwriters to research and develop a script based on Allen’s idea.

Chase-Riboud notes in her suit how odd it is that in all their extensive research, “the researchers never came across, let alone read, ‘Echo of Lions,’ ” particularly since the book sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, was reviewed by major newspapers and was translated into five languages.

The author, who is seeking $10 million in damages, also states that for 10 months she tried to discuss with DreamWorks the origins and references for its project but wasn’t satisfied with the response she received.

“I have great respect for Spielberg,” Chase-Riboud told The Times. “I do not understand his attitude about this.”

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Times staff writer Ann O’Neill contributed to this column.