A flag on ‘Marshall’ play

When writers reference “the suits,” it’s usually a dig at MBA-toting executives who treat a screenplay like an insurance application: “A 39-year-old black female protagonist with a history of alcoholism and no superpowers? Sorry, we are unable to cover you!” But a growing crop of intellectual property battles may be shifting the word’s semantic focus in the screenwriters’ lexicon of torment.

The latest film to become entangled in a copyright or implied-contract imbroglio is the small-town football drama “We Are Marshall.”

Last Wednesday, L.A. attorney John Marder filed a copyright infringement and breach of implied-in-fact contract suit in federal District Court against Warner Bros., screenwriters Cory Helms and Jamie Linden and others on behalf of filmmakers John Witek and Deborah Novak.

Witek and Novak’s Emmy-winning documentary “Marshall University: Ashes to Glory” details the same incident of a West Virginia town struggling to find redemption after most of the members of the university’s football team die in a plane crash (Novak grew up in the town and was present for the major events depicted in both movies).

In the filing, they claim that the producers saw the documentary, actively solicited participation from Witek and Novak and offered them a contract before communication abruptly ceased. The studio then went on to make the fictionalized film.

The “Marshall” suit is just one of a handful of similar recent high-profile dust-ups, such as Laura Kightlinger’s claims against Mike White over his “Year of the Dog” screenplay and Canadian author Rebecca Eckler’s suit against Judd Apatow and company over the origins of “Knocked Up.”

Marder, who has spent 20 years exploring the contours of this area of the law, also represents Reed Martin in his case against Jim Jarmusch and “Broken Flowers,” which is in its pretrial stage, and Aaron and Matthew Benay in their fight over “The Last Samurai.”

Last year, Marder helped establish a new legal concept called “implied-in-fact contract” in his arguments on behalf of Jeff Grosso over the film “Rounders,” which Grosso claimed drew ideas from his spec script “Shell Game.”

This precedent shifts the legal terrain so that there’s an implied contract whenever a writer pitches a producer or other interested party with an expectation that if any of that material is used in a film, the writer is entitled to compensation for it -- even when there’s not explicit copyright infringement.

“This is a really murky part of Hollywood that is undefined,” Marder says. “And although the studios fight it like crazy, they’re better off having it clearly defined.... That’s what we were asking for. I don’t care what the law is as long as it’s clear, it’s out there, and we all know it.”

The feel of life among wild ones

Screenwriting assignments don’t typically lead to a territorial head butt from an 11-foot wild elephant in the dusty heat of Kenya. But when writer Jeff Stockwell took the gentle hit from a curious elephant earlier this month, it was all in the name of research.

New Line underwrote Stockwell’s trip to east Africa to spend two weeks with Daphne Sheldrick, a 73-year-old Kenya-born animal rights pioneer who for 50 years has championed the wildlife of Africa, battled poachers and developed groundbreaking methods for keeping alive scores of orphaned elephants and gravely endangered black rhinos. (For details on her work, check out www.sheldrickwild lifetrust.org.)

After a “60 Minutes” segment on Sheldrick ran last year, New Line bought the film rights to her story and thought that Stockwell’s talent for adapting offbeat source material (“The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys,” “Bridge to Terabithia”) would make a good match for Sheldrick’s sensibility.

“I headed over there with a notion of the kind of story we were going to tell,” says Stockwell. “But it was more; if it’s going to be done well it’s going to come out of an actual connection that you’re going to have with her.”

Stockwell spent a week with Sheldrick at her orphanage in Nairobi National Park, sleeping in her spare room, and then chartered a Cessna to Tsavo National Park (which Sheldrick’s late husband, David, founded in 1948). He’ll spend the next few weeks hammering out a narrative that details the Sheldricks’ extraordinary animal-rights efforts in the commercial and geopolitical context of the ongoing larger struggle against the decimation of native species.

“The problem with screenwriting is I’m spending all of my time bent over a book and my laptop, researching things, but pretty much within the four walls of my office,” says Stockwell, a former teacher and naturalist who worked as a seasonal park ranger for three years at Canyonlands National Park in Utah before he got into the industry.

“I wasn’t in [Kenya] trying to fill in dots to any specific story. It was just to go absorb her life, learn about the land, interact with the elephants and try to get a sense of those creatures that she’s so attached to. It was magical.”

If a tad more physical than expected.

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Scriptland is a weekly feature on the work and professional lives of screenwriters. Please e-mail any tips or comments to fernandez_jay@hotmail.com.