Fast forward thirteen years, and she is astounded to realize that her script was used to make one of the most successful films of all time. Lawsuits abound.
Did I mention that this is an African-American female writer?
Sounds incredibly scandalous, salacious, and entirely in line with some of the things people in Hollywood have done before.
Except for the fact that it's all in the mind of Sophia Stewart.
One newspaper--a college paper in Utah--credited Ms. Stewart with winning her original lawsuit in 2004, based on the interview with Ms. Stewart. The sophomore writer took her word as gospel--and that one piece of journalistic poop has spun into this nightmare.
Ms. Stewart also claims that the same "script" was used two years before she sent it off to the Wachowskis by one James Cameron and his "partner in crime" (her words) Gale Anne Hurd and transformed into The Terminator.
The.
Same.
Script.
Now, there are plenty of copyright laws that are dubious at best. James Cameron liked the look of the first three minutes of an old episode of The Outer Limits...and copied that style for three minutes worth, essentially, and now Harlan Ellison has a writing credit on The Terminator as well. Whether the visuals that were used were even in Ellison's original script, I cannot say--I've not read it. But I can tell you that Cameron thinks this was a horrible thing for Ellison to do--they had to settle out of court because at the time Cameron didn't have the money for a lawsuit and the company backing the film told him outright that they would come after him if they lost--and Cameron said in print that he'd been inspired by and/or "ripped off" said three minutes of film time.
If he'd not said anything, nothing could have been proven.
So, the Terminator and the Matrix. They have the following in common:
1. Machines that take over the world.
2. An innocent (sort of) who is thrust into a world beyond his/her comprehension, with a guide who has lots of experience in this "new world".
3. A foretold "savior" that will help those under the regime of the machines.
That's about it.
We've been afraid of sentient computers since before HAL came along courtesy of Arthur C. Clarke (Forbidden Planet, anyone?). And don't get me started on savior stories, because I don't think the Gospel writers are suing for copyright these days.
I can see that there are similarities, yes. Fighting a war with the machines that humanity is losing. Humans reduced to living in a state of constant combat. But the story of Neo and the story of Sarah Connor/John Connor are not the same story, any more than The Terminator and Back to the Future are. Both deal with time travel in roughly similar proportions (30/40 years). In both cases a couple has to get together to make sure a kid is born. Both Kyle Reese and Marty McFly get stuck in the past (for a while, at least, for the latter). But Biff Tannen isn't exactly the Terminator, no matter what George McFly once thought.
I'll tell you plainly that I have not ponied up the $9.95 (Kindle) or $24.95 (paperback) to read the "script" Ms. Stewart copyrighted in 1983, since for my money I'd also be getting a lot of her nearly incomprehensible legal actions against everyone in show business. I do find it interesting that she did not attempt to sue James Cameron for many years, and her primary focus has been the Wachowskis. (I have read reviews from people who have read the manuscript, and the complaints are all the same--it's unfinished, a bit of a mess, there is some sort of savior, but her story is about aliens taking over, not machines, and that anyone who sees either the Matrix or the Terminator in this manuscript is a lunatic. There are plenty of positive reviews for Ms. Stewart's works on amazon.com--but these people also have never reviewed anything else on the site. They all hail her as a fantastic writer who clearly is the most gifted woman in the history of mankind and known civilization. Almost like they were plants.)
Let's look at her complaints against the makers of the Matrix.
The Wachowskis--in 1986 going by the names of Andy and Larry--were 21 and 18, respectively. I do not know if they put out an ad for scripts that they would then turn into animation, which was the purpose of the alleged advertisement. Larry (now Lana) had not finished high school when said ad appeared, and I cannot find information as to what trade that ad was published in. That's not to say that they didn't do it, but the Wachowski family was not known as a family of means. They were living in Chicago at the time, which is also where Ms. Stewart states she was also living. So it's entirely possible that they ran a simple ad in the Chicago Tribune, received her script and tossed it into a pile. Ms. Stewart claims she never heard anything from the Wachowskis.
This may have happened, but I have serious doubts about the veracity of anything Ms. Stewart claims at this point.
For one thing, she keeps alleging on her website (for those of you willing to subject yourselves to it, http://www.truthaboutmatrix.com) that she has won a $15 BILLION settlement against these yokels.
As my father would say, "Now wait just a damn minute."
Think about it. If an African-American woman won a settlement that astoundingly large against Warner Bros., The Wachowskis, and Joel Silver, who would be the first person to demand an interview?
That's right: Oprah.
For one thing, Oprah would no longer be the richest woman of color in the country. That alone would force her to sit down with Ms. Stewart to get a couple of things right. For another, Oprah made her talk show empire...in Chicago. They would have much to discuss.
Yet I do not see Oprah lending her support to Ms. Stewart. I doubt Oprah is aware of Ms. Stewart's existence. I do believe Oprah would genuinely want Ms. Stewart to be the rightful author of all Matrix-related items, because it would be such a boon to the African-American creative community.
And...crickets from Team Harpo.
This, more than any other single thing, tells me that Ms. Stewart may not have all her facts straight.
Despite Ms. Stewart's best efforts to have you believe that she's some sort of incredibly gifted genius (and by all means buy her books, because even billionaires need serious cash flow that only amazon.com can bring), I'm going to tell you what actually happened here:
Ms. Stewart told everyone who had ears that she had been wronged. She was contacted by a lawyer, one Jonathan Lubell, who said that he would represent her for $50,000 and put things right. Going through the information, however, said lawyer apparently did not think that Warner Bros. et al would actually go to court and fight this, or he thought he'd taken a clunker of a case that he was sure to lose. No matter the reason, he never informed Ms. Stewart when the defendants wished to take her deposition. As the defense took this to mean she refused deposition, the case was thrown out in 2004.
Had she been deposed in the first place, the case would likely have been thrown out anyway, but this gave her legal grounds to try again. Ms. Stewart did win the right to have another trial, given the presumed negligence of Mr. Lubell and his team. That case was also thrown out of court.
So Ms. Stewart, thinking she couldn't have a fair case in California, pled her case again. And again. Most recently (2014), she pled her case in Utah--a two-fold case: one against Mr. Lubell and his firm (since Lubell is now deceased), and one against Warner Bros. et al. This is the case about which she has documents on her website (and I can read some legalese--I mean, it's not exactly a second language to me, but I can decipher it and I cannot decipher the stuff she has put in the documents on her website. I mean, I know something of substance is in there somewhere, but I think I'd do better as a gold prospector in Syracuse, NY right now than finding the substance in the pdfs on her site). I had no trouble in deciphering the actual verdict in said trial, which I found on one of the many websites that have trivia about this case.
In case you are curious, Mr. Lubell and his associates were found to be negligent and ordered to pay the legal fees from the 2004 case and some other related fees to the tune of roughly $350,000. (As the original case was thrown out, she was ordered to pay the fees that the Wachowskis, Warner Bros., and Joel Silver all incurred.)
The subsequent case against Warner Bros. in 2014, despite her "expert" testimony that used monetary figures from websites such as Box Office Mojo and imdb.com as part of said expert testimony (not, say, the actual ledgers from the company that made the movie), was found to not have merit and the judge recommended that no damages be awarded to Ms. Stewart for this or any other similar case brought in Utah.
I highlighted that because I thought that maybe Ms. Stewart needed someone to explain it to her, and just in case she's as megalomaniacal as I think she is, perhaps she'd find this blog and finally understand the judgment.
The interesting thing in all of this is that this is a story that simply won't die. I wonder why people want to continue to feed into a woman who considers herself to be the most gifted writer in her generation without any proof. (Cough Neil Gaiman Cough). For certain, she's the only one who says so, because I have yet to see any of her other work, which I find highly suspect. Why do we know nothing of her writings between 1983, when she claims she "finished" her manuscript (as I understand it, the manuscript she's selling is not exactly finished, and really, she's had plenty of time to do so) and 1999, when the Matrix hit the big screen? Would we not already know her name in creative circles? While I do think it may have been more difficult as an African-American woman to be recognized as a writer than as a white man in the 1980s, it wasn't unheard of or impossible (hello, Gloria Naylor. Hello, Terry McMillan).
Therefore, while I think that this is an interesting exercise, I do think that Ms. Stewart may suffer from sort of psychological disorder. God knows I feel like I do after researching this for several days now.
I need better hobbies.
