I'm With You, Rebecca Eckler

www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/221606

I too have felt the sting of Hollywood ripping off my ideas. I'm also suing a major Hollywood studio for what my attorneys and I consider to be a "shameful bastardization" of an original novel I wrote years ago. The novel, Spy Derman Three, is about a Canadian secret agent named Derman Three who lives on Baffin Island keeping a watchful eye on our Arctic fishing grounds.

Just look at how a certain major superhero movie 'borrowed' my ideas...

* He has a pet seal named Mary and a pet fish named Jane. Sometimes he put a red wig on Mary and kisses her. It's lonely up there in the Arctic.

* Derman Three's undercover day job is working as a photographer for a major newspaper. By the way, in case you're wondering how this jives with his position on Baffin Island, he works all day at the paper, then flies to Nunavut every night to Baffin to check the waters, then flies back. It costs a lot of taxpayer money.

* Derman's best friend, Ozzy Harborn, tries to kill him. Not over seeking vengeance for a dead father, though --- Derman forgot to take off his shoes before entering Ozzy's living room.

* Derman has horrific nightmares, and thus tries to stay awake for as long as he can. Ergo, one could say he's fighting the sandman. One of Derman's nightmares involved being chased by a giant grain of rice, and he was so traumatized that he threw out every bit of rice in his pantry. Ergo, one could say that the sandman was responsible for the death of Derman's Uncle Ben.

* Bruce Campbell has a cameo in my novel as a snooty French maitre'd. In case you're wondering how a person could have a cameo in a novel, Bruce Campbell can do anything he wants.

* Derman is covered in a black substance that makes him act irrationally. It isn't an alien substance, but rather polar bear dung. Derman believed that the feces acted as an aphrodisiac (spoiler alert: it didn't).

* My novel takes about 15 minutes too long to read, and feels a bit like too much stuff in crammed in there.

I'll see you in court, Sam Raimi