Une bloge de Jaircinio Munoz

Part Une

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Have you ever been the victim of intellectual property theft?

Have you ever had your intellectual property stolen, only to find it out there in the world in the not-too-distant future under somebody else’s name, claiming to take credit and getting paid for it? 
Have you ever been blackballed by someone or some group simply because they are jealous of your talent and resent you for not kissing their goddamned ring?

All the while you are being ridiculed and called a liar, conspiracy theorist when you try to tell people about it!
If you have, then I can most definitely relate. While some of these artists are fortunate enough to fight back and get compensated for, the majority of us “starving artists” suffer for wanting to hold on to our artistic integrity.
Every now and then you hear about the story of how Tarantino had two screenplays stolen from him before he made it big with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction or the lady who really wrote the Matrix. When we hear these stories there are usually two types of reaction to this information. Some might make a joke out of it, while others question its legitimacy.
I never really thought much about it, until it happened to me and would steer my life into a completely different direction from what I had envisioned for myself when I first decided to make filmmaking my career of choice.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by power and the influence of film. It can both entertaining and informative, inspiring and unequivocally funny and sad at the same time. The way which storytelling can take us to unimaginable far off places where we are only limited by imaginations or lack thereof.
I didn’t know how, but I always knew I wanted to be a part of it, somehow, someway.
After changing my major 5 times my first 2 years of community college, I finally decided to say “fuck it, why not me?” I took the plunge after deciding that if I was going to pursue a career in anything to sustain myself with, I wanted to always feel passionate about it. Imagine making a living doing something that you are so passionate about, it may never feel like working because you enjoy so much doing it. I majored in Film & Television Production while minoring in creative writing, which is something I have always done since I was a kid, be able to express myself very well through the written word. Got my AA and AS degrees before taking some time off to try and live a life worth writing about, as I felt I had not lived enough living in my little family bubble which we tend to fall prisoners into at times.
After 5 years of traveling, partying, falling in and out of love twice, I was ready to go back to Film School and began the real pursuit of making Filmmaking my career. After reading an add for Full Sail University in a magazine I picked up on my way back to San Diego, CA from my last trip to Paris, FR, where I had just written down on a paper napkin the idea for the opening scene of a movie which would become the script for my first independent feature film and my other reason for choosing Full Sail. I decided that would be the school I wanted to go to with their promise of “hands on, real world education” and high placement percentage post academia and offering themselves as resources for us to use.
I got the idea for this film while going for a weekend stroll through the streets of Paris, with my extended summer love Cecile Muller, whom I had met on my first trip to France and one of the main reasons I would always go back to France after each trip to Western Europe where I would backpack for weeks after saving money for a year just so I cold travel again. Never been one to settle down in one place for too long. Never been married, I believe it is unnatural. Never been codependent on other people to validate myself and although I can be very social, I always have enjoyed doing things by myself, because I’ve never been a fan of putting myself in uncomfortable situations in places I did not want to go, simply because someone else wanted me to.
I have also been known to sound elitist at times because I can be very unapologetically honest when asked for my opinion about whatever topic which may arise. Never been comfortable masking the truth with politeness, if people have a problem with the truth, it is their problem, not mine for pointing it out.
Recently I have outgrown the need to always throw in my 2 cents and learnt when and how to bite my tongue, but still will not lie when asked a question. Which doesn’t happen as often as it once did, since I have isolated most people from my life, by choice mind you, though I won’t offer much information about anything unless asked about it.
Why am I still talking about myself? Well, this is why I had my script stolen and blackballed from the Hollywood industry since 2004 while still attending Full Sail. Because after writing the script which was originally titled Champagne Supernova, my favorite song of all time, I figured that was too obvious even for someone who likes to wear his influences on his sleeves. So I went with part of my favorite quote from my favorite song, regardless of how I feel about Noel Gallagher from Oasis, for being the cunt that he is, I am able to separate the genius of the band from the unceremonious cunt Noel. Who can obviously NOT sing and was riding his brother’s voice and charm the whole time they were a band.
I handpicked a skeleton crew to shoot my film during our summer break from school, planned the shoot over 9 months in advance, working with the 7 actors which took 4 different casting sessions to cast, because there is so much bad talent out there and I didn’t want the prettiest actors, I wanted to best, more charismatic actors with screen persona. We saw on a average of 75 to 120 actors per session.
Rented all the equipment, bought all the 35mm film stock, because I was adamant about how a real filmmaker shoots with film not video.
While recruiting my cast and crew, I must have dished out only but a handful of completed scripts to people. One of them, made its way to this big time Hollywood big wig, who happened to be an investor at Full Sail and had heard about me, though I had no idea who the hell he was. One fateful night at a house party at guy whom I had picked to be my director of photography’s place, him and this shot caller were trying to tell me that although they really liked the script, it would be so much better if done a different way.
Presenting me a hypothetical situation in which an investor approached me with an offer to finance the script while allowing me to shoot it, so long as I did it their way to which I didn’t have the nicest of reactions to. I pretty much told this guy, that I would never play the Hollywood bullshit ball, that would never clean up for Hollywood or kiss their ring just to be part of the inner circle and be their little bitch. That I would rather take 20 years to my film my way, to give it to some talentless hack who would ruin it, because money was not and would never be the reason I got into film. That if that hypothetical investor were there right then and there I would tell him to fuck off and die.
So, the shot caller hired my DP, Isaac Meisenheimer, to steal my script, sabotage my shoot, so I wouldn’t have enough material for a completed film in exchange for long career behind the scenes after graduating school, rubbing elbows with B-Listers in Hollywood. Hollywood, don’t know if you know this or not, is the smallest, hardest, most coveted click to break into and in so being, easy to be blackballed from.
They gave my baby to this talentless fucking hack named Hunter Richardson and shot a piece of shit, straight to video movie with Jessica Biel, Chris Evans and Jason Statham called London. Which this talentless, thieving hack got some sort of Canadian Film Festival Award for best original screenplay, which I took as a compliment myself seeing as how the script is like 65% my original script to Beneath The Landslide.
Mind you, I found out, while watching this fucking DVD with my girlfriend at the time, when we used to go to Walmart right behind our place, buy DVDs and then return them within 48 hours to get our refund. We must’ve seen over 100 movies for free from there. As we’re watching, this piece of shit movie called London, I could not get the feeling out of my head of, “why does this sound so familiar?”
Then, it happened, right before the climax there is a page and a half long monologue that Jason Statham’s character rants off which really brings the whole thing together segueing into the climax of the movie. Word for word verbatim taken from my goddamned script. Fucking lazy, talentless, fucking hack Hunter, didn’t even bother changing a goddamned word, and he got an award for it.
You know what his sophomore effort was that he wrote after London?
Stuck On You with Matt Damon and Jim Carrey, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about him lying about writing London, nothing will.
The fucking shot caller and Isaac figured, “what the fuck is he gonna do about it?” He can’t afford a lawyer and they made damn sure that the movie made no money, so there would be nothing to sue over. They were both just happy that they made MY film THEIR way and I would NEVER work in the industry, no matter what I did.
They were right about me affording a lawyer, after watching that piece of shit London, I consulted a lawyer who informed that legal fees alone would far surpass the $50,000 Hunter got for making the movie and the studio had changed just enough of the script, which obviously made no money on paper, for plausible deniability thinking this hack had actually written the script.
This motherfucker red flagged every resume I ever send out, making goddamned sure I would not be employed in the industry. He also made sure that every attempt at trying to make my film, would fail, from Florida, to NYC and then back to San Diego again.