Anora - plagiarism accusation

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere, but this seems pretty damning if it's all true:

https://x.com/EmilyDWarfield/status/1897402744627196219

I genuinely can't decide which of the 2 versions looks the least like a Best Picture winner.

A lot of movies rip their plots off from other movies. The Matrix is basically Dark City with better special effects and martial arts sequences. Inception was ripped from a DuckTales cartoon. Little Man Tate was ripped off from a Cheers episode. Haven’t seen Anora but wouldn’t surprise me if this accusation was true.

Mark

I don’t even care that he stole the idea or use twitter anymore. Now sit back and enjoy my extra long twitter rant about how he stole the idea.

She’s right about one thing, twitter is a cesspool. I don’t think it’s as unique as she thinks though.

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LOL, a show about "sex work reality." It's called prostitution, kids.

Norm on point, RIP.

I don't buy it.

-For one, her idea isn't that unique. A Stripper trying to marry a rich guy above her station has been a story in Hollywood since the 1930s and probably before then. About the only thing she can claim is her idea was it's about a Russian rich guy.

-For two, Sean Baker has already said this movie was inspired by a real-life story of an American/Russian newlywed being kidnapped for collateral and from his time when he edited wedding videos, including many Russian/American couples.

-For three, she says she shared it with him in 2016. Given that Sean Baker's likely had hundreds of ideas pitched to him in that time, I find it hard to believe that this was SOOO unique that he held onto it.

-For four, Sean Baker's has done a bunch of stories about strippers already and has often worked with them to get ideas and stories he can use. I doubt he needs to rip off this random chick's idea when he's likely already borrowing from the stories of prostitutes that he's heard over the years.

-For five, she's a schmuck with a twitter account who's desperate for attention. Why do we believe these people?

>LOL, a show about "sex work reality." It's called prostitution, kids.

Agreed. They're called "hookers," kids.

Well, let’s see where this leads too. I always felt it was loosely inspired by Romeo and Juliet myself, but that’s without having seen it yet. I’m sure there may be more nuance.

I've never understood these "accusations"; The Matrix is basically gnosticism with an A.I. as Demiurge.

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> I always felt it was loosely inspired by Romeo and Juliet myself,

And obviously inspired by Pretty Woman. But even these comparisons really only compare to maybe the first 1/3 of Anora.

☝️

It was fairly clear after the first film, and after that it gets hilariously obvious, what with the Merovingian and all.

It’s funny that this comes up after the movie cleans up at the Oscars. If it hadn’t we probably wouldn’t have heard anything about this . A movie ripped off its plot from another movie? That never happens

Maybe there's a lot more in what she thinks is similar, but all she offered is, "a stripper named Annie getting mixed up with the Russian Mafia," (and in Anora, it's a Russian plutocrat, not actually the Russian Mafia. Though I understand how people conflate the two), I'm failing to see that much similarity. The clip she posted seems to imply an importance of a rich ex-boyfriend to the plot (which isn't in Anora at all from what I remember). I guess there's that one stripper Annie was on bad terms with? Maybe that's being implied as some type of similarity (but that's reading between the lines, no idea if she's even claiming that).


It strikes me as being on the shakier end of plagiarism claims.

It seems like every time a hit movie comes out of nowhere, it is always accused of being stolen from someone else

Not again...

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I think most of what we see is, in fact, stolen. We have far too many twin movies that appear following a hot script circulating between studios. This is just how the business works. Screenwriters are not highly valued. They are certainly not highly paid. And they are held in perpetual disadvantage. You, as the writer, have to share what you've written. You must do this to establish that you're worth the investment. However, once you've shared your ideas, anyone else can run with them. So, the beggar comes to the king with an idea for the kingdom and if the beggar objects to being robbed, he might be banished from the kingdom (blacklisted). And if he takes it to courts, the industry has expensive lawyers on retainer.

So Nolan was a big DuckTales guy?

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This isn't an accusation of a movie just ripping off another movie. This is an accusation of a film-maker taking an idea that has been sent to him for advice and stealing it to make a film. Who knows if it is true but it certainly seems so.

It's very reminiscent of Asghar Farhadi’s case that was dropped. He was accused of completely stealing one of his students documentary ideas for his film ‘A Hero’.

"Ripped off" and "plagiarized" aren't exactly the same. Your examples are ripoffs but a film that pulls directly from another, like how my older brother pulled dialogue and names straight from Dragon Ball Z, is plagiarism.

I can have a silly film about King Arthur with a killer sheep and a crazy Englishman stabbing people, and while it's obviously ripping off Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it's not plagiarism. If I have King Arthur argue with a Frenchman over a Grail they supposedly already have, especially with lines from the Monty Python movie, then I just plagiarized.

Semantics, yes, but they're important semantics.

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>Inception was ripped from a DuckTales cartoon

Where did this nonsense come from? Oh, Internet...silly as always.