Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Da Vinci Code Delay? Fact or Fiction?

There's been talk that Dan Brown's top selling novel The Da Vinci Code copied material from a 1984 non-fiction work called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. This claim is made by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. The legal case is due in London Courts next week. According to the Scotsman if the claim is upheld in court next week, Ron Howards film starring Tom Hanks could be drasticly delayed from it's May release date.

I have a hard time not comparing this to the situation with James Frey over A Million Little Pieces. I think this situation is very different, but it still draws into light what is true and what can you put into a work of writing. Frey said things were true that were actually false, where here Dan Brown is writing historical fiction using truth and facts, but manipulating them for his use. The frusteration to the Brown and Random House (Da Vinci Code's publishers) is that they claim that the facts expressed in the story are simply facts and not under the copy write protection. Baigent and Leigh must feel that it is more than just use of facts...or perhaps see this as a great opportunity for publicity.

1 comment:

Spoke said...

Publicity. Quite like Bono suddenly showing up in our living rooms and on radios telling us about his latest aid awareness ventures...slightly before a new U2 albumn appears in shops, just before their world tours are launched that cost far too much money per ticket. Way to bait the masses of loyal U2erites.
Below that humanitarian surface, even the mighty Bono is a capitalist.