Too little, too late… ‘plagiarised’

IN THE early 1990s, music journalist Kevin Powell wrote a series of articles for Vibe magazine – “Exclusive: Is Tupac Crazy or Just Misunderstood”, “Tupac Shakur Jailhouse Exclusive” and “Live from Death Row”. These stories are now the backbone of the almost mythical story of slain rapper Tupac Shakur’s life.

A new Tupac biopic titled All Eyez on Me was released in the Us last week (it opens in SA cinemas tomorrow) and Powell claims the film-makers lifted the plot from his articles.

Last week, he filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court in New York against Lionsgate, Program Pictures, Morgan Creek Pictures and producers and screenwriters of the film.

What’s truly strange is the evidence he offered to back up his claim. Powell admitted that one of the characters in his non-fiction magazine articles, a man by the name of Nigel, was fictitious. That same non-existent character, he said, showed up in the film, proving that the film-makers stole his story.

“While some of the content in these articles was factual, some portions of the article were changed or embellished,” the lawsuit stated, adding that these “are stories with fictional characters and reworked narratives”.

Powell’s articles feature “a fictional character named Nigel, based on a real person named Jacques ‘Haitian Jack’ Stagnant”, the lawsuit stated, adding that Powell’s articles featured “details of Nigel and Tupac’s relationship that have not been published by anyone else”.

As the lawsuit stated, factual, historical events cannot be copyrighted, but fiction can.

And in this case: “The name and character of ‘Nigel’ was specifically created without the authority or encouragement of Tupac Shakur. This made-up character of Nigel was the embellishment of a reallife character that was central to the narrative and was copied and pasted into the film.”

The lawsuit also pointed to other similarities between Powell’s articles and the movie, such as the fact that the dialogue in both was “fast and heavy-laden with the use of metaphorical slang and strong language, including, but limited to the liberal use of the F-word, indicative of the way rappers in the 1990s talk” and was “intense, honest and revealing”.

“After viewing the movie twice in the past few days, it is clear that my exclusive Vibe cover stories on Tupac Shakur (when he was alive), were lifted without proper credit or compensation of any kind to me,” Powell wrote on Facebook.

The defendants have not issued a statement on the lawsuit.

This is the latest potential black eye for a film that has been underwhelming at the box office: it made a middling $26 million on its first weekend. Part of the issue might be its brutal reviews.

Nick Allen of RogerEbert. com called it “one of the most useless music biopics ever made”, adding that it was directed “with minuscule passion”. Vulture’s Emily Yoshida, wrote that it was “rarely more than a faithful adaptation of the rapper’s