Speilberg’s ‘Amistad’ faces charges of plagarism

Bernard Weinraub

Thursday, Nov. 13, 1997 | 4:16 a.m.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - One month before the release of "Amistad," Steven Spielberg's film about a true-life revolt of African slaves in 1839, this widely anticipated movie has been ensnared in a plagiarism suit that could halt its distribution.

Author Barbara Chase-Riboud has filed a $10 million copyright infringement suit against Dreamworks, which made the film.

Her lawyer, John Shaeffer, said Wednesday that he was weighing further legal action to stop the film's release across the nation. He filed a motion in U.S. District Court on Monday seeking a video of the movie and the final or "continuity" script. "We believe we have sufficient information to seek an injunction," he said.

At issue is Ms. Chase-Riboud's contention that her 1989 historical novel, "Echo of Lions," was, in the words of the suit, "brazenly stolen" to make the movie. The suit said there were "shocking similarities" between the "Amistad" script and the film.

Bert Fields, the lawyer for Dreamworks, which is owned by Spileberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, said Ms. Chase-Riboud's claim "had no merit whatsoever." He said, "The really sad thing is this woman should be supporting this project and not trying to stop it to grab some money for herself."

Ms. Chase-Riboud's book and the film deal with an uprising by 53 Africans aboard a Spanish slave ship, La Amistad, off Cuba. Forced to rely on two surviving members of the crew, the Africans, who want to return to Africa, are tricked into sailing to the Connecticut coast, where they are seized by an U.S. Navy ship and put on trial for the murder of the crew. The court case reached the United States Supreme Court, with the Africans represented by former President John Quincy Adams.

The film's stars include Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew McConaughey. Its dominant figure is an actor, Djimon Hounsou, who plays Cinque, the charismatic leader of the rebellion and the court fight. Cinque is also the central figure of Ms. Chase-Riboud's book. "The heart and soul of the 'Amistad' script was lifted directly from her book," said Shaeffer, who is handling the case with his partner, Pierce O'Donnell. O'Donnell represented columnist Art Buchwald in his celebrated and successful suit against Paramount over the Eddie Murphy film "Coming to America."

The dispute has become a charged issue among black intellectuals. The racial issue was raised in the plagiarism suit. "What a paradox," said the suit, "that the renowned filmmaker who produced and directed 'The Color Purple' would be a party to denying a prominent black American woman of letters and the arts her rightful recognition for raising public consciousness about slavery."

During the making of the film, Spielberg and one of his producers, Debbie Allen, conferred with black scholars on such issues as slavery and the historical impact of the Amistad case.

Fields, the Dreamworks lawyer, said Ms. Chase-Riboud was "trying to own American history" and added, "This is like saying you can't write about the Battle of Gettysburg or some other historical event."

Ms. Allen, who played a central role in the project, said she learned about the Amistad case in 1978 while in a bookshop at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington. She optioned a 1974 book on the subject, "Black Mutiny," by William Owens, and struggled in vain for more than a decade to have the film made. Spielberg agreed to undertake the project in 1994.

Of Ms. Chase-Riboud's claim, Ms. Allen said: "It's very unfortunate. I never read Barbara's book. I never even knew it existed until last year. I don't know her. I don't know what's motivating her. I know that if you work on something for a long time, you feel that it belongs to you. But this story belongs to the world."

Ms. Chase-Riboud was reported to be away from home when she was called for comment.

Her suit suit asserts that as far back as 1988, her editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had submitted a copy of her manuscript about the Amistad to Spielberg's company, Amblin Entertainment, for consideration as a movie. The company responded and said the idea was better suited for a television mini-series.

The suit said that a review of the "Amistad" script and the Chase-Riboud book "reveals a shocking number of striking similarities," notably scenes and plot devices that were not part of the historical record and were made up by the author.

One similarity, the suit says, is the fictional character played by Morgan Freeman in the film. He plays a erudite black man in New Haven, Conn. "There's no real historical basis for that character," Shaeffer said. "I don't think there were many wealthy African-Americans living in New England in the 1840s."

But Fields, the Dreamworks lawyer, said: "The Morgan Freeman character is quite different from the one in the book. Ms. Chase-Riboud does not own the idea of a black abolitionist character."

Ms. Chase-Riboud had previously written the acclaimed 1979 novel, "Sally Hemmings," about the black slave purported to be Thomas Jefferson's mistress.