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Spike's 'Oldboy' has an image problem...

Written by (Editor) on 29th November 2013

Open the Box! Take the Money! With allegations flying, who knew a remake of OldBoy would get so dramatic BEHIND the scenes?

One might expect any news to do with the remake of Chan-wook Park's Oldboy to be somewhat controversial. The original film was hardly shy and retiring and the news that Spike Lee was to envisage a western version, even starring Josh Brolin, certainly got a mixed reaction.

However the controversy that HAS transpired it not one that many would have predicted. It involves an award-winning graphic artist, Juan Luis Garcia, claiming that he was hired to create some concepts for the movie poster, was then offered a minute amount for the use of the finished designs and when he refused that amount found  (allegedly) very similar designs being used anyway.  The problem is that the artist says never got paid anything for his work, and even got threatened with a lawsuit against him. 

Hollywood is full of claims and counter-claims, some of them clear signs of injustice and corporate sleight-of-hand, others opportunistic and attention-seeing with no merit. But now the director has sparked further controversy by responding in a dismissive fashion to Garcia. Garcia, advisedly or not, had gone public with his complaint after alledging he had been given no choice - he reached out to Lee through his website http://juanluisgarcia.com asking for some recognition for the work he'd done...

Lee's response on twitter was simple if somewhat over-capitalised: 

I Never Heard Of This Guy Juan Luis Garcia,If He Has A Beef It's Not With Me.I Did Not Hire Him,Do Not Know Him.Cheap Trick Writing To Me.YO

The critcism of Lee's reply was fairly extensive - querying why he felt the need to respond at all if he felt the person was opportunistic... balanced by the others saying that if it was all true it was a continuation of the nature of artists regularly being underpaid and sometimes taken advantage of within the business.  

Lee replied to the avalanche of negative comments against him with:

Why Should I Pay Someone Who I Never Met Nor Had Any Contact With Ever? He Never Made Any Deal With Me.Why Don’t You Pay Me For Your Stupid Text On Thanksgiving Day?

He later tweeted to someone who said he was 'heartles', with:

Lady It Was Not Heartless.Juan Luis Garcia Came With The Wrong Approach.Never Tried To Reach Me.To Do It In A Public Letter?NO

Garcia acknowledges he was promised a small amount based on a larger figure later IF the designs were used and that  the only reason he reached out to Lee personally was because he didn't get any response from the agency after he refused a further "minute" amount when his design was selected for use.  There was no contract at that time, but  Garcia says he didn't even receive the low payment. Lee posted the poster image to his facebook page with the poster concept now bearing a (c)  2013, Spike Lee credit. It could be argued that Spike might not have been aware of the provenance of those images and acted in good faith via the advertising agency that originally hired Garcia.

Except... that the agency in question that  originally dealt with Garcia APPEARS to be http://www.spikeddb.com/   an advertsing agency apparently owned by... Spike Lee.

We, at Impact, take no sides in this issue, we're just reporting the VERY public back-and-forth over the last forty-eight hours. But at this point we can only show you the Garcia design and the finished poster and you can decide whether Garcia appears to deserve payment for delivering a concept that was then used or not... and maybe suggest that any artist out there working for an employee gets any promises in writing for clarification later.

We simply hope the unfortunately public dispute is resolved and clarified soon.

After all, psychotic revenge thrillers could do without all this added drama!

Oldboy Posters

Written By

John Mosby

Editor

John Mosby

Born at a early age, creative writing and artwork seemed to be in John’s blood from the start Even before leaving school he was a runner up in the classic Jackanory Writing Competition and began...

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