And with that title, bet you all think I’m talking about Al Franken, right? Well, not exactly (although I quite agree that his resemblance to J-Franz is getting kind of spooky.) In this case, we have Chris Elliott, comedian, actor (remember “Get a Life”) and perhaps most importantly of all, son of Bob Elliott, who is out promoting his debut parody THE SHROUD OF THE THWACKER. It’s a takeoff on the kind of thrillers Caleb Carr got famous for, but puts a post-modern — well, as post-modern as flatulence jokes can be, so would they by post-flatulent? — twist on it by having himself be one of the protagonists, among other things.
The problem is that one of the supporting players in the book goes by the name of Boilerplate, “a robot said to be developed by the inventor Archibald Campion in the late 1800’s.” And Elliott believed it.
Too bad it wasn’t, and the guy who created Boilerplate was upset enough to consider legal action:
in fact, Boilerplate never was. It is the creation of Paul Guinan, an illustrator and graphic novelist in Portland, Ore., who with his wife, Anina Bennett, is the author of “Heartbreakers Meet Boilerplate,” published in July by IDW Publishing.
In an interview, Mr. Guinan (pronounced GUY-nan) said he learned of Boilerplate’s inclusion in Mr. Elliott’s novel when he read a local newspaper article last month about a promotional appearance by Mr. Elliott in Oregon.
In the acknowledgments section of his book, Mr. Elliott says that Boilerplate came to his attention thanks to research performed by his brother, Bob Elliott Jr. “You can’t make up something like ‘Boilerplate,’ ” Mr. Elliott writes. “Well you can, but it’s a lot easier when your brother just shows you a picture of it.”
Soon, Mr. Elliott heard from friends of Mr. Guinan, who said that he was considering legal action for the “fairly blatant and quite unauthorized” lifting of a copyrighted character.
Mr. Elliott, who is scheduled to give a reading tonight at 7 at the Barnes & Noble at 4 Astor Place in Manhattan, said in an interview that he knew Boilerplate was some kind of a spoof. But, he said, he thought it was a 19th-century spoof, not a postmodern, post-dated parody of a hoax.
“I knew something like that could not exist,” he said. “It was an innocent mistake, and I felt like such an idiot. It made me feel like less of an idiot that the background information he gives on his Web site is fairly convincing.”
In the end, Elliot and Guinan settled things between themselves and Guinan would be credited in future editions of the book — getting some dough in the process. But I do wonder about the soon-to-be-published book on the sad plight of Bonsai Kittens…