Back in October, I wrote, directed and edited an entry for Doritos’ annual Crash the Superbowl contest entitled, “Rest in Chips.”  My commercial was about a dead guy who’s last wish was to be buried in a casket full of Doritos but to the surprise of everyone at his funeral, it turns out he faked his death and is alive inside the casket of chips that eventually gets knocked over.  Sound familiar?  It might if you watched the Super Bowl last night.  Because during the first quarter of the big game, Doritos aired the three winners of the Crash the Super Bowl contest and the third winning ad they showed just happened to be about a dead guy who’s last wish was to be buried in a casket full of Doritos but to the surprise of everyone at his funeral, it turns out he faked his death and is alive inside the casket of chips that eventually gets knocked over!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t MY fake-funeral/Casket-full-of-Doritos-that-gets-knocked-over entry.  It was another entry called “Casket” and it was created by a team of filmmakers from a “non-denominational megachurch” in LA called Mosaic that’s popular with aspiring filmmakers and actors. The church is headed by a well known author, producer and self-professed leader named Erwin Mcmanus and he funded the production of “Casket.”  (you can read about Mosaic and their Crash the Superbowl aspirations here)  Here’s their ad:

I’m sorry to say it but I suspect that the team that made “Casket” may have stolen several of their ideas from me.  How can that be?  Well first, here is the entry that I created for the Crash the Super Bowl contest, “Rest in Chips:”

Sure, they’re not on the same level technically, but there are so many similarities between the stories of “Casket” and “Rest in Chips” that I’ve had a hard time accepting that they’re just coincidences.  If you ignore the aesthetic differences between the two entries (camera quality, location, music) you’ll see that they share many common key elements.  (The kind of stuff you’d see in the scripts for each spot)  Really, the only significant difference in the two stories is WHY the two “dead” guys each decide to fake their deaths.  Other than that, in just 30 seconds, both ads manage to feature:

1. A dead man’s last wish to be buried in a casket full of Doritos

2. A “dead” man who turns out to actually be alive

3. A fake funeral orchestrated by the “dead” man as part of a nefarious scheme

4. A framed photo of the “dead” guy enjoying a bag of Doritos next to the casket

5. Shots of that guy in his casket buried up to his face in chips

6. Unsuspecting mourners who scream/gasp in surprise when the hoax is revealed

7. A climax in which the “dead” guy gets his comeuppance when the casket of chips is knocked over

That’s a lot for just 30 seconds, isn’t it!?  Well, the coincidences don’t stop there.  As it turns out, all of those elements can also be found in this crude animated storyboard that I made weeks before I went out and shot my entry:

Yeah…see where I’m going with this?  I created that storyboard as a test to see if I could fit all the dialogue and action into 30 seconds.  Then I posted it to youtube so that I could send the link to friends so they could give feedback on the idea.  The above version was posted to youtube on October 12^th, 2009.  But that is actually the second version.  I posted the first version of the storyboard video on October 6^th and named it “Doritos Storyboard.”  After about a week, a friend actually said to me, “aren’t you worried that another contestant could see that and steal your idea?”  I realized he was right and that I had made a dumb mistake.  Because the video was named “Doritos Storyboard,” any prospective Crash the Superbowl contestant who went to youtube to watch last year’s winning entries or other Doritos-related videos for inspiration could have seen my storyboard.  In fact, it would have appeared at the top of the page if the results were “sorted by date.”  So I pulled the original version and replaced it with the generically named “Dortest” version around October 12^th.

A week or so after the submission period for the Crash the Superbowl contest closed, I saw “Casket” and I was flabbergasted.  I remembered the storyboard on youtube and immediately suspected that I had been ripped off.  I had to do something about it so I did what any self-respecting dork would do.  I blogged about it. I first compared the two ads in this blog post from November 19^th:  A Tale of Two Caskets (full of Doritos.) Since “Casket” was so slickly produced, I was worried right from the start that it might make it to the finals.  So while Doritos was still evaluating all 4,000+ entries they received, I e-mailed them my concerns on December 9^th.  They responded to my e-mail and said the company’s “legal team” would look into it.

Since the official rules said that Doritos judges were supposed to assign each entry a score, and since 40% of that score was supposed to be based on “originality and creativity,” I assumed that even if there wasn’t plagiarism, I uploaded my casket-full-of-doritos entry to the contest site first, so logically, that would impact “Casket’s” originality score.  And in a competition with 4,000+ submissions, the Top 6 videos would probably be decided by just fractions of a point.  So losing even a few originality points would end an entry’s chances of winning, right?

Boy was I wrong about that one.  On January 5^th, 2010, “Casket” was announced as one of Doritos’ 6 CTSB finalists.  And man, let me tell you, I flipped the F%^& out.  I wasn’t just mad because a team of filmmakers that may have ripped me off had just won $25,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl, though.  In a way, I was much more upset with Doritos.  They knew that somewhere out there a filmmaker suspected that the “Casket” team had plagiarized his entry/storyboard.  There were tons and tons of awesome videos submitted to this year’s competition. Why did they have to pick the one video that they knew would drive some poor guy crazy and maybe even get them into legal trouble!?

A single question has been on my mind since I first saw “Casket” back in November.  “When did they come up with that idea?”  Obviously the entry was a very elaborate production.  Maybe they had spent months working on the thing.  If it turned out that the team came up with the concept for their entry prior to say, the start of October, then there was no chance they could have stolen the concept from me….unless they were mind readers.

I’m not insane and I’m not some jerk who likes ruining other people’s moments of glory.  I absolutely, positively do not want to paint anyone as plagiarists if they’re totally innocent.  I also really do not want to put my life on hold while I engage in a copyright battle with a megachurch and a multinational corporation if I don’t have to.  In the last few weeks I have exchanged many e-mails with FritoLay and the lawyer for the “Casket” team (yes…they already got a lawyer and it seems like he was hired just to deal with this issue.) I have asked them over and over and over and over to PLEASE, send me some kind of documents, materials or other proof that “Casket” was an independent creation that wasn’t wrongfully derived from my works.  My sincere hope has been that someone would want to provide me some kind of evidence that would put me, and my family and friends who support me, at ease.  I would have been happy just to see some copies of some e-mails that showed that their idea pre-dated the creation of my script for “Rest in Chips.”  If they could prove they were innocent, or even just offer a credible explanation, then I could apologize, drop the whole thing and move on with my life.

But even though the filmmakers behind “Casket” have known for weeks, and probably even months that some crackpot out in the suburbs of Chicago was accusing them of plagiarism they have not done one thing to counter my claims.  I have asked repeatedly for some shred of proof that they weren’t guilty of ripping me off.  But according to their lawyer, they don’t want to give me ammunition in case I sue them.

Let’s cut the BS here.  If there was some A%&hole running around the Internet, endangering my commercial’s chances of airing during the Superbowl and telling Doritos and the rest of the world that I might have stolen some of their ideas, you know what I’d do?  I’d shut that guy down immediately with a big facefull of proof.  I’d e-mail the guy and tell him he was full of s%^&.  I’d write my own blog posts and fill them with proof that my works were independent creations.  For God’s sakes, I’d offer to take a lie detector test if the guy wanted me to!  I would immediately do whatever it took to shut down a false accusation of plagiarism against me.

Now what I wouldn’t do is hire a lawyer if I had nothing to hide and I certainly wouldn’t keep my “proof” hidden from the world.  I think the thing that most makes me believe that I was ripped off is the fact that none of these people have ever contacted me to simply say “You’re wrong, and here’s why….”

The other thing that makes me think I was ripped off are the cold, hard, dirty facts.

Here are my facts:  I wrote my script for “Rest in Chips” around October 1^st.  I created an awesome-looking animated storyboard based on my script and first uploaded it to youtube on October 6^th. That video could have been seen by anyone searching for Doritos-related videos up until about October 12^th.  I shot my entry on October 25^th, I posted my first rough cut to the web on October 28^th and I uploaded my final entry to the Crash the Super Bowl contest site around November 5^th.

Because Doritos and the Mosaic team would not even tell me WHEN the idea for “Casket” was born, I decided to do some digging myself.  And by “digging” I mean I just read the articles that showed up in my google alert notices.  The information below all comes from interview quotes from members of the “Casket” team.  These are my sources (1) (2) (3) (4)  Here’s what I’ve learned in the last few weeks:

1.  The idea for “Casket” was first suggested in a Mosaic pitch meeting that seems to have taken place in early October, probably around October 9^th.

2.  The idea for “Casket” was pitched by one member of the group.  The group decided to shoot the idea and the person who suggested the idea then “wrote the original script.”

3. At least 4 other people are credited as having co-written or contributed to the script for “Casket.”

4. “Casket” was shot in one day on November 1^st and the entry was uploaded just before the deadline on November 9^th.

As I said, members of the “Casket” team shared all of this information during interviews so unless they all lied to several reporters, the above points are facts.  And these facts line up perfectly with my theory of how I may have been plagiarized.  FritoLay has had a timeline of when I created the various incarnations of my Crash the Superbowl entry since mid-December.  I explained weeks ago that I wrote my script shortly after the Crash the Superbowl contest began and then created an animated storyboard version of my script and uploaded it to youtube on October 6^th.

For roughly a week, the storyboard was on youtube and could be seen by anyone doing a search for videos tagged “Doritos.”  The “Casket” team has gone on record stating that from the day they decided to shoot an entry for this contest to the day they uploaded their video, only a month had gone by.  That means that their pitch meting seems to have happened right at the time my storyboard was visible on youtube.

I find it very hard to believe that not one member of a large, well-organized team of professional filmmakers went to youtube before their pitch session to research last year’s winning entries and watch other Doritos related videos.  I have known about the Mosaic pitch meeting for a while and my theory has been that one member of the team prepared for that pitch meeting by doing some Doritos research on youtube beforehand.  While there, they saw my storyboard, realized the idea would work great in one of Mosaic’s churches (I think they have 7 total) and probably figured that the concept was fair game and took it.  Now that I know when that pitch meeting took place, I suspect that my theory accurately describes how things happened.  And since it seems that as many as 5 people contributed to the story of “Casket,” that explains the differences between my works and the final version of the other team’s entry.

The goal of Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest was for the winners to score a spot in the “Top 3” on the USA Today ad meter.  If one of the Doritos finalists were to be ranked the best spot of the game, the creators would get a million bucks.  Second best would get the filmmakers $600K and 3^rd would get them $400K.  The ad meter results are in and one Doritos ad actually scored the #2 spot.  But “Casket” wound up being ranked #14.  (click here for the full ad meter results)

I mention this because I want everyone reading this to understand that there is no big jackpot that I am trying to grab a piece of here.  All the makers of “Casket” got was $25,000 and I’m sure that money is already divided up and gone.  So my concerns aren’t part of some crass sue-a-church-and-get-rich-quick scheme.  For me, this is about principle and as I’ve told the lawyers at Doritos many times, my number one goal is simply to find out the truth about what the heck happened here.

Now that the contest is all over, I really don’t know what I should do next.  Should I get a lawyer?  Should I seal myself up in a casket full of Doritos and pretend this never happened?  What the heck is the little guy supposed to do in this country when he suspects that some giant megachurch with deep pockets and lawyers on retainer infringed on his copyrights?

Right now, the only thing I know for sure is that next year, I’m entering Careerbuilder’s Super Bowl commercial contest.

BTW:  I normally post under the pseudonym “Beardy” but here’s info about the real me.  Ironically, I do not actually have a beard.  If anyone (even a member of the “Casket” team) wants to contact me I can be reached at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.