Draft in Development
Terminator
Main Titles – Chapter One
Arrival of the Terminator Chapter Two
A1 Title Sequence – Slitscan Effect A1
Fifth Draft
March 11, 1984
March 19, 1984 revision pages
By James Cameron with Gale Anne Hurd
[This description is evidence of the intent of the parties to engage in willful copyright infringement within the meaning of 17 U.S.C. 506 (e).]
Gradually the sound of distant traffic becomes audible.
A low angle bounded on one side by a chain link fence and on the other by the one-story public school buildings.
Spray can hieroglyphics. A Los Angeles public school in a blue-collar neighborhood.
Angle between school buildings, where a trash dumpster looms in a low angle. A cat crosses frame.
Close on CAT, which freezes, alert, sensing something just beyond perception.
A source less wind rises, and with it a keening WHINE.
Papers blow across the pavement.
The cat YOWLS and hides under the dumpster.
Windows rattle in their frames.
The Whine intensifies, accompanied now by a wash of frigid purple light. A concussion like a thunderclap right overhead blows in all the windows facing the yard.
C.U. – C.A.T., its eyes are wide as the glare dies.
1A/FX Angle – Dumpster 1A/FX
Electrical discharges arc from the dumpster to a water faucet and climb a drainpipe like a Jacobs’ ladder.
2 EXT. School yard – Night 2
Slow Pan as the sound of stray electrical crackling subsides.
Frame comes to rest on the figure of a naked man kneeling, faced away, in the previously empty yard.
He stands slowly.
This man is in his late thirties, tall and powerfully built, moving with graceful precision.
He is the TERMINATOR.
Actual depiction of the introduction of the Terminator Film does not include the cat, the war scene, or the statement overlay.
Description observed by the writer.
The film opens with a post nuclear war darkened war scene canvassed by robots controlled through computer chips with laser-guided weapons in or about 2010 to 2030 A.D. A hovercraft of immense proportions enters the scene with the most advanced and computer oriented laser guided weapons known to the post nuclear world. A man pops up from nowhere and begins to run as his friend roots that he make it. Still, with precision, the computer generated robot focuses, aims, and disperses his atom relationships so as to mystify his very existence.
Then the insert from the screen wrote these words:
The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in this time. It would be fought here, in our present tonight.
This description does not appear any where in the script written by James Cameron. Yet, the words and the post nuclear war came from some source. This was not revealed in any draft done by James Cameron including the draft from June of 1982.
Sophia Stewart completed the six-page treatment of the Third Eye on May 1, 1981. It was forwarded to the Vice President of Creative Affairs of Fox before May 5, 1981. Surprisingly, Gale Anne Hurd, then the public relations and marketing director of New World Productions under Roger Corman who had never produced a film, started Pacific Western Productions on May 12, 1981. The only thing that she could have had was the embezzled treatment of Sophia Stewart. How do we know this?
The description above that constitutes the first minute and 45 seconds of the film does not come from the script written by James Cameron with Gale Hurd. Instead, it reads on the language of the “Third Eye” that was written by Sophia Stewart on May 1, 1981. The copyright is Txu-116-610.
The copyright filed by Cameron and Hurd is subject to nullification under 18 U.S.C. 1001 for willfully failing to disclose their use of Stewart's stolen treatment.
Sophia Stewart copyrighted the May 1, 1981 treatment in February of 1983. Gale Hurd and James Cameron therefore had a duty to identify her work as a derivative contribution in paragraph 6 of the related copyright application. Did they do that?
Their copyright registration on February 3, 1984 says, “No.”
Its material features are as follows:
Registration Number: Pau-584-564
Authors: James Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd
Description: 129 pages
Note: Screenplay
Claimant: Hemdale Film Corp.
Created: 1983 [first registered screenplay by Cameron alone with writer’s guild in July of 1982 thereby making copyright registration knowingly false]
Author on © application: Gale Ann Hurd, as employee for hire of Pacific Western Productions. [However, Hurd was the sole stockholder of the entity started on May 12, 1981 that seemed to operate with the script embezzled from Fox without the knowledge, consent, or approval of Sophia Stewart, the creative force behind the writing of the Third Eye.]
Sophia Stewart, then a USC film student, did not know that Gale Hurd, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Stanford, had secured her script by improper means and developed a Public Relations campaign to make it appear that the concept and plot design came totally from Cameron and Hurd. This willful failure to disclose Stewart’s contribution makes the copyright registration invalid under 18 U.S.C. 1001 for willfully failing to reveal that the substantial contributing author was omitted with the intent to deny her royalties in the project. Yet, on a reading of the "Third Eye" as copyrighted on February 2, 1983, it is undeniable that the first minute and 45 seconds came from that discussion and that it is totally excluded from the copyright submission of Cameron and Hurd to the Copyright Office.
The technique of taking the script and sending it through a chop shop so that many of its features are changed while unpublished and then bringing it forth as a published work is described as infringement in Dezendorf v. Twentieth Century Fox.
Yet, it is plainly present in the movie. This is evidence that Hurd had consciousness of the wrongfulness of this activity and did not want it to be said that she wrote exactly what was written in Stewart’s treatment. The May 1, 1981 treatment is covered by copyright registration number Txu 117-610 in the name of Sophia Stewart. This is evidence of a theft of the script, knowing unauthorized use of it, and an intent to deny Stewart of her share of the profits associated therewith.
Phil Banks
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