Quentin Tarantino’s Girlfriend Plagiarised Christchurch Film Critic
Richard Scheib, a Christchurch-born critic found out that Quentin Tarantino's girlfriend, Lianne MacDougall, had seemingly plagiarised his work. But instead of hating her for what she did, he said that he was actually flattered by his copycat. However, an apology would still be "nice."
Mr Scheib writes his critiques in his Web site moria.co.nz.
In an interview with The Press, Mr Scheib said, "I was kind of flattered and realized that some relatively high-profile names were reading my material. I wasn't outraged. I felt sad for her that she has to go those lengths. Karma has come back to bite her arse. It would be nice if there was an apology."
For a review of 1991 film Popcorn, Mr Scheib review has a paragraph that went like this, Maggie, a student at the University of Southern California film school, is plagued by recurrent dreams. The film department's funding has just been cut but the department head comes up with the idea of hodling a festival of old gimmick horror films in a soon-to-be-demolished theater to raise funds.
In comparison, Ms MacDougall's review of the same film went like this, "Maggie (Jill Schoelen), a student at USC film school, is plagued by recurring dreams that feature a terrifying man evoking Satan and other cultish horrors. At school, the film department's funding has just been cut, but the department head comes up with an idea: holding a festival of old gimmick horror films in a soon-to-be-demolished theater to raise funds."
Mr Scheib is not the only critic plagiarised by Ms MacDougall.
It was blogger Mike White of the Impossible Funky Set who first discovered and exposed Ms MacDougall's dirty deed. Flaberghasted, Mr White wrote in his blog detailed accounts of Ms MacDougal's blatant copying of his ideas.
In so much annoyance to what she did, Mr White called the attention of Ms MacDougall's book publisher, "I would advise St. Martin's Press, the publisher of Lianne's upcoming book, Grindhouse Girls (with an intro penned by Tarnatino), to do their due diligence to make sure everything is properly vetted and footnoted."
In a report from The Guardian, another film critic had expressed her hatred towards Ms MacDougall's plagiarising.
MaryAnn Johanson of the FlickFilosopher site was shocked to see that one of her reviews was used for Ms MacDougall's article without proper referencing, "I am sick of this shit, and it is time to start publicly shaming the wrongdoers. Here's my review of Turn Me On, Dammit! Lianne Spiderbaby's here. And just in case she decides to edit, here's the screenshot I took this morning, with the passages that have been lifted directly from my review highlighted."
Ms MacDougall writes under the pen name "Spiderbaby". Her web site and Twitter had been doubted after the controversy, but her last tweet was, "I apologise for the plagiarism in my work. I am leaving journalism behind for awhile. I'm so very sorry to everyone esp those I have wronged."
Ms MacDougall works as a host for the Web site Fright Bytes and had written the upcoming book Grindhouse Girls: Cinema's Hardest Working Women.
According to The Guardian, she had allegedly plagiarised ideas from Empire magazine, Critical-Film.com and HighDefDigest.com for her column called Spiderbaby's terror tapes for the FEARnet.site.