What pisses writers off

So, there's this new film called "Proof." You may have seen Gwyneth Paltrow doing the rounds of the talk shows to promote it. I've yet to see it, but it's being generally well-recieved by the critics.

It's based on a play of the same name, written by a man named David Auburn, who also co-wrote the screenplay. For the play, Mr. Auburn won something called the Joseph Kesselring Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Desk Award, and the Tony Award for Best Play.

None of which would have happened if one man had not dreamed a dream and had an idea. That man, may I remind you, is named David Auburn. And it was all, apparently, so that Roger Ebert could make the first line of his review,

John Madden's "Proof" is an extraordinary thriller about matters of scholarship and the heart, about the true authorship of a mathematical proof and the passions that coil around it.

"John Madden's 'Proof.'" Five paragraphs later, Ebert gets around to mentioning the play and that oh yeah, it won an award or two. And as if that wasn't enough to get steam pouring out of the ears of any writer with the slightest self-esteem?

Dig the irony of invoking "true authorship" one line after you smash a writers face into the shit.

Fuck it. I'm writing a book. Ain't nobody ever going to say my stories about Annabel, Keitha and Colley are anything but "Ben Varkentine's..."