Can U Digg It?

“In 2020, James N. Kienitz Wilkins set out to adapt Telephone, a new novel by the veteran author Percival Everett. But Wilkins, a self-described “noncommercial filmmaker,” never bothered to inquire about the rights to the novel while working on his screenplay. “Maybe a switch flipped in my head after I read that Barry Jenkins never asked to adapt If Beale Street Could Talk,” Wilkins writes. “That motherfucker just picked up the pen and begged forgiveness, and now he’s directed Mufasa: The Lion King.”

When Wilkins finally reached out to the author’s representatives, he learned that an unnamed entity had already secured the rights. Thanks to “the renewed interest in—and aggressive marketing of—the capital-B Black experience,” Everett, known for his genre-twisting racial satires and philosophical metafictions, had become a hot commodity in Hollywood. Within a couple of years, the writer/director of another adaptation, American Fiction, would win an Oscar, and Everett would hit the talk-show circuit.

Wilkins wasn’t willing to give up, though, and his lawyer advised him to pursue a loophole that could put the rights-holders in a bind: If Wilkins could get them to read—or even click on—his screenplay, they’d open themselves up to “accusations of IP crimes and misdemeanors.” For fear of infringement claims, they’d be forced to collaborate, if not to cease and desist.

“Can U Digg It?” is an account of Wilkins’s effort to reclaim the right (or some right) to a story that he believes to be his own—and to defy the agents, managers, lawyers, Hamilton stars, IP hoarders, Disney “dinglehoppers,” and IMDBPro metrics standing in his way. Inspired by the form of Telephone, Wilkins offers three versions of his quest: a lawyer-approved screenplay, an essay, and a dossier.” [Triple Canopy]