'Disturbia' is a ripoff of 'Rear Window,' lawsuit claims

When the sleeper hit "Disturbia" hit theaters last year, every major movie review of it mentioned the Alfred Hitchcock classic "Rear Window" and with good reason: The makers of "Disturbia" clearly delighted in paying homage to 1954 thriller with their plot and plenty of little touches.

But when exactly does winking homage turn into cinematic thievery?

Attorneys for the estate of the late Sheldon Abend (one of the true characters in Hollywood; more on him in a moment) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Monday in Manhattan. The suit names Dreamworks, Paramount Pictures, executive producer Steven Spielberg and others involved in the making of "Disturbia" and claims they essentially made a remake of "Rear Window" without bothering to pay for the rights to the source material. (Here's a bare-bones Associated Press story on the suit, and a meatier Reuters article.)

You can't watch "Disturbia" and not think of "Rear Window": Both present a confined voyeurs (one by injury, one by house-arrest electronic cuff) who spy on their neighbors by staring down through their windows. One neighbor, it turns out, may be a murderer, but can the voyeur prove it and also keep a distance from the danger?

The sublime 1954 film, which starred Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly and Raymond Burr, was based on "It Had to Be Murder," a short story by Cornell Woolrich from 1942. Woolrich died in 1968 and the rights to the story were bought by Abend.

Abend, who was a boxer and a tug-boat coal-stoker before entering the literary and film world, died in 2003. He represented the author estates of Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw and Damon Runyon, and with his Stetson hat and out-sized persona he seemed like one of the latter's colorful characters. Gary North wrote a very interesting obituary of Abend for Daily Variety that discusses a previous lawsuit involving "Rear Window" as a property that set a notable precedent. Abend was on the winning side that time, we'll see how it turns out for his estate.

It's hardly new in Hollywood to cop someone else's idea. In fact, here's a whole photo gallery of "non-remake" remakes that was compiled by Patrick Kevin Day, a good friend to the Hero Complex. But "Disturbia" does seem like one of the most brazen examples of "borrowing" the story and spirit of a film, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The timing of the lawsuit is probably uncomfortable since the "Disturbia" team -- led by executive producer Spielberg, director D.J. Caruso and star Shia LaBeouf -- are back on Sept. 26 with "Eagle Eye," a high-tech thriller. I visited the set earlier this year, I've seen a good chunk of the film, and what did it's man-on-the-run premise instantly remind me of? That would be "North by Northwest."