The release of the latest Spike Lee Joint, a remake of the 2003 Award-wining Korean film, Oldboy, has been mired by controversy and critique over freelance designer Juan Luis Garcia’s accusations that his advertising company stole his designs.
In an open letter which has gone completely viral, Garcia explains that he was approached by an ad agency in January and asked to design some posters for Lee’s remake. He claims that he was told that the budget was small and that he would only be paid “peanuts” for the compositions but that if Lee and the studio liked them, he would be “compensated fairly”.
It sounds pretty melodramatic but Garcia says he was “taken advantage of, lead on, lied to, manipulated, and harassed for over two months” while he worked, but eventually he was rewarded as the agency told him: “Congratulations, Spike loved a couple of the posters. Yours is going to be the key art.” The agency made him an offer that was so low that he could earn the same amount in one day as a photographer’s assistant, so even though the exposure was promising, Garcia claims he had to decline.
He explains: “The agency was furious. They told me that I didn’t want to mess with Spike Lee, that I would never work again, that I was a despicable human, that they wish they never met me, and that they were going to sue my ass to oblivion” even though he had never signed a contract or received any compensation.
Now not only did the ad company release an official poster that looks surprisingly like Garcia’s poster, but Spike Lee had put up Garcia’s own posters with “© 2013 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks” emblazoned across the bottom on Facebook yesterday.
Spike Lee responded on twitter, with the dismissive “I Never Heard Of This Guy Juan Luis Garcia,If He Has A Beef It’s Not With Me.I Did Not Hire Him,Do Not Know Him.Cheap Trick Writing To Me.YO” and has come under a lot of fire from his Twitter, Facebook and other fans. Criticism of the film itself has been mixed.
Matt Derody
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