Shut up Rebecca Eckler, nobody cares

It’s not just me: everyone hates columnist Rebecca Eckler, all the way to the Canadian north. I’m an easy-going guy, but something about Rebecca Eckler, and Leah McLaren, just makes me want to scream. Her writing is the equivalent of "My Humps". The “inane and vapid” Eckler is suing the producers of “Knocked Up”, claiming they ripped off her book Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be, and she is getting little support from the public. And like TownieBastard, I too had something to say to my computer screen, and actually is a quote from the movie: “F*ck off”.

General consensus is that it’s an opportunistic bid to knock up her beleaguered profile and book sales with a waste of time of a lawsuit. She details her "fight against Hollywood" in her Maclean’s column (and good call letting Eckler air her beef there MacLean’s editors). Just reading her MacLean’s column generated my usual reaction to Rebecca Eckler’s writing “shutupshutupshutupnobodycaresshutup”.

The similarities she points out between the plot of the movie and her book are vague and coincidental at best, many of which are covered in the comment thread on ALOTT5MA:

• They both use the title “Knocked Up”. No case there, it’s common use.
• Both Eckler and “Knocked Up” Allison get drunk and get pregnant. Because, you know, Eckler thought of that first.
• Eckler got knocked up by her fiancé at her engagement party. In the movie, Allison gets knocked up after a night with a random guy she met at a bar. No similarity.
• Not only did the cover of the screenplay feature a martini glass with a soother around the stem, like the cover of the American edition of my book, the words "Knocked" and "Up" were in two different colours, the same as my book cover.” – that image never appeared in any of the promotion of the film.
• I don’t believe Eckler had a bunch of funny stoner friends sharing her place.
• In her book, Eckler “has a best-friend- with-screaming-children named Ronnie, who I go to often for advice. In the movie version, Alison has a sister, named Debbie, with screaming children, who is her sounding board.” I don’t recall the kids screaming in the movie, and using a family member or friend as a sounding board is standard Hollywood screenwriting 101.
• "Both 'Alison' and I did numerous pregnancy tests.” Well duh.
• "What also got my back up was that Ben, the man who gets Alison knocked up, is not only Jewish, but from Canada, like my man.” Seth Rogen (Ben) is also Canadian and Jewish (as you mention in your column) and he likes to work that into his scripts. He was Canadian in “Undeclared” too.

To sum up from a genuine lawyer-type person, her claim is shit. In other words: shut up and stop wasting our time you delusional, greedy, self-righteous, self-indulgent hack.

On the title of her book “Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be”, if you have to declare yourself “hip”, you aren’t.

Learn How Grown Ups Are Born - "Knocked Up" out today

Some great reviews on "Knocked Up" which is out in theatres today. Rotten Tomatoes has an aggregate rating of 92% (!) positive reviews. Most of the reviews trend with the same "crude but with heart" sensibility that I loved about Judd Apatow's last movie "The 40-Year-Old Virgin".

I've been looking forward to "Knocked Up" since February, and it looks like I won't be disappointed. If you need convincing, click here for the trailer, and I defy any man who denies they didn't have the same reaction, even for a second, that lead actor/writer Seth Rogan does when he's told he's going to be a dad.