Charlie and Boots! I’m suing.

I don’t want to get on my high horse — for horses are hard enough to ride with­out being metaphor­i­cal as well — but there’s a new Aus­tralian film out called Char­lie and Boots that stars Shane Jacob­son and Paul Hogan and I was never even consulted!

For those who don’t know, two of the main char­ac­ters of The Great­est Blog­ger in the World (the roman­tic leads in fact) are called Char­lie and the Boots. Now I can hear you say­ing to your­self “Well ‘Char­lie and Boots’ if very dif­fer­ent to ‘Char­lie and the Boots’” but I’m not sure one lit­tle ‘the’ makes it OK.

No doubt the pro­duc­ers of the film saw my book when it was released two months ago and quickly changed the char­ac­ters names and title of their lit­tle film after real­is­ing the hooky­ness of ‘Char­lie and the Boots’. Never mind the fact that the film would have been in pro­duc­tion for years.

And they no doubt thought they could entan­gle them­selves from poten­tial legal action by putting a ‘the’ in there. Well, they may have. But what’s more pow­er­ful? The Aus­tralian legal sys­tem or my blog. That’s right, film pro­duc­ers. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

PS. The sim­i­lar­i­ties between the film and book char­ac­ters’ names may have sim­ply been due to some Jungian-style col­lec­tive uncon­scious cre­ativ­ity a cou­ple of years back. We may never know. Not con­sciously anyway.