DAN FOST
Thursday, May 4, 2000
It was a glitzy party for a cheesy movie.
Tina Brown, the editor of Talk magazine, came
to San Francisco last week, unveiling for a tech
and media crowd the Miramax movie
``Takedown,'' the hyped-up story of notorious
hacker Kevin Mitnick and the effort to send
him to prison.
The reason why the magazine was promoting
the movie was never exactly made clear to the
150 or so people sipping wine and munching on
asparagus spears, Chinese dumplings and
chocolate truffles at the Delancey Street
screening room on the Embarcadero. I suppose
the folks at Miramax -- a partner in Talk --
were letting the magazine use the flick to
promote itself, and to show how cybersavvy it is.
But never mind the movie. The really good story
is in the fallout the film has engendered.
The film is based on a book, also titled
``Takedown,'' that John Markoff, a New York
Times reporter and one of Silicon Valley's
leading journalists, co-wrote with computer
security expert Tsutomu Shimomura, who
helped catch Mitnick in 1995.
The film stars Russell Wong as Shimomura and
Skeet Ulrich as Mitnick. The real Shimomura
even has a brief cameo in the film.
Marin County author Jonathan Littman, who
also wrote a book about Mitnick (``The Fugitive
Game,'' published the same day as
``Takedown''), believes that many passages
from his book were plugged into the movie.
While Markoff and Shimomura received
six-figure sums for the rights to their book,
Littman hasn't received a cent -- and last
month he filed a suit charging Miramax with
copyright infringement. Miramax is contesting
the suit.
Mitnick, who was released from prison earlier
this year, says he settled a lawsuit with
Miramax in which he claimed the movie
defamed him. He wouldn't reveal details of the
settlement.
Even Markoff, on whose book the movie was
based, expressed disdain for what the
filmmakers did to the story.
``I thought it was a fundamentally dishonest
movie,'' he said the day after the screening,
which he attended. ``This is every reporter's
nightmare, to see the truth get trampled.''
While Markoff wouldn't pass judgment on the
merits of Littman's suit, his comments may
have the ironic effect of supporting his
onetime-ally-turned-rival. The two talked
regularly and met for lunch while they were
each following the dramatic story of Mitnick's
life underground, but they each gave the other
an unflattering portrayal in their books.
Markoff's book told the story of Shimomura's
pursuit and capture of Mitnick, while Littman's
book was based on extensive conversations with
Mitnick and was far more sympathetic to the
hacker.
The movie contains many scenes of Mitnick in
his fugitive days, and Markoff admits that
neither he nor Shimomura ``knew anything
about Kevin's activities except for the two or
three weeks that
Tsutomu was chasing him.
``Markoff noted that the screenwriters didn't
necessarily have to rely on Littman's book; they
could have dug for information on their own
from some of the voluminous public records in
the case.
The movie has been shown in France, and plans
for American distribution -- whether in
theaters or on television -- are unclear.
Littman wouldn't comment on the lawsuit, or
on anything Mitnick- related; his attorney, Bill
Edlund of the San Francisco firm Barko,
Zankel, Tarrant & Miller, handled all
comments.
But the complaint filed in Littman's case, which
was e-mailed to me by his public relations firm,
makes a compelling argument for copyright
infringement. Miramax representatives would
not discuss any specific points raised in
Littman's suit.
The complaint details several scenes from the
movie that appear to come directly from
Littman's book, including virtually the first 20
minutes of the film.
Scenes with eerie similarity include those
depicting Mitnick meeting in a strip club with
another hacker who is an undercover
government agent, Mitnick conning Pac Bell
employees into giving him information about
security software and Mitnick using that
software to eavesdrop on phone calls by FBI
agents.
A particularly damning comparison involves a
page from Littman's book in which he writes
that Markoff sensationalized Mitnick's story in
a front-page article in the Times.
Littman writes, ``There are plenty of allegations,
but the only solid charge against Mitnick
appears to be a probation violation, generally not
the sort of stuff that lands a year-
and-a-half-old fugitive case on the front page
of the New York Times.''
In the movie, an FBI agent reads that same
story, and gripes, ``Even the article says there's
no proof. Nothing connects Mitnick to any of
these allegations. It's a reporter hyping a story.''
You can bet that in Markoff's book, he didn't
accuse himself of hyping the story.
``I learned about the story from an FBI source,''
Markoff said, countering the movie's claim that
his article spurred the FBI to investigate
Mitnick. (The hype charge has dogged Markoff
for years, with hackers and some journalists
contending that he puffed up Mitnick's
misdeeds and Shimomura's heroics in the
Times for the purposes of getting a book and
movie deal. Markoff said that he had written
about Mitnick since 1981, when he was a
reporter at Infoworld, and that he had no way of
knowing his articles would become a book when
he was writing them.)
Littman's complaint also includes e-mails he
and Mitnick received from one of the
scriptwriters for ``Takedown,'' John Danza. To
Littman, he wrote that, ``I'd really like to write a
film that doesn't rely so heavily on Tsutomu's
book.''
To Mitnick, Danza said he read ``50 pages or so''
of Littman's book, ``and find it much more
interesting than Shimomura's book.''
In both e-mails, Danza notes that his attorneys
advised him not to read Littman's book for fear
of opening him up to copyright violations.
Littman is seeking an unspecified sum, and his
suit claims that while Markoff and Shimomura
received $750,000 for their book rights and
$650,000 for the film rights, he received
nothing. Markoff said the numbers were
wrong, but he added, ``They're not off by an
order of magnitude, but I still have my day job.''
Even without the alleged copyright violations,
the movie is a deeply flawed telling of the
Mitnick story.
Some scenes were invented out of whole cloth,
including confrontations between Mitnick and
Shimomura on the streets of Seattle and in a
federal prison. It showed Mitnick hacking into
Shimomura's computer, which even Markoff
said was unlikely, and it also portrayed
Shimomura as admitting wrongdoing in
creating anti-hacking tools that ultimately fell
into Mitnick's hands.
``It's a very sensationalized and fictionalized
depiction,'' Mitnick said in an interview from
his home in Thousand Oaks. Mitnick also said
the book ``Takedown'' was false and
defamatory, although he never sued the
authors. He also said Littman's book contained
inaccuracies, because he lied to Littman in
interviews conducted while he was on the lam.
Mitnick, 36, remains on probation until 2003,
and he's now fighting his own First
Amendment battle. He said his parole officer
won't let him speak or write on computer-
related topics for money, even though this is his
area of expertise. ``The U.S. government is
abridging my First Amendment rights,'' he said.
``They don't want me to talk.''
Much of Mitnick's perspective on the case can
be gleaned at a Web site,
www.kevinmitnick.com, which is maintained
by friends of his, because he is not allowed access
to the Web or computers of any sort.