D.J. Caruso...Friend or Foe?

For those of you who haven't been keeping up, there's this guy out there directing movies named D.J. Caruso. We've written about him a couple of times now, which got me thinking -- how do we feel about this guy? We want Sam Mraovich to keep making movies, but what about the man behind, most recently, Eagle Eye and Disturbia?

Here's the skinny on those films: They're Hitchcock films. The people behind Disturbia are currently being sued for creating an unauthorized remake of Rear Window, and check out what Boston.com has to say about Eagle Eye:

"Eagle Eye," [like Disturbia], is a movie only a copyright lawyer could love. It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it...Is it any fun? For an act of pillage, it's pretty entertaining. Bring earplugs and Dramamine, though, and keep "Vertigo" cued up on the DVD player for when you get home.

Now, The Deej, as I'll be referring to him from now on, is 43 years old. This is important, because if he was 25 and had just gotten out of film school, he might not know any better than to steal outright entire pieces of classic films. But as someone who's been directing films since 1995, he should know better, which means he probably does, but that knowledge is not deterring his quick fingers (intellectual property-wise). So what does it all mean?

1) The Deej could simply be a talentless hack who has built his career by aping luminaries who came before him, trusting that audiences/studio executives will be either so ignorant or so blase about his thievery that they'll let him continue unimpeded (which, if this is the case, it's worked according to plan - go Deej).

2) The Deej is someone who watched Hitchcock's catalogue and thought "Man, I wish I would've made those movies," and now is trying to do just that because no one's stopping him. I can understand this to a certain extent. After Back to the Future came out, I wanted a DeLorean. I'd still take one if somebody left it in my driveway.

3) The Deej, could, in fact, be a kindred spirit, and welcome invitee to the PSUA, who harbors the dream of one day creating a sort of arch-pastiche, a film constructed entirely of recycled pieces, a sort of mainstream cineplex-and-popcorn found-art experience. This we could get behind. So which is it? Well, I've had kind of a bad day, so unless The Deej contacts us and lets us in on the joke, at which point he will immediately inducted into the Practicing Surrealists Union of America, all dues waived, I'm guessing he's (1).

D.J Caruso, I propose you are a toolbox.* And yes, that is my gauntlet at your feet.

Vince out.

*Definition from UrbanDictionary.com: The term "toolbox" refers to someone who is such a tool that his supreme stupidity is on the level of what you'd expect from a collaboration of several tools.