Devlin Cortez’s reputation may have aided him during the scandal over the music score for his new film, Dark As Night, had Brett Dumois, its composer, not taken his life less than a week after the film’s successful Sundance premiere. Dumois’ suicide shocked the music world until a New York University film student posted on several social media platforms that the composer had plagiarized the fifteen orchestral compositions that made up the film’s score.
Sasha Moore, a freelance film reporter, noticed the link to the student’s post in her RSS feed, and followed it to read his indictment against Dumois: See for yourself! Open your phone’s music identification app, play the soundtrack, and you’ll have all the proof you need that Dumois stole the music for the score he claimed as his own work.
Moore had attended the film’s festival premiere and given it an enthusiastic review highlighting its thrilling score. She googled the Lame Horse Studios website. The virtual assistant on her smartphone listened to the official trailer and confirmed that none of its three compositions were written by Dumois. His only attempt at subterfuge was to change the titles. It was hard to believe. She sent the NYU student a message requesting an interview.
“Dumois was a hero of mine,” he replied. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”
Moore’s story, Busted: AI Uncovers Plagiarism, was published the following day. The story featured a three-column wide photograph of Dumois and Cortez taken the night of the Sundance premiere. In it, Devlin Cortez looks younger than fifty. His shoulder length black hair and full beard go well with his distressed leather flight jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans and scuffed hiking boots. He’s smiling. He owns the night. His film is a critical success. He is surrounded by well-wishing friends. He is still blissfully unaware of the storm to come.
By contrast, Brett Dumois appears upset. His silver hair is tied back in a ponytail. Like Cortez, he is wearing a black T-shirt with the film’s logo. One hand rests on Cortez’s shoulder, the other holds a hand-rolled cigarillo between his thumb and index finger like a joint. His eyes betray his pain. The night has cost him dearly.
Within a single news cycle, Moore’s story was major industry news, launching an army of online film buffs demanding that Sundance withdraw its awards. Meanwhile the victimized musicians threatened a class action lawsuit—which, as a financial journal reported, meant fines up to $150,000 for each of the copyright infringements—more than three million dollars, plus another million for legal fees. If he was found liable, it meant bankruptcy. And looming in his what if future, was the specter of prison. Cortez had been broke before, but being behind bars, regardless of sentence length, would break him.
*
“It’s still hard for me to believe Brett stole the music,” Cortez told Moore during a phone interview; “I never doubted his work before, and I didn’t this time. I’m heartbroken.”
“Is it possible that Mr. Dumois took his life because he couldn’t live with what he had done?”
“Listen, Brett knew better than most the financial and legal consequences of copyright infringement. He was a pro. The very best. Other people imitated him, not the other way around. My friend was not a plagiarist.”
“If that’s true, why did Mr. Dumois borrow the work of others claiming it was his own—isn’t that the definition of plagiarism?”
*
On the day of her husband’s memorial service, Chloe Dumois stood at the chapel’s lectern and looked out over the audience of family, friends, colleagues, a handful of prominent actors, and, in the front row, her dear friends, Cortez, and his wife, Julia. That Chloe still possessed a dancer’s lithe body with its natural poise and grace was evident. She wore an unadorned black dress, little if any makeup, and a slender gold chain around her neck.
She adjusted the mic, and brushed a strand of her blond hair behind one ear. The room grew quiet; “Music was Brett’s life. He spent it creating music that he hoped would serve as Die Seele des Films, the soul of the film. And not once did he credit himself for creating music that, as he claimed, never came from him, but through him. All he had to do was listen.
“But the music stopped during the last year of Brett’s life. His sudden migraines and lightening mood swings made me suspect that he may be seriously ill. Insisting he was fine and just wanted to be left in peace to work, he spent his final days listening to hours of music in order to compile his selections into a score so perfect that it defines Cortez’s film. Everyone, including myself, assumed Brett had written the entire score, and I think he let us believe it, because he may have.
“You see, Brett was seriously ill as I feared. Against his doctor’s advice, and despite suffering hallucinations and constant pain, he finished the score and attended the premiere. When he returned home, with me at his side, he took his life rather than face an agonizing death from an inoperable brain tumor, a metastatic glioblastoma that had been growing fat in the fertile soil of his right frontal lobe.”
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Chloe’s eulogy transformed Dumois into a tragic hero. In an unexpected about-face, the musicians he’d wronged agreed to drop their class-action lawsuit on the condition that the film be recut to credit them and their music. Dumois would be listed In Memoriam as music director.
The film’s brush with scandal made it a hot property. After a brief bidding war, a major distributor released it to theaters and eventually for online streaming. Its box office success made it possible for Cortez to begin his next project. Things could not have worked out better.
Stephen Newton is a writer living in Southern Appalachia. His most recent work is featured in Drunk Monkeys, Cagibi, The Write Launch, Litro Magazine USA, The Atticus Review, and The Lumina Journal, among others. For more information, please visit stephenanewton.com.
