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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and we'll end today by opening the phones for artists to talk about permission to tell someone else's story. Have you grappled with this in your writing or visual art or anything else? 646-435-7280. If it's true that most art draws from real-life experiences, then have you ever used another person's real life to inspire your art? Did you ask for permission from that person before you started the project, or after, or never at all? If not, how did you reconcile that? Do artists get to use any source of inspiration they want without asking first? What are your guidelines for yourself? What kind of blowback have you ever gotten after the fact? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Why are we bringing this up today? Well, largely because of the piece titled, Who Is the Bad Art Friend, Who Is the Bad Art Friend. That was in last week's New York Times magazine as it happens. It's being shared a lot. It's a true story about two female writers who run in the same literary circle. One donates a kidney, posts on Facebook about it. The other woman writes a story centered around the post. It gets more complicated after that, but at the core, the piece went viral because it deals with the moral dilemma around how artists treat their muses, their sources of inspiration.

Wondering if anyone falls on one extreme end of the spectrum. Do artists need to ask for permission in every case? If so, or if not in every case, at what point do they, should they, have you? 646-435-7280. What about specifically using material found on social media posts, which some view as informational and not having "market value" and therefore might be in the clear when it comes at least to some of the legal issues.

Give us a call, tell us about your experience. Maybe you've been on either end of this as the artist or the unintentional muse 646-435-7280. There's so many examples, right? With or without permission. According to The Guardian, James Gandolfini, who famously played Tony Soprano on The Sopranos, routinely called the writing staff of The Sopranos vampires because of the way they poached actors' lives for material.

Here's another one from Barnes & Noble, Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series was inspired by J. K. Rowling's chemistry teacher. Apparently, the teacher said he was horrified when he found out. Artists and intentional or unintentional sources of inspirational alike, when is it okay to use people's lives for art? Have you ever been on either side of this? 646-435-7280, and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. I know somebody who says they went to see a play written by a former romantic partner only to realize that the character of the X in the play has a lot of their characteristics. Have you ever been in that experience or anything like it? We're taking your calls now for artists about permission to tell someone else's story or those of you who might have been in the friend's position about giving it. Let's see. Sheila in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sheila.

Sheila: Hi. How are you, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Do you have an experience?

Sheila: Yes, I do. I was in a writing group, and we would all collectively talk about what we were working on. We were working on various things for short plays, web series, sketches, et cetera. I went to a sketch show and saw that another person in my writing group had taken several of my stories and put them into their sketches before I even finished my own work using my own stories. I confronted them, but not really, and that, I said, "How do you feel about as a group us talking about things?" She said, "Well, once you say something like, it's up for grabs, nobody owns it then because it's out there in the world, and so we can all do something with it." I was like, "Oh, okay." I don't really-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Okay, even a little different or a little beyond the examples that I was talking about in the intro, this is like plagiarism adjacent, right? Because you were using these stories for your work.

Sheila: Yes. I hadn't finished mine yet because I was working on a longer project, but she took bits and pieces of what was going in into my work to put into her own sketches. I was like, "I don't think that's right at all." Just because--

Brian Lehrer: I guess the shocking thing is that the leader of the writer's group, if I'm hearing you right, said that's okay.

Sheila: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Sheila, thank you very much. I'm going to get some other folks on, but thank you. I'm sorry that happened to you. Jonathan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi Jonathan.

Jonathan: It's a quick story. My prom date is now a well-known writer, and I ran into her on the subway a few years after. We were no longer prom dates, obviously. The encounter wound up in a story of hers a few years later. I was very tickled by it. There was one little detail that I would've preferred not to have to confront, but other than that, I was quite pleased and flattered to see myself in there.

Brian Lehrer: But only you and she knew, or would you say that's not the case?

Jonathan: I suspect if any of our close circle of friends, some of whom we keep in touch with saw it, there would be enough of a description. The description was clear enough to identify me.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan, thank you for your call. Marlene in Long Island City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Marlene.

Marlene: Hi. How are you, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Marlene: It's great to be on.

Brian Lehrer: I see you've been on both sides of this, you told our screener, right?

Marlene: Yes. I've been on both sides of this. The first one that happened was I was photographed by a photographer, a professional. It was supposed to be a gift for me for doing something for her. I never received the gift, but years later, a friend of mine sent me a catalog from Florida from a college. My photograph was in there as one of the teachers in the school. I realized this was the photograph that she had taken and she never sent to me, and it was used without my permission. I was very upset, and I really didn't have any contact with her any longer, but it was very disturbing to me. I thought if she had asked permission, I probably would've said yes, but that was not given, and the other side of it-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and you don't want to be surprised by it, right?

Marlene: Exactly, and the other side of it, I read the article that you were talking about, and I felt both sympathetic and not sympathetic. I felt outraged by the fact that she never really requested to use the story from this woman or to even suggest to her that I was so moved by your story that I wanted to respond to it even negatively, but on the other hand, she did change it, and she did do it from her own perspective, which was another way of dealing with that. As a writer, I've also written a story that was based on a true experience of mine with a friend. I wrote about it, but I didn't share it until he died.

Brian Lehrer: Ah, so you waited for--

Marlene: I waited, yes.

Brian Lehrer: You waited. Did you consider-- [crosstalk]

Marlene: I stated his wife after he died. Pardon me?

Brian Lehrer: Did you consider asking for permission to publish it? Was there a reason that you thought you might not get it or he might not want to be asked?

Marlene: I think it was a very sensitive time, and it was about illness, and I didn't think he'd want to read it or even hear about it.

Brian Lehrer: Right. What about his widow then hearing about it or reading about it?

Marlene: I think she appreciated it, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Marlene, thank you. Thank you so much for telling us both of those stories. How about Max in Boerum Hill? Max, you're on w NYC. Hi there.

Max: Hi. I'm so excited to be on, and I called the other day, couldn't say this, so happy belated birthday. I was in a play. The last play I did just before the pandemic hit was a play that was written and directed by the person that I was portraying. It was an interesting experience of being in the room with the person. It was mostly a verbatim play of interviews that he had done with his mother as she was declining into dementia. It was a very emotional piece, but it was interesting because he was pretty hands-off with my performance. He let me do what I did, and I didn't really do an impression. I was just trying to live it as a character, but the stranger thing was when his family was there, his brother who was also a character in the play, and that was kind of a nerve-wracking experience to a certain degree.

Brian Lehrer: You were playing for a playwright and director of the play, and so obviously, that person knew you were portraying them, but was there something then where it threatened to cross a line into appropriation or anything like that?

Max: It was something that I wrestled within how I was wanted to approach it because there was a certain impulse to maybe do an imitation in some way, which did feel like potentially appropriation, but also not using any of his mannerisms or anything also felt like maybe I wasn't honoring his story as his story. It was a complicated wrestling match.

Brian Lehrer: I guess if you wanted to interpret the character, maybe a little more darkly than the playwright saw himself, then you'd be intimidated about making that choice.

Max: Absolutely. Fortunately, for me in that circumstance, he was very generous with his own story and letting me explore my own journey through his words.

Brian Lehrer: Right, as an actor.

Max: It was a good experience, but it was a little fraught internally.

Brian Lehrer: Max, thank you very much. Megan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Megan.

Megan: Hey, Brian. My hardest pounding. I listen to you every day, and I've never called before. I have, I guess, a three-pronged approach to this. I could talk about this topic for hours. I'm so glad you have it on for all of the artists here in our city.

Brian Lehrer: Let me say, and let me just warn you though. We have 60 seconds left in the segment, so go for it.

Megan: I got you. Okay. This is a hip-hop story. As we all know, this genre uses a lot of different other people's music, but they usually shout it out in a subtle way. I do think that with hip-hop, there is a way of appreciating the roots where you get your music from. My husband makes music, and we have argued because I went to art school, and appropriation was always something that I was against, but listening to the way that he uses the music and shouts out the roots of the music, it makes it okay-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: To sample something and give credit, to give credit in one way or another.

Megan: I also think it's a little generational that's not very calm because I think younger, you might be okay with it, but I'm old.

Brian Lehrer: Megan, thank you very much. Thanks to all of you who called on this and all show. The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond, Zach Gottehrer-Cohen works on our daily podcast, Juliana Fonda, and Liora Noam-Kravitz at the audio controls.

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