Opinion

Crime and Pseudonym

Filmmaker James Ricketson applied for script development funding using a pseudonym and a fake ABN number but the result was counterproductive, to say the least. Should artists be allowed to use pseudonyms when applying for public funding, or is the Government right to scrutinise such actions, taking them to their last consequences?

Ricketson writes:

“It is an offense under the NSW Crimes Act,” the bureaucrat informs me in a letter, “to dishonestly make a false statement with the intention of obtaining a financial advantage.”

My crime: Making an application for state Government funds to write a screenplay. The bureaucrat’s title: ‘Deputy Director General, State & Regional Development and Tourism, Industry & Investment NSW’, herinafter referred to as DDGSRDTIINSW.

It all began when the chief executive of Screen NSW, Tania Chambers, wrote to me in relation to a script development application of mine: “In your Preliminary Notes, you state that: ‘(name of project) was presented to Screen NSW last year under an assumed name…”

Yes, I had outed myself, unaware of the heinousness of the crime I had committed in using a pseudonym. “This information raises an extremely serious matter,” writes Tania, “which I have referred to the Screen NSW Board and Government colleagues.” This is how the DDGSRDTIINSW became involved. A flurry of letters and emails ensued!

Quaking in my boots in expectation of an early morning knock at the door, being carted away by the police, charged under the NSW Crimes Act, I became a little more curious than I had hitherto been as to why so many famous authors decided to write pseudonymously:

  • Jane Austen didn’t want her friends or family to know that she wrote novels, choosing to describe her authorial role as being ‘by a lady’.
  • Alice and Wonderland’s author, the Reverand Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics professor from Oxford University, used Lewis Carroll as his pseudonym – in this day and age any ‘man of the cloth’ taking photos of pre-pubescent girls as Dodgson did would be well advised to use a pseudonym!
  • The first Harry Potter book was published under the name “Joanne Rowling”. The publishers were worried, however, that young boys would not want to read a book written by a woman, so requested that Rowling use two initials only to conceal her gender – the K referring to no name at all.
  • Stephen King’s early novels were published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman because his publishers didn’t believe readers would take seriously an author who published more than one novel a year.
  • Evan Hunter, famous for his novel The Blackboard Jungle wrote novels in different genres using several pseudonyms – including Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, S.A.Lombino and Ed McBain, so that readers of each could know what to expect.
  • George Eliot, author of Middelmarch and Mill on the Floss did not want her contemporaries to know that she was a woman (Mary Anne Evans) – in part so that she would not be written off as just another female romantic novelist and in part to keep her long term affair with a married man hidden from public scrutiny.
  • If Man of Steel Tony Abbott harboured a secret desire to explore in a novel, his inner Danielle Steele, (actual surname, Schuelein-Steel ), publishing a pseudonym might be a good idea.

There are many very good reasons why a writer (established or unknown) might wish to remain anonymous, so why is it that the NSW Crimes Act could be invoked if they apply, using a pseudonym, to a NSW Arts funding body?

“Further, under Commonwealth Tax law,” writes the DDGSRDTIINSW, “it is an offense to identify yourself by using a number purporting to be an ABN or using an ABN that is not your own.”

Whilst I didn’t think twice about providing a fake ABN number, I knew at the time it was against the law to do so with the intention of  “obtaining a financial advantage.” However, the possibility of obtaining financial advantage would only have arisen if my pseudonymous application (never completed) had been successful – at which point I would have had no choice but to out myself anyway.

As anyone will know who has tried to open a bank account (without which Screen NSW would not be able to pay me) it is impossible to do so without multiple forms of indentification. Neither a passport nor a driver’s license is enough. Only a fraudster lacking in imagination and ambition would go to so much trouble to obtain from NSW coffers the small financial advantages available to novelists, screenwriters and other creative artists by way of Government patronage, when working for that Government provides far greater opportunities.

It is not so much the pros and cons of pseudonymous applications that are important here but the mind set that results in the DDGSRDTIINSW being called in to deal with the matter and its being seen as a matter for the Screen NSW Board to discuss. Does it really matter whether a screenplay has been written by Mickey Mouse or ‘by a lady’? Jane Austen’s novels would still have been good even if she had called herself Mickey Mouse.

Post Script: The DDGSRDTIINSW has determined that, despite my breach of the NSW Crimes Act, my application may proceed. The Screen NSW Board has, at the time of publication, not yet decided how serious or otherwise my pseudonymous application was.

Encore contacted Screen NSW for their views on this piece, and we received the following response from the NSW deputy director for general industry and investment, Barry Buffier.

“I fundamentally disagree with Mr Ricketson’s view about the seriousness of providing a false ABN and other incorrect information when applying for a financial grant. The NSW Crimes Act and the Commonwealth Tax Law support my position on this. Any further correspondence on this matter would not be the best use of our resources.”

Do filmmakers have the right to apply for funding using a pseudonym? What are the valid reasons for doing so? Discuss…

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