Pablo Picasso said, “good artists copy, great artists steal.” However, if you read the full interview, Picasso goes on to say, “and also, sometimes shitheads will repost your work on their vimeo.” Such is the case with A+L collaborator Clay Liford’s short film My Mom Smokes Weed, which recently resurfaced as “Smoked” with a person named Frankie Hopkins claiming to have co-written and directed it. Huh? As this reddit thread reveals, Hopkins has a history of being a thief and a liar.
When Liford contacted Hopkins on Facebook, Hopkins played it dumb. Here’s an excerpt (courtesy of Liford):
Frankie Hopkins: You want to [talk to] all the crew of those film? I’ve worked with them for years.
Clay Liford: How does that change the fact that you stole? I don’t care who you work with. I assume you’ve seen your dedicated reddit feed? Normally I wouldn’t give two shits about the free publicity you’re giving me. But you caught me on a bad day.
Frankie Hopkins: What reddit?
When Liford included the reddit link above, Roberts responded with:
So enjoy reddit while you can because it’s probably going to get shut down once Hopkins copies and pastes a cease and desist order into an email.
On the Facebook page for Hopkins’ “production company”, Level 3 Pictures, you can see he’s currently in the process of stealing Stealing Time, a three-year old short from Finite Films, relabeling it as “Out of Time,” even going so far as to post Stealing Time‘s behind the scenes materials as Level 3 production updates.
Now we certainly aren’t encouraging anyone to go to Level 3’s Facebook page () and leave a comment calling him a thief and idiot. And we also do not encourage you to tweet at or . But, we can encourage you to watch Liford’s short, posted below. If you like it, share it some place.