the unexpected short-term success of the film may be more attributable to a sociological phenomenon rather than the quality or uniqueness of the film per se, positing that the movie's shock value, sexual humor and historically taboo themes may have created a brief nationwide discussion in which movie-goers would see the film "so they can join the debate, if only to say it wasn't that good." Alleged copyright infringement Canadian author Rebecca Eckler wrote in Maclean's magazine about the similarities between the movie and her book, Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-Be, which was released in the U.S. in March 2005. She pursued legal action against Apatow and Universal Pictures on the basis of copyright infringement.Complaint for Copyright Infringement: Demand for Jury Trial – legal filing with United States District Court, Central District of California, January 3, 2007. In a public statement, Apatow said, "Anyone who reads the book and sees the movie will instantly know that they are two very different stories about a common experience." Another Canadian author, Patricia Pearson, also publicly claimed similarities between the film and her novel, Playing House. She declined to sue and declared Eckler's lawsuit to be frivolous. Accusations of sexism Mike White (longtime associate of Judd Apatow and screenwriter for School of Rock, Freaks and Geeks, Orange County, and Nacho Libre) is said to have been "disenchanted" by Apatow's later films, "objecting to the treatment of women and gay men in Apatow's recent movies", saying of Knocked Up, "At some point it starts feeling like comedy of the bullies, rather than the bullied." In early reviews, both Slate Dana Stevens and the Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano wrote articles claiming the film propagated sexist attitudes, a topic which was the primary focus of a Slate magazine podcast in which New York editor Emily Nussbaum said: "Alison [Heigl's character] made basically zero sense. She was just a completely inconsistent character.... she was this pleasant, blandly hot, peculiarly tolerant, yet oddly blank nice girl. She seemed to have no actual needs or desires of her own...." A. O. Scott of The New York Times explicitly compared Knocked Up to Juno, calling the latter a "feminist, girl-powered rejoinder and complement to Knocked Up." In a later Vanity Fair interview, lead actress Katherine Heigl admitted that though she enjoyed working with Apatow and Rogen, she had a hard time enjoying the film itself, calling it