Continuing Broadway Monday at Overlawyered, Eric Idle reports that the musical production of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” has spent more money on lawyers than the comedy troupe did on the entire budget of the original coconut-laden film. No word on whether last year’s threatened action by “Camelot” producers complaining about possible confusion is behind those expenses. Hormel, producers of food-like substance Spam, has adopted the more productive approach of co-optation, rather than litigation, and is offering a “Collectors’ Edition” Spam tin. (Eric Idle, “The Tale of Spamalot”, Daily Llama, Sep. 6; AP/USA Today, “‘Spamalot’ heads to Broadway”, Dec. 3; Ernio Hernandez, “‘Monty Python’ Musical Spamalot Urged to Change Title by Broadway-Bound Camelot”, Playbill, Nov. 14, 2003; “Monty Python Star Faces Costly Broadway Wrangle”, WENN, Nov. 12, 2003).
Posts Tagged ‘movies film and videos’
The New Napster?
Major Hollywood studios, through their industry representative the Motion Picture Association of America, are suing more than 100 operators of computer servers that relay digitized movie files through on-line computer file-sharing networks, according to the Associated Press. The MPAA views the primary file-swapping services, eDonkey and BitTorrent as Napster-for-movies. The question is whether the argument will work.
Dazed and Confused II
The Washington Post profiles plaintiffs Bobby Wooderson, Andy Slater and Richard Floyd (Oct. 12) in a newspaper article that will do more to damage their reputations than the movie ever did.
Did you guys really smoke that much dope back in high school in 1976?
Slater smiles slyly when he answers that question. “Well, I wouldn’t say it didn’t happen,” he says. “But I don’t think there was any more here than anywhere else.”
“Certainly those things happened at that time,” interrupts attorney T. Ernest Freeman, “but that aspect of the movie was really exaggerated, particularly with respect to our clients.”
(Peter Carlson, “Bummer, Man: Portrayed as Potheads In ‘Dazed,’ Trio Has A New Joint Venture: Suing the Filmmaker”, Dec. 8).
Greeks shelve plan to sue Oliver Stone
Left, right and center together
A correspondent on Andrew Sullivan’s letters page, unnamed as is the practice there, thinks the new Pixar animation “The Incredibles” (Feb. 24, Oct. 25, and, yes, I saw and liked it) might point the way to fruitful dialogue between those who deplore the litigation culture generally and those outraged at big business’s overuse of aggressive litigation tactics in areas like Linux, trademark and file-sharing contexts (Nov. 23).
Pixar’s “The Incredibles”
The latest offering from the ruling geniuses of animation (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, etc.) is a little bit different, as we reported Feb. 24. Notes the New York Times:
The buzz out of early screenings is that “The Incredibles,” set to be released Nov. 5, carries a considerably more middle-American sensibility than the usual fare from Hollywood, where liberal shibboleths often become the stuff of mainstream movies.
The new movie’s hero, Bob Parr, a k a Mr. Incredible, after all, has been driven into middle-aged retirement and the Superhero Relocation Program by a flood of lawsuits brought by personal-injury lawyers representing people Mr. Incredible has saved but who later complain of things like neck problems.
Mr. Incredible’s 10-year-old son, Dash, is blessed with super speed but is forced to conceal it from his unknowing peers at school — until, that is, he complains that he is being held back by the “everyone is special” ethic, which holds that kids should receive a trophy just for showing up on the playing field.
Writer-director Brad Bird demurs when asked whether the movie is meant to be critical of trial lawyers:
“I just always wondered when a superhero broke through a wall, who was going to pay for that wall?” he said with a smile. “In the small-minded world we live in, that deed is not going to go unpunished.”
(John M. Broder, “Truth, Justice and the Middle-American Way”, New York Times, Oct. 20).
Dazed and Confused
If you see Bobby Wooderson, Andy Slater or Richard Floyd of Huntsville, Texas, don’t ask them if they wanna smoke a joint. The three former classmates of “Before Sunset” director Richard Linklater have decided, eleven years after the fact, that the Linklater movie “Dazed and Confused” defames them by using similarly named characters. As evidence of his emotional distress, Wooderson cites the fact that his son was asked for autographs by his Harvard classmates. (But how did they find out if his son wasn’t bragging about the coincidence?) Another plaintiff told a desk clerk that he was “the guy from ‘Dazed and Confused'” and was supposedly mobbed by a lobby full of fans–no doubt because New Yorkers are so enthralled by the sight of such a celebrity. The three are so upset that people associate them with a movie that did $8 million in box office in 1993 that before they served Linklater with the suit, they had their attorneys issue a nationally-publicized press release. They’ve sued in New Mexico, because Texas law doesn’t allow one to wait eleven years before suing for defamation. Actor Wiley Wiggins complains about “the sad sacks back in Huntsville who are trying to cash in 11 years later over vaguely having something to do with a movie.” (Andrew Tran, “Modified names spur ‘Dazed’ lawsuit”, Daily Texan, Oct. 12; Tom Waddill, “Three Huntsville residents file suit over negative resemblances in popular cult film”, Huntsville Item, Oct. 11; Chris Rush Cohen blog, Oct. 8).
Full disclosure: I once represented co-defendant Universal years ago. But that was about the Grinch.
Update: Supreme Court ducks ADA stadium-seating issue
Despite a split between circuits on the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to resolve “whether disabled moviegoers must be given better seats than the front-row accommodations they’re provided in many new stadium-seating theaters. … Instead, at the urging of the Bush administration, they left undisturbed rulings against two theater companies while the government reviews its guidelines for movie theater owners.” (Gina Holland, “Court Dodges Fight Over Disabled Seating”, AP/WTOP, Jun. 28; “Supreme Court decision lets disabled sit away from the picture”, KATU, Jul. 1; “Beyond the letter of the ADA” (editorial), The Oregonian, Jul. 3; Christine M. Garton, “Disabled Moviegoers Fight Stadium Seating”, Legal Times, Jun. 24). For more on the controversy, see Nov. 11 and links from there.
They’re using your name! Let’s get ’em!
The central character in a new Tom Hanks movie, “The Terminal”, is a hapless Eastern European tourist by the name of “Viktor Navorski,” a name recalling that of the veteran left-wing author and Nation magazine publisher Victor Navasky. “Whenever a commercial for ‘The Terminal’ appeared on television, my phone would ring and it would be another attorney assuring me that my ship had come in. Clearly I had a case for “misappropriation of my name and likeness,’ ‘expropriation of my right of publicity’ and my favorite, ‘product disparagement.'” (Victor Navasky, “You Say Navorski, He Says Navasky”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 5).
Dept. of truly bad ideas
“Republican Californian Congressman Duncan Hunter has introduced a bill titled the ‘Parents’ Empowerment Act,’ which would allow the parent or guardian of a minor to sue (in federal court) anyone who knowingly disseminates any media which contains ‘material that is harmful to minors.'” The bill would apply in cases where “a reasonable person would expect a substantial number of minors to be exposed to the material” and “the minor as a result of exposure to that material is likely to suffer personal or emotional injury or injury to mental or moral welfare.” “Compensatory damages under the bill would start at no less than $10,000 for any instance a minor is exposed to harmful entertainment products”, and liability would apparently extend to original publishers, final retailers, and everyone in between. (“House Bill Threatens Retailers”, icv2.com News, May 21; Jonah Weiland, “CBLDF: New Censorship Bill Turns Parents Into Prosecutors”, May 21; Alan Connor, “The Parents’ Empowerment Act: finding the porn in Harry Potter”, London Review of Books, May 20)(text of H.R. 4239, introduced Apr. 28, courtesy TheOrator.com). Focus on the Family, the religious-right group, likes the idea (Keith Peters, “Congress Considers Parents’ Empowerment Act”, Family News in Focus, May 3)(more on free speech and media law).