John August

Archives for 2012

The Somewhat Healthy Screenwriter

Episode - 50

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Follow Up, Random Advice, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, WGA

Screenwriters are often not the healthiest folk. We do our work at computers, surrounded by snacks, so it’s no surprise many of us get fat. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Screenwriters are often not the healthiest folk. We do our work at computers, surrounded by snacks, so it’s no surprise many of us are not our fittest. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We’re not doctors or nutritionists, but we’re relatively healthy members of a cohort that is relatively unhealthy, so our advice might point you in useful directions.

We also discuss the upcoming WGA Board elections, sumo wrestlers, head tits, Jaclyn Smith and secret e-smoking.

All this in more in the new Scriptnotes.

LINKS:

You can download the episode here: AAC.

UPDATE 8-17-12: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Death and advertising

Rights and Copyright

In his will, Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch left instructions that “in no event may my image or name or any music or any artistic property created by me be used for advertising purposes.” Wendy S. Goff looks at why that opens a legal can of worms:

In a sentence that referred to publicity rights, the words Yauch added introduced the matter of copyright. The two are very different legal animals.

Publicity rights refers to Yauch’s interest, while he lived and in some states after he died, in protecting his image and his name, which had value because he was a celebrity. Legally, they couldn’t be used in advertising without his permission (or that of his heirs). Someone who violated this right could be required to pay a fine for the value of the damages they caused, and turn over any profits they made as a result.

Contrast that right with copyright — the federal law that covers a literary, artistic, musical, or other creative work. Copyright owners have the right to control the use of their work and get paid for it. In the music industry, it covers not only the written composition (sheet music and lyrics), but also sound recordings. To make things more complicated still, the composer of the music and the lyricist are both considered authors.

Yauch and his heirs clearly control his publicity rights. But most of his music copyrights are likely shared with his bandmates and others; his estate can’t constrain what it doesn’t own. Music is especially hard to pin down:

When songs have been distributed to the public under certain conditions, the owner of the composer’s copyright cannot prevent other artists from “sampling” or making “covers” of the song.

The mandatory license right forces the owner to license the rights to others who may make their own recordings and sell them for a profit. (Whether Monster Beverage exceeded the rights afforded by a mandatory compulsory license, and therefore infringed on the Beastie Boys’ copyrights is the subject of a lawsuit.) Therefore Yauch’s heirs may be forced to license his work, whether or not the terms of his will allow them to derive any profit from it.

Philosophically, it’s easy to see what Yauch was going for. Practically, this was a situation that needed more-nuanced legalese to avoid unintended consequences.

Link via Jen Pollack Bianco.

On blasting and drafting

Follow Up

The guy who made that Phil Coulson fan film — and wrongly credited me — thinks I was out of line to complain so much.

Chris R. Notarile writes:

I don’t know why you think I was trying to garner fame from your name. When I was crediting my “Coulson” fan film, I simply Googled the character and listed on Wikipedia was YOUR name under “writing credits” for Iron Man. Since I don’t know you personally nor did I know what you contributed to the film, I gave you an honorary “character” credit for IMDB. But as we all know, IMDB is notorious for not posting correct information, thus they gave you a full on “writer credit”.

And the only reason why I even did it, was because I didn’t want some crazy fan blasting me for NOT crediting you. (which I now find ironic) I apologize for the inconsistency, in fact I tried to explain it on the forum, but come on.

Dedicating an entire blog to blast me is just wrong. I was very explicit within the film that it was a FAN FILM, which as we all know is just for fun. I busted my butt to make something entertaining for Coulson fans. That was my soul intent. And like any fan, I wanted to thank all those who I thought were responsible for the creation of something I adored. (I had no desire to take credit from anyone. Like any fan film, it is customary to list all those involved in the creative process) I am saddened to hear how aggressive you were about the listing of my movies on IMDB.

And I’m even more disappointed at how you chose to handle this situation. I’m pretty accessible myself. A simple email to me would’ve sufficed if you were truly offended. I hope you can move on from this hickup and come to enjoy the films for what they are- fun.

I’ll accept his explanation, although I don’t fully buy it. For starters, my name is not strongly associated with Iron Man and especially not with the Phil Coulson character — at least not until this incident.

I wrote:

He’s drafting off my name (and Whedon’s much bigger name) by misrepresenting my involvement in his short film.

Which he was. He can claim it was unintentional, but for several weeks anyone visiting Joss Whedon’s IMDb profile saw two fat links to short films about a Marvel character. Many, many people assumed they were official tie-ins, even after I explained they weren’t.

So was I wrong to put Notarile on blast? Should I have emailed him first?

Maybe. That would have been gentlemanly.

Granted, he didn’t email me. He didn’t give me the choice to be associated with his film. And considering that it’s taken him a month to acknowledge my July 9th post, I wonder just how quickly it would have gotten resolved.

At the time, it wasn’t clear whether Notarile himself had actually done the mis-crediting:

Now, it’s possible that the director himself didn’t link my name to this. IMDb credits can be edited by just about anyone, so someone else could have done it.

This is why the bulk of my blasting was aimed at IMDb for making it so easy to create bogus credits. IMDb needs to handle this much better.

Here’s a simple way you can start: I’m a registered user, so why doesn’t your system kick out an email to confirm a change like this? I know I didn’t work on this. It should never have showed up on the page.

I have a movie coming out, and I’m starting to do publicity. All is takes is one lazy journalist looking at IMDb to assume I’ve been reduced to doing crappy superhero knock-offs.

True, one idiotic fan film isn’t going to hurt my reputation much, but what happens when I’m listed for acting in a porn film, or producing a inflammatory religious documentary?

IMDb corrected the Phil Coulson credits, but to my knowledge, they still haven’t fixed the underlying issue.

As far as Notarile, I’m sympathetic to his situation. He wanted to credit the original creators. That’s laudable. But I’m frustrated that he thinks he did nothing wrong by listing them in a way that strongly implied we were collaborators.