Rights and Copyright

To what extent can a character quote, sing the lyrics, or
hum the tune of a song without rights or permission being attained?

–Trevor

Ultimately, that issue would have to be addressed by whoever’s handling the
legal affairs for the movie. Believe me, it will come up when it needs to.

For your purposes in writing a screenplay, don’t worry about it. Don’t footnote,
don’t asterisk, don’t put a special note in the script. You can leave it as
simple as:

• Max is WHISTLING the "Bewitched" theme when a pitbull suddenly
  attacks his car.

If it’s especially important to show the lyrics of a song, put them in a character’s dialogue block. Remember that sung words are generally italicized.

As a budding screenwriter,
I’ve sent something away to be copywritten. Since it’s been sent out, I’ve
made a few minor changes to it, including changing a character’s name and deleting
a scene. Is it possible to make changes to the registered screenplay, and still
have it protected without having to send in the new draft?

–Matt

"Copywritten" seems like it should be a word, but it isn’t. The
problem is the "written" part. Copyright actually has nothing to
do with the process of writing. It’s a legal protection on a piece of intellectual
property that can be transferred, sold or bartered. Columbia Pictures owns
the copyright to GO, even though they didn’t write it.

The word you’re looking for is "copyrighted." Based on the lawsuits
we all read about, in which rap stars get sued for copyright violations after
sampling three seconds of a song, it’s understandable that you want to be hyper-vigilant
about copyright.

Vigilant is not the same thing as paranoid, however, which is what you’re
being.

Copyright is actually a fairly broad protection of intellectual property;
that is, an idea and its execution. Changing a character’s name or deleting
a scene doesn’t fundamentally alter your work, and wouldn’t fundamentally alter
your ability to protect it.

How much needs to change to make re-registering your script worthwhile? That’s
obviously going to depend on the project. If you rewrote the last act so that
the big action climax takes place on the space shuttle rather than a yacht,
then sure, maybe that’s worth re-registering. But if your rewrite just changes
some dialogue and fixes typos, then forget about it. While such tweaking hopefully
makes your script better, it doesn’t change anything in the grand scheme of
things.

My movie has main characters who love movies and, at last count, reference
over fifty films and watch nearly a dozen. You addressed the need to get permission
during filming and encouraged us the aspiring to just go wild during the writing
process, but what about in the copyrighting process?
Should I get the permission of the producers of, for
instance, THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, if I write that it’s playing in the background
of the scene or of PHOENIX if my characters refer to it in conversation,
even though they refer to it in a nice, non-slanderous way.

–Josh M. Nileski

I fall back on my standard advice of Just Don’t Worry About It.

If you’re excerpting whole scenes of THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, then
there would obviously be legal issues, since you can’t copyright something
that’s already copyrighted. But it’s not like there’s somebody at the Library
of Congress who’s going to read your script and press the emergency copyright
infringement alarm.

As far as referring to other movies, Josh, this is America. If you want your
characters to say that TOWN AND COUNTRY was a boring, unfunny disaster, they
can. (By the way, it was. I like and respect pretty much everyone involved
in that movie, but what the hell happened?)

I have a question about copyright. I just finished writing
a comedy script which I would like to get made, but in the script I have involved
some slight spoofs
of other films and a few references. What I would like to know is does this
infringe on the copyright? The references and spoofs are indirect and only
take up parts of the film, but I don’t want to make a film then find out I’m
being sued
by everyone. Please help.

–Bunmi

Usually, I’d write up a lengthy explanation of copyright law as I understand
it, which although hopefully entertaining would probably be grossly inaccurate.

So I’ll just give my opinion instead.
You can’t go through life afraid of being sued. If your script is funny, and
part of the reason is because of references and spoofs of other movies, then
you obviously don’t want to remove them. So don’t. I guarantee, no one is going
to sue you just for typing them in your script.

If someone buys your script and makes it, maybe the copyright owners of the
original movies will sue, but I seriously doubt it. There’s a long tradition
of movies parodying each other, and it would be hard to prove any actual damage
or wrongdoing.

Besides, at that point, it’s not your problem. Any lawsuit is going to be
directed at the big rich studio, not the measly underpaid writer. There would
probably even be language in your contract with the studio protecting you just
in case.

So while I can’t say that you’re absolutely, 100 percent safe, I can assure
you that your time is better spent writing funny scenes than worrying about
lawsuits.