Somewhere the truth is out there about using people’s names…
But they do not pay off all of those people, just having a contract with a single one provides you with the legal protection you want.
Back in the '30s, Groucho and Chico Marx had a radio show called “Beagle, Shyster, and Beagle” in which Groucho played a lawyer named Waldorf Beagle. I got the following paragraph from this site. The bolding is mine.
You can read a little here about a successful lawsuit over the TV show Have Gun, Will Travel.
I have no knowledge about movie studios paying people to use their names, but it would seem that there has long been evidence that it is necessary.
I can’t imagine how that would be the case if the fictional character didn’t resemble any of the real people with that name. Anyone have a legal cite for this? (This would also seem to suggest that if you happen to have the same name as a fictional character created before you were born you could also hold up production of a film or show with that name, and I find this hard to believe.)
BobT:
More likely, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I don’t think there is a legal reason to have to pay for someone’s name. However, I think it is prudent, business wise, to avoid a potentially costly law suit.
You are aware, aren’t you, that Tolkien exchanged letters, after LOTR was published, with Sam Gamgee, the grandson of the Gamgee who invented Gamgee-cotton swabs (hence the tortured puns on the interrelationships between the Gamgee and Cotton families of Hobbiton and Bywater)?
As I recall from the commentary (yup, I listened to it too) they were fairly upset initially at finding only one Marla Singer. The reason is that if they find multiple possessers of a name, they don’t have to worry about getting permission as long as their character isn’d modeled on any one of them because they can argue that they used the name generically. However, if there is exactly one possesser of the name, they would have a better-than-average shot at a defemation suit. So, they either had to get the real Marla Singer’s permission to use her name or the studio would force them to change it for the movie.
Why would this be the case if the name is the same but none of the attributes of the character are? I should think that you’re more likely to be sued over similarities to actual events than over coincidental naming involving events which have nothing to do with the real person’s life.
As the Zissou example demonstrates, it’s pretty difficult to come up with a realistic sounding name that no one has. (This is also suggesting that the productions of TV and movies are going about the process backasswards, picking out names randomly, writing scripts and shooting scenes, and* then* doing searches for the names… wouldn’t professionals have a better system down for this by now?) Again, I’d really like to see a legal cite on any of this.
Well, the character of Marla Singer is depressed, suicidal, immoral, and a little psychotic. The real Marla Singer could make a case for defamation of character because someone with her name (and the name is only hers, note) is portrayed negatively. It wouldn’t necessarily be a good case, but if it’s good enough to have a chance of making it to court, the studio would rather avoid it entirely than risk it, even if they were sure of victory
Well, in the case of Fight Club, the name Marla Singer was originally used in the book, and the filmmakers wanted to use the same name. The writer of the book didn’t do any name research, as he wasn’t as worried about being sued as a major studio is. Also, the book had a much smaller audience than the movie, as Chuck Palahniuk is (or was) a fairly obscure author.
If the real Marla Singer isn’t any of those things, Marla Singer being a pretty realistic sounding/humdrum name (there was really only one of those?! Wow!), I should think there’s no case at all for a lawsuit.
Why wouldn’t the author and, more importantly, the publisher, of a best-selling work of written fiction have to worry about this same issue if in fact it’s a real one? Now we’ve taken this supposition about the law to the point where it doesn’t even have internal consistency. Never thought I’d say this, but: Is there a lawyer in the house?
Incidentally, Saturday Night Live used my name for a skit back in the late 70s. There are a good 15 people who can be Googled with my name and it doesn’t appear that our lives and the character in the skit have anything in common. I find the supposition that SNL should’ve been getting an OK from one of us to use the common Anglo-Saxon-derived surname and common male first name in combination sometime in the week they had to produce the piece to be ludicrous.
In the interests of partially clearing this question up, I went back to my source (the Fight Club DVD commentary) and transcribed the relevent part. This is from director David Fincher’s solo track, at about the 26th minute. There are four separate commentary tracks, so it’s possible it was also discussed on some other track, but I think this is what I’m remembering.
This is kind of an aside, in between talking about problems setting the movie in a specific place. They left the location ambiguous, because they didn’t want to bother getting clearances from a real city, and, as a realated topic, he brings says this (obviously the wording looks awkward because it’s a text transcription of spontaneous speech):
So, that’s all I really know. That’s all I’ve got. But, like I said, I think the studios worry about the threat of a lawsuit going to court to court at all, not just about whether or not it will be a successful lawsuit. Fighting in court is expensive whether you win or not.
But I don’t really know. Is there a lawyer in the house?