We’ve all seen that disclaimer at the ends of movies and TV shows a zillion times, but how did it originate?
You just know there’s a story behind this.
Good question.
As a corollary, why on earth do they put the same disclaimer at the end of movies based on true stories? Come on, you’re not fooling anyone.
Probably legal requirements. They may not be fooling anybody, but they need deniability. There’s no other explanation for its use on films like The Greek Tycoon.
I’m still surprised that this shows up on historical pictures. What – Lawrence of Arabia, King Faisal, and General Allenby didn’t exist? Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More?
At least in Mad magazine they change it to “…no resemblance without satiric purpose…”, but you’d think they’d be more accurate in their disclaimers for biopics and the like.
IIRC the disclaimer goes on biopics because they frequently combine real people into composite characters, or assign actions performed by one person to another character for purposes of storytelling, and so even though John Doe may be long dead, his associate Richard Roe may be alive and decide that the composite character of Bill Snow is based on him or that showing “Richard Roe” in the film assassinating Robert Kennedy is defamatory and cause legal trouble.
Why it goes on historical pictures about people who’ve been dead for centuries, probably habit and/or custom.
I heard that it started with the movie Anastasia. The heirs of the Romonovs sued since they hadn’t authorized the movie, they weren’t paid off, something like that. The idea is that if they put it on, they can’t sue. I assume a Dopey lawyer can tell us if it has any legal weight to put on the disclaimer.
I’m pretty sure the practice massively predates Anastasia.
ETA: Unless you mean the 1956 one.
It was composed by some lawyer, somewhere, and eventually went on to become a standard. It translates as ‘I don’t want to be sued.’ As a trade off, any bad actions by any character can be claimed to be something that was added in for story purposes. I certainly never did that. See, they said so right there.
My favorite disclaimer was in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, in which Douglas Adams claimed that his characters bore no resemblance to real people “living, dead, or wandering the night in ghostly torment.”
Just because the character is named Henry VIII wouldn’t stop someone from claiming the writers modeled the character after him, and it’s defamatory etc etc. The disclaimer isn’t because the character’s resemblance to Henry VIII is coincidental, but because the character’s resemblance to Richard Roe is coincidental.
It’s a nice theory, but it says “any resemblance”, not “any resemblance other than to Henry VIII and his courtiers” or whatever.
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Dead people can’t be defamed. It’s the law.
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If a movie really was defamatory, I doubt that this disclaimer would absolve the movie producers of liability.
That’s not strictly true.
Dead people can be defamed; however, dead people can’t sue, because they have no standing, being dead.
I believe it’s not just a standing issue. Otherwise, their estates could bring suit. Under the principles of common law defamation, a statement cannot by definition be defamatory if it is regarding a dead person.
No… at common law, a person’s cause of action dies with the person. You need a specific “survival statute” for it to be preserved.
But I believe that standing is not the only issue here. Neither of us have thrown cites at each other, but I recall being told by more than one law professor not that the dead just don’t have standing to sue for defamation, but that, fundamentally, a dead person cannot be defamed.
I have seen it expressed as “reputation dies with the person.” Therefore, a dead person has no reputation to injure.
To hold otherwise would likely raise weird standing issues. There’s no chain of title on Henry VIII’s reputation. Who owns it today? Who would be entitled to bring a defamation suit on his behalf today over a contemporary injury to his reputation (e.g., The Last Boleyn Girl)?
Yep, the early one.
Oh.
That’s possible.
I read this initially as “Neither of us have thrown cities at each other.”
I thought it was the film Rasputin and the Empress that started it. Princess Irina Yussupova (niece of Tsar Nicholas II) brought an action against the film studio for implying in the film that she had been seduced by Rasputin. In fact she had never met him.