I notice that whenever some incident happens, the newspapers report that some bystander signed a movie deal for the rights to the story. For example, the movie, “The Terminal”, was based on a real life person who was stuck in an airport. Spielbarg had to buy the movie rights,
Why can’t you just make a movie about a public fact pattern–why did Spielberg’s Dreamworks have to buy the rights? You see ‘unauthorized’ biographies all the time–is there not freedom of the press?
I can understand if it were illegally instrusive into someone’s life, and violated someone’s right to privacy, but it would seem that making a movie about it wouldn’t be a problem.
Except The Terminal didn’t really even pretend to make a factual portrayal of the real stuck-in-the-airport guy, it was just sort of inspired by him. I’m sure they could’ve made basically the same movie without getting the guy to sign over the rights.
I suspect that the real reason Spielburg paid him for the rights was to make sure he didn’t get pissed off and start bad mouthing what was supposed to be a heartwarming picture when the inevitable reporters started to seek him out before the release of the film. (or alternatively, Spielburg just wanted to help out a guy who is sort of a hardluck case.)
I don’t think you can copyright actual events. It might keep the source of the story from helping other people make a second movie out of it, but not from someone making such a film on their own.
After all, if all it took to prevent a movie about someone from being made was to sell the rights to a third party, you’d think unpopular figures would just sell the rights to their story to someone for a dollar and tell them to sit on it and hence keep any unsympathetic film makers from portraying them badly.
You can make a movie of factual events without asking permission. Oliver Stone is doing a film about George W. Bush: do you really think Bush would have granted permission for that (though as a public figure, Bush has less say in the matter than others).
People ask permission for a variety of reasons. One is to prevent lawsuits. The other is to get the subject on board with the concept. A third is to make it harder for anyone else to make a movie about the person: if you grant the rights to producer A, then producer B is going to have to make any movie without your cooperation and without the inside anecdotes that would make it more than just a newspaper story.
IANAL, but in the case of The Terminal it would probably be hard to argue that the guy was a public figure, so there’d probably be “invasion of privacy” issues.
Sometimes they pay for the rights to a public figures story so that
1- they can say ‘authorized’
2- the person will give them assistance and access
3- in paying for the rights the person agrees not to sue them
The producers of What’s Love Got to Do With It, for example, paid Ike Turner $40,000 for his agreement. Since Ike Turner was a public figure (however faded) and since they already had Tina’s permission this was not necessary, but it probably saved them a lot more than that in legal fees and possible settlements had Ike sued (for the movie did take some demonstrable liberties [e.g. Ike wasn’t the father of Tina’s first son, wasn’t romantically involved with Tina until long after the time period in the movie, and the incident where he came into her dressing room with a pistol was very exaggerated). Ike could have sued claiming this hurt his public image and made him less bookable and perhaps gotten some “go away” money at least, but the $40,000 (which he desperately needed at the time) required him to sign a quitclaim to anything they wanted to say- they could have shown him ripping Tina’s arm out of her socket and beating a dachshund with it and he couldn’t have sued them.
What I don’t understand- that’s somewhat relevant to this- is how authors like Charles Higham and Kitty Kelly get away with their sensationalized unauthorized biographies. Especially with Kitty Kelly, who made some claims that were proven to be false and represented rumor as fact (e.g. Nancy Reagan had an abortion by Frank Sinatra and continued her affair with him all the way to the White House) and yet don’t get sued. (The writer Augusten Burroughs and his publisher and the film studio that made the film based on Running With Scissors were sued by the family the book was based on- case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and a new disclaimer on the book, but then they weren’t public figures which makes a big difference.)
Lawsuits are long, expensive, unpleasant and public, and the standard for proving defamation when you’re a public figure is very high as compared to that for ordinary folk. If you were Nancy Reagan, former First Lady of the United States and the wife of a dying man, would you want to take the time, trouble and expense to file suit, thus subjecting yourself to discovery?