entertainment

entertainment

Who were Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd and Lydia Hamilton Smith and in what recent Oscar-winning film were they depicted by these women? Name the actresses as well.

Was the depiction accurate or one dimensional? Does it matter? Yes–in a way.

With regard to access to content–here a person’s life–we do indeed harken back to defamation and invasion of privacy. There is a right of publicity for famous people, but there is no “right to a life story.” If you set out to base your entertainment work on a real event or real person, there is always the spectre at the feast: a suit. if buy rights to a person to gain access, that person can contractually force you to fudge and cover warts, even lie or obfuscate. But in essence, all you are really doing is buying off a suit. Beyond that you can do what you wish…and if this person is dead or not, you have automatically made them, and they themselves, public figures. The burden then shifts off of you. You can now have them fondling something they barely knew in “real life,” saying things they actually didn’t say, create fictional characters (in The Butler’s film version, the producers Oprah Winfrey and Lee Daniels created a son and changed the butler’s name slightly). You can minimize or eliminate real people and then fictionalize them into your own creation–especially if they start squawking.

Look at these two primers on the subject:

http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/121028/data+protection/Privacy+Rights+and+Celebrities+Truth+Fiction+and+Biopics

http://www.lawlawlandblog.com/2010/06/being_biopicky_or_how_do_you_m.html

Required response (briefly):

So why aren’t there more suits over this?