Friday 26 October 2012

Hollywood Babble On & On #964: Two Drips From The Brain Pan

Greeting readers!

Today, two mysteries that I think need to be solved.

First up...

BBC MANAGES TO MAKE PHONE-TAPS LOOK MILD
 
The venerable British Broadcasting Company is being rocked by a scandal centered around former TV host the late Jimmy Savile.

In case you've been living in a cave Jimmy Savile became a celebrity hosting the BBC's Top of the Pops and other shows. After his death last year it was revealed that there was apparently no perversion Savile didn't indulge in, repeatedly, and allegedly with hundreds of defenseless children.

Now it looks like the BBC organization used its massive weight and political/social clout to cover up Savile's perversity and the investigation is just starting to pick at the tip of this iceberg.

Now I've made 1 conclusion and have 1 question about this case.

My Conclusion: The BBC has managed to make the phone hacking by the now defunct News of the World newspaper seem fairly tame in comparison to letting a pedophile rapist not only run amok among defenseless children but cover up his crimes for decades.

Rupert Murdoch probably can't stop laughing at the heads that will be on pikes over this scandal.

My Question: How was anyone able to meet Jimmy Savile, the man at the center of this scandal, and NOT just assume he was some sort of raging scrofulent pervert at first?

Here's an experiment. Find an artist who knows nothing of the scandal, ask him to draw a picture of a rich, flashy, pedophile pervert, who tries to look hip decades after he should have given up simply because he hopes it will get him closer to underage girls.

This is what that picture would look like:
Am I right?

THE SOUND & THE FURY SIGNIFYING DOLLAR SIGNS!

The estate of the late Southern literary legend William Faulkner is suing Sony Pictures for the atrocity of distributing a movie (Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris) where a character quotes a line by Faulkner.

Now they're not suing Woody Allen himself, even though it was him who dug up and cruelly sodomized the corpse of the literary lion by quoting the author in the context that he expressed a great truth.  

There's a very good reason for that.

Woody Allen is an individual who will most likely fight the case in court, using the arguments of freedom of speech, that the use of the quote counts as an uncompensated endorsement of the author's work, yadda yadda yadda.

Sony Pictures is just a cog in a massive international conglomerate that is much more likely to just shell out a cash settlement for the estate, and its lawyers to drop this nuisance suit rather than let the high priced law firms they keep on retainer fight it.

The Faulkner Estate Lawyers are also hoping that if it does go to court they can get a jury to vote for them simply because Sony is a big corporation and the movie itself made over $140 million at the box office.

Personally, if I ran the studio, I would come down on them like the wrath of an angry god. This is a nuisance suit cash-grab and should be tossed from court and the people who filed it fined the court costs to teach them to stop wasting the court's time.

Then maybe horsewhipped with a wet noodle.

That's what I think, what do you think? 

 
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6 comments:

  1. Hard to feel sorry for Woody what with him using the family room as a place to pickup chicks.

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  2. What? You can actually sue over a quote? I thought you were free to quote whoever you like and copyright infringement only begins with longer passages. How did they even justify that? Why wasn't it dismissed right away?

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  3. D,

    I agree, Sony should fight the Faulkner Estate. Otherwise this kinda thing will happen again and again.

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  4. Question:

    Was the BBC one of the = groups of people calling for Murdoch's head during the phone-hacking scandal?

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  5. Kit- People in the BBC were at the forefront of demands that Murdoch's head be put on a pike.

    That's why I'm sure Murdoch's loving every minute of that scandal.

    As for the Faulkner lawsuit, Sony has no choice but to fight it, because if they don't and settle, you won't be able to quote anyone, no matter how common it was, or how long they were dead.

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  6. What is shocking is the 300 possible victims number.

    I'm reminded of Eddie Izzard on mass murders. How we have trouble comprehending a number like 100,000 people killed so we're like "Well done, well done. You must get up early in the morning."
    LINK
    Starts around 0:50 -ish.

    ReplyDelete