Brokeback Lawsuit

This is from indieWIRE:

Actor Randy Quaid has filed a lawsuit against Focus Features, claiming that he was misled about Brokeback Mountain being a small movie in what his lawyers are calling a "movie laundering scheme".

In court documents filed yesterday in Los Angeles (and published by AOL's TMZ.com), Quaid's lawsuit (seeking $10 millon in damages) reads:
Producers James Schamus and David Linde, by and through Focus Features, LLC, and Del Mar Productions, succeeded in obtaining Randy Quaid's performance in 'Brokeback Mountain' by falsely representing it as a low-budget, art-house film, with no prospect of making any money. Yet, from day one, defendents fully intended that the film would not be made on a low budget, would be given a worldwide release, and would be supported as the studio picture it always was secretly intended to be.

Additionally, the filing also contends that Quaid is "an instantly recognizable household name and much-admired actor on the world's stage". His legal representatives claim that he is responsible for a worldwide box office of "nearly $2 billion." The film was made for $14.9 million and has grossed more than $80 million in the U.S.

Download the pdf and look at this! I think this lawsuit is really going to make an impact on independent film.

At first, I dismissed this lawsuit mainly because Randy Quaid was in this film for a hot minute. Plus, the document acts as if Randy Quaid is the kind of star that people go to movies specifically to see. However he does have a leg to stand on with this suit.

Producers were calling this film low-budget but it did cost 14.9 million dollars which is low but that low. What the film has made (which is 80 million dollars so far) is not really the issue because he did not ask for a back end deal so he is not supposed to see any portion of the profits. I do think it can be proven the Producers had a deal with Universal before the film was made. If this is the case, the film was then worth much more than 14.9 million dollars. The reason for this is that marketing is not included in that number and they spent a ton on this film.

Still the big question this suit brings up is: What is a low budget film? What is the cap on a film being seen as low budget? This question has been defined lately by big Hollywood stars who take pay "cuts" to be in these teeny movies that really are not teeny at all. But what I want are cold hard facts. What is the industry standard for a low budget narrative film. What is the cap on it? Where is this information? The lawsuit states that the cap is 7 million dollars but where did the lawyers get this information? SAGIndie, the Screen Actors Guild's indie film wing, creates low budget contract for actors. They work with projects with budgets of $0 to 2 million dollars. That seems a little low.

I am going to wait to read what some other news outlets have to say but as someone in this industry, I think this lawsuit could bring about a lot of dialogue.

Comments

[L. Britt]

You are right, tuckergurl. The court papers are good reading! I don't know any of these people, yet I'm not surprised by any of it. We'll never know the truth of it all. Is Randy being a greedy SOB or did Ang and his (business) partner* pull the wool over everyone's eyes and no one else is saying anything because their careers all benefited?

*Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)