May 27, 2025 • 38 mins
Joe Escalante's weekly fingering the pulse of the business end of showbiz, live and direct from Boston (hence the audio quality)!!! This week: two Box Offices splashes in what may be the biggest Memorial Day for the theater industry. Thank you Mission Impossible and Lilo & Stitch! You've given Joe hope for the movie theater industry!
Also, the latest from Cannes, with a bunch of movies that you'll never see. The best movie is an Iranian film from a guy named Jafar... Joe is afraid of Jafar. Celebs behave badly, and Diddy is still behaving badly.
A vape shop got sued by Toys r Us. Disney got sued by a guy thinking a time travelling surfer named Bucky is the same as Moana. Welcome to Hollywood, where everybody stole somebody's something.
Also, the latest from Cannes, with a bunch of movies that you'll never see. The best movie is an Iranian film from a guy named Jafar... Joe is afraid of Jafar. Celebs behave badly, and Diddy is still behaving badly.
A vape shop got sued by Toys r Us. Disney got sued by a guy thinking a time travelling surfer named Bucky is the same as Moana. Welcome to Hollywood, where everybody stole somebody's something.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Joe Wescalante live from Hollywood. We will be doing two
hours of the business end of show business, like we
do every Sunday from five to seven here on k E.
I B. Sam, Engineer Sam. You are here with me.
Everything good. I'm coming to you from Boston on across
the street from Fenway Park. Sublime is playing at a
(00:33):
concert called Boston Calling tonight and that's over at Harvard,
a big festival on their athletic field. And then we
will first I'll probably go to a baseball game across
the street, but very first, I'm coming to you from Boston. Hey,
(00:57):
I'm three hours ahead. Okay, let's start with the Sean
Diddy trial. Over the past week, this high profile federal
trial seen some significant developments, primarily focusing on testimony from
key witnesses. They put that girl, Cassie Ventura, you know
(01:19):
who she is. She's the one that got kicked in
the video.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah. Yeah, she's the one that swung like the star
witnesses against him.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah. So she's got she has the she wrapped up
her thing, you know talking about She says she was raped, abused,
coerced into these freak offs. So far on the Sublime
weekend tour. There's been no freakoffs and but basically Combs
is facing a racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud
(01:50):
or coersion transportation for the purposes of prostitution. I assume
that's across state lines, and the prosecutors are areing that
he used his business empire to facilitate and hide criminal activities.
This trial will probably go on through late June. H
(02:12):
They you know, they show that video of the girl
getting beat up, showing that this is you know, what
he does. But it, I mean, that's just that's a
simple assault case. A They have to prove in this
thing that he used his business to do this, and
there was a conspiracy and a lot of people are
in on it. It's gonna be hard. So you know,
(02:34):
I'm not entirely sure he'll be convicted in this case
even though, but they and if he is convicted, I mean,
they're you know, I think he might get the bill
Cosby appeal situation from you know, appeelable issues at trial
because they're just throwing everything at him. So many people testifying.
(02:56):
One of the people testified this week was Kid Cuddy.
Are you a fan of Kid Cutty Sam.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I've seen him play live at Coachella a while ago.
He's got some decent songs. I know. The relationship between
he and Diddy is pretty turbulent.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, he used to have a decent car, but then
it was destroyed by a Molotov cocktail after he started
dating Cassie Ventura. And he's suggesting that Combs was involved
in this in a prior home invasion. So that's what
he's up there saying Combs basically threw a Molotov cocktail
at my car. And they had former personal assistants testifying
(03:33):
this week describing buying supplies for alleged sex parties. That's
the Babo oil and other stuff we heard about. And
then people who were in charge of cleaning up hotel
rooms after the freak offs and people testifying to Combs's
abusive behavior. And then though the girl, Cassie Ventura's mother testified.
(03:55):
She said that she was extorted for twenty thousand dollars
and they said they were going to threaten to release
explicit videos of Cassie after she began dating Kid Cuddy.
Now the defense, what's Diddy's defense? They are challenging Cassie
(04:16):
Venture's credibility, portraying her as a willing participant in a
toxic relationship and questioning her motivations, particularly regarding the twenty
million dollars settlement she received from Colmbs. Now, it is
very strange how she got this settlement from Comps for
twenty million dollars and then here she is. You know,
(04:38):
I don't know what the settlement was for. Well, I
guess in those settlements that you sign, like, they'll say,
here's twenty million dollars. You can't say anything about me. Ever,
unless the court of law tells you you have to
say something about me. So they usually have a sentence
in there too, saying unless you're like testifying in court
and you're compelled to, then then you have to do it. Ah.
(05:04):
Other news, Aaron Rodgers has weighed in did you hear
about this? An?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
No, I haven't. I got to hear about this though.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, he was. He was on Joe Rogan and he
openly questioned the silence of numerous A list celebrities, including
Lebron James and Aston Kutcher, who were known for having
attended these parties. I guess uh uh. His main point
is not to necessarily accuse his individuals of any wronging themselves,
(05:31):
but highlighting this like what he calls a culture of
complicity among the Hollywood elites that influential figures avoid speaking
out as serious allegations against did He mount and he
specifically names Lebron James because there was a resurface video
where James once stated it ain't no party like a
(05:52):
did He party, but he wishes he could take that back.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I get the feeling though a lot of times wherever
Lebron goes, his wife tends to go with him. So
if anything, if it may not be the act that
they engage in, but it's the act that they may
be aware of and aren't saying anything that Rogers is
bringing up now, I'm I think Rogers also has this
kind of proclivity to want to get as much attention
(06:19):
on himself as possible, So him mentioning Lebron James's name
is going to make a splash in the media. So,
oh yeah, that's clickbait right there.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah, it caught my eye. He he doesn't care. He
just doesn't give a dame.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Oh no, he doesn't need to. He has he's rich.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah. Is he still playing? Is he gonna play this season.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think he might be done. I think he might
be done. He might try to miss the amount of
comeback but diminished returns at this point.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Maybe that's why he spoke up.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, he tends he has a reputation for speaking up
in the media and saying things that end up becoming controversial.
So this is part for the course for Rogers. It
sounds like there's a reason why he continually has a
microphone put in front of him, because he's known for
saying stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay, Joe Rogan, that's the big one of the biggest
microphones in the world. Yes, okay, So we'll in the
coming up in a little bit, we're gonna talk about
the can Film Festival. And the can Film Festival is
where you know, the all the prestige films go to
get awards, and you know, there's a lot of it's
a movie market. Also people go there to to buy
(07:35):
and sell films for the upcoming year and they just
wrapped up. And so we'll talk about who won, who
are the big winners, and then we'll go to the
top movies for this week and see what Sam saw
and what I saw or what we didn't see. And
ready for traffic. Am I correct? Sam?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, we got a minute or two, but we can
go early.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Okay, Well we'll just go early and then we come back.
We will, we'll do those things. Joe Escalante Live this
time from Boston, not Hollywood. But I'm still I'm still
phoning it in Scalanta live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you
mean Burbank, but right now I'm really in Boston. This
(08:20):
week we wrapped up the seventy eighth Annual Can Film Festival, Sam,
were you there?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
No? Unfortunately I missed it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yes, I wasn't there either. But if you want to
celebrate a bunch of films you're never going to see,
it's a great place to go. And they had a
little sabotage. There was some kind of sabotage that it
shut off the power for the festival.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Really, yeah, like that, like somebody went and on like
hold the plug on it or what happened?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean I felt like doing that a bunch
of times after seeing movies like The Surfer. But I
was isn't me.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Have you ever been to can at all?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I haven't been to the festival. But they had a
music festival. There's there's a music festival they do during January, okay,
and I and I went to that a bunch. It's
called the Meet Him Festival. So you know, I've stayed
in all those hotels, I've uh, you know, been around
the exhibit hall. I actually I had an exhibit there
for for Kung Fu Records. And here's a kind of
(09:28):
funny story. One time I was at the Meet Them
Festival and you know, I'm built up my record label.
It's pretty big internationally. We got our big booth. You know,
people are coming by having meetings. We've got all their
you know, banners and displays, and and then on Sunday,
you know, I have my employees are manning the booth
(09:49):
and I'm you know, hopping on a plane to get
out of town. I think I had a plane to
go fly somewhere to to you know, like continue to
meet my wife or something, to do some traveling. And
as I was leaving, some French authority said where are
you going. I go, I'm going to catch a plane.
(10:10):
And I had a tag that said I was an exhibitor.
I had a badge that said exhibitor. And he goes,
you can't leave because the exhibit. The festival is not
over until four pm tonight or something at Sunday, and
I go, yeah, but I'm catching a plane. My employees
are manning the booth. Don't worry about it. And he's like, no,
(10:32):
you know, there's a little language situation going on. And
they put me in a room for like forty minutes
and interrogated me and kept bringing all these people saying
you cannot leave. I mean, it's this is what this
is what countries without like a bill of rights are.
They just like they will throw you in a room
(10:54):
and lock you there and tell you tell them the
information they need to have. And I was, I was,
you know, I'm going to miss my flight, so I'm
pretty mad and everything. Anyway, the next year, they they
gave me a really nice like suite at the Majestic
Hotel to make it up to me. But still that's
what goes on at places like that. But this week
(11:18):
Can Film Festival, the big winner is a movie that
you're not going to see and it was called it
was just an accident from Iranian filmmaker I'm not lying.
His name is Jaffar that.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I may actually go out of my way to see
this one.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Then, yeah, a scary Iranian filmmaker named Jeffar has won
the can Film Festival. All right, be careful. So he
won the Palm d'Or. And the US distributor is called Neon.
Have you seen that Neon? When you watch a movie
(12:01):
and that logo comes up.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I can't recall if I have, actually.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Because you're seeing Marvel movies. But anyways, it comes up
a lot. And this is like the sixth consecutive time
Neon has won this award. So I mean the prestigious films,
but you know, I don't know how they make money
on them. Other top honors were from this like a
Scandinavian film called Sentimental Value. And yeah, I looked at
(12:34):
all these I looked at the trailer sets. There's really
nothing out there that compels me to see it. There's
one called Serrat that looks me interesting. I don't know
that got the Jury prize, but it just, you know,
nothing that compelling coming out of there this year that
I could see. None of the winners anyway. Now, what
(12:54):
was going on in the US. The US, we have
what some people are saying might be the biggest box
office Memorial Day weekend in history. Sam, Can you believe
that in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Absolutely, I see the people herding into the parking lot
that I park my car, and usually for where I live.
It's crazy because everybody saw it coming. There's two big
movies that came out that everybody wanted to see. It
was the Mission Impossible movie and Lilo and Stitch.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, those are the top two movies of the weekend.
Early estimates due point to a record breaking Memorial Day holiday,
and Lilo and Stitch is potentially going to end up
at one hundred and seventy five to one hundred and
eighty million for the four day weekend, and close behind
(13:49):
I'm not that close is Mission Impossible, which is estimate
to pull in around seventy seven million over the weekend.
There's some holdovers too, contributing to it could be a
three hundred and twenty two million plus Memorial Day weekend overall.
That is Final Destination, Bloodlines, Thunderbolts, and Sinners.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Usually we see this kind of action as in the
theaters on fourth of July Memorial Day. It came in
that things are cooking early this year.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, so it'll be a very interesting to see the
totals It just shows you the movies are it's still
possible for movies not to die, and and we hope
they don't die. I saw a movie this week called
The Chronicles of a Wandering Saint. Okay, it's from Argentina,
(14:46):
and it's a very interesting movie. It's not really it's
hard to see right now, it'll start ending up on
your streaming services. Try to remember it. Chronicles of a
Wandering Saint. It's a crazy story. And I'm going to
give you a couple of spoiler alerts because you're never
going to see it. Anybody listening to this show is
probably not going to see it. It's about a woman
(15:07):
who is It's about church ladies. Okay, okay, church ladies.
They they're a special breed. I mean, I ideal church
ladies almost every day and you know, they're all in
their like sixties, and they hang out of the church
all the time, and they you know, help out. And
you know, the this Catholic church I'm talking about, they
(15:30):
they don't the church, you know, really couldn't function without them.
But they're also kind of a probably a pain in
the ass for the for the priests in other ways.
You know, they want everything done their way and they've
been there for seventy years. The priest comes in and out,
new priests, old priest, but in any case, one of them,
for some reason decides she wants to fake a miracle.
(15:58):
And why I don't know. It's it's unclear. That's like
one of the weak parts of the movie. You don't
really get the backstory. There's a lot of cute things
in it, and it's you know, subtitles from argent Argentina.
But she wants okay, so she's trying to see in
the process of faking miracle, this woman dies and then
(16:21):
we have to deal with whether she's going to have
it or not because she was a dedicated church lady
your whole life. You know.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Well, it depends on what the motivation was for fake
in the miracle. I'm guessing if it was something like,
we need to fake this miracle to draw attention to
starving kids that we have to feed for God, then okay.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Cool, Yeah, it was it was more on that, Like,
it was more I think it was so she could
feel special and and uh, I think it made her
ah like more appreciated around the church. It kind of
(17:03):
reminds me of the lady who who painted that Jesus
in Spain that ended up looking like a monkey. But
I actually went and visited last year. Uh it kind
of reminds me and maybe the lady that did that,
and uh, she wanted to feel special, so she thought,
I will fix this, this chipping painting of Jesus, and
(17:26):
it all went south. And that's what happened here. And
very interesting because they talk about what happens after you die,
and it is not inconsistent with Catholic beliefs what they're
doing after she dies, because there it is basically is
she is she going to become a saint. She lived
(17:48):
a saintly life. And then you get into the bureaucracy
of the afterlife, bureaucracy of of of of sainthood, and
the the the magisterium of the church does say like,
if if you are in heaven, you are a saint.
We talk about saints that are famous, but if you
make it to heaven, you are a saint. You made
it there because you lived your life as a saint.
(18:11):
You might not be famous, you might not be canonized
as a saint by the pope, but you are a
saint nonetheless. Otherwise you would never be in heaven. And
this is all becomes, you know, part of her after
death journey where she makes some poor decisions. I gotta
tell you. Sounds like yeah, so he's prone to poor decisions,
(18:32):
this woman. So Chronicles of a Wandering Saint. I highly
recommend it if you get a chance.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Let's go to break, Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Joiscalante Live from Hollywood. All right, Joa Scalante Live from Hollywood.
By Hollywood, you mean Boston, Sam, cold here?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, it's not too warm out here today either. It
was overcast. You know, we had some hot days and
then we went right back to the cold.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
That said, I hear it's cold here. I was at
Bottle Rock two nights ago, and that's a festival up
there in Napa. It was it was very warm and
beautiful and wonderful and uh, but now here I am.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
There's a lot of intellectual property cases going on. We
love these cases, Sam, We love these cases because you know,
people got their trademarks, they got their copyrights, and people
are always trying to steal. Basically, here's the latest in
an ongoing case. The parent company of Iconic toys, r
us Brand, has escalated its efforts against this company called
(19:47):
vapes are Us what vape our Us? Yes, its owners
in New Haven, Connecticut. And according to this pre litigation letter,
toys r US chooses the best is always the letter
that comes from the people like, how dare you use
our thing? Uh? They accuse VPRs of outright infringing and
(20:10):
diluting its famous trademark. The letter officially calls out vapor
us as bad faith and appropriation of true kids distinctive logo,
the r US designation, Uh, the signature backwards are and
even the color scheme and the bubble font. Can you
believe that, Sam, they took the bubble font?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Did they even bring in Jeffrey the giraft?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
No, but they have Baby G running around all drunk
on gummies and so they they of course, they accuse
VPRs of of attempting to profit from the you know,
the the the good will created by Jeffrey and Baby
(20:51):
G and GG you know, throughout the years. So this
is what happens to these things, you know. Choys US
is emphasizing they want absolutely no association with such business
selling smoking and drug related products, stating that such a
juxtaposition tarnishes their carefully crafted fund Safe Kid Friendly Image
(21:12):
Company asserts the actions constitute a trademark and trade dress infringement,
dilution of their mark, an unfair competition under both federal
and state laws, seeking a permanent injunction. SAM the halt
Vapius's use of their intellectual property, alongside significant financial damages
and the letter and previously demanded immediate cessation of the
(21:35):
infringing uses and citing past cases where they already destroyed
someone called smokes RS. So if you think we're kidding
around here, vapors, just read your history books. We've already
demolished you kinds of people. And you might think, Sam,
what happened to toys r US? I thought they went bankrupt?
(21:56):
How are these guys still you know, running around swiming?
And that's probably what these potheas stock. They probably thought, hey,
there's no toys dress anymore. We can use we can
use this. And but I mean to be honest, haven't
we seen a million RS businesses? You know, yeah, Burger's
RS or everything RS. And it's not like it's not then.
(22:19):
There were probably this stuff before there was toys RS.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah. I got the feeling that they were just doing
it because they I mean, I think they knew that
they went bankrupt, but they also know that the brand
still exists, and I think like some Macy's are now
having like their toy department be Toys or be Toys
r US. They haven't branded as that. Now. The problem
is that these guys are going around. I'm just guessing
(22:42):
that they just wanted to wait for a cease and
desist before doing anything. This gives them cloud.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well, I think they're screwed and this is going to
cost them a lot of money and there's nothing good
will come of it for them because they used to
the font a little bit. So someone bought Toys r
US like a few years ago. They bought the brand,
and they try to rehabilitate the brand. They opened up
a few new stores, like you say, they've got some
like stores within stores. They're trying to protect this brand
(23:12):
and they then they paid money for it and they
can't have these uh Vapors weren't in the good room.
So the problem with the problem that if they would
just call themselves vapor Us and not use the logo,
they probably never would have been on the radar of
Toys rs. But they wanted to use it. All because
they wanted to be clever. They were like, hey, make
(23:35):
it just like toys r US and they did and
they are hodido as they say in the Hispanic community.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Well, it would be like if a place, a weed
shop opened up, like an edible place called mcweed's and
use the exact same font and logo as McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, right, you can go mcweed's. You can have a
way to get away with that. But if you use
the same m and the arches and all that stuff,
that's when you get burned, because that's when it looks
at the look and the feel and now you're you
got and and the damages are are pretty bad in
these trademark cases, so it's nothing to screw around with.
(24:14):
There's another thing that's intellectual property case floating around. This
happens every once in a while celebrities take photos that
paparazzi take of themselves and then they use them on
their Instagram without permission and they get a lawsuit. So
Jennifer Lopez has two lawsuits right now. They allege that
(24:37):
she posted two copyrighted paparazzi photos of herself from a
pre Golden Globes party in January of twenty twenty five
to her Instagram and also to the X platform, and
the lawsuit claims that Lopez's unauthorized use of the images
was commercial in nature, serving to promote her public appearances,
(25:01):
boost user engagement, and highlight her fashion affiliation and brand partnerships.
These paparazzi guys are each seeking up to one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars in damages per photo. According to
plaintiff's Lopez's representatives had verbally agreed to a monetary settlement
(25:21):
after being contacted, but Lopez has reportedly not signed the
written agreement or paid the agreement the agreed upon him out.
This is not the first time Lopez has faced similar
copyright lawsuits for posting paparazzi photos of herself. But I
guess if she likes a photo of herself, she's just
gonna post. She's gonna post it, Sam. If she looks good,
(25:42):
she's just gonna do it.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I got the feelings she has like an intern or
someone controlling the account, and they were just too lazy
to find actual pictures of her that were taken by
her or by her people. So she went online, did
a Google search and just picked whichever pictures looked good
of her, regardless of who took it.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, you're probably right. So I mean, but it begs
a question. Paparazzi people, they're running around, they're bothering these people.
They take pictures and then and and Jennifer doesn't want
them to take these pictures. These guys sell those photos
to the tabloids. They make money. You can't even post it.
That's the outrage that most people would would say, this
is not fair. But this is the way our intellectual
(26:25):
property laws work is if you take a photo, you
own a copyright in that photo, and so you can
she can prevent you from using that for certain uses.
That's why she said. These guys are saying this is commercial.
Their use is commercial. That makes the damages more harder
(26:45):
to avoid because it's not editorial. Now, that would be
the opposite of commercial. Editorial would be like, well, look
at Jennifer Lopez walking out downtown with Ben Affleck. You
know this mean they're back together. That would be like editorial,
we're doing a story, but she's popular. But commercial will
(27:06):
be like putting it on a T shirt and trying
to sell it, making posters out of it. And these
guys might be a stretch, but they're saying she would say, look,
this is editorial. I mean just I just here's me
doing this. You know, it's just a picture of me.
I'm not trying to sell anything. I don't make any
money from my Instagram. They're going to do you.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Well, that's the thing. They may be looking at it
from the perspective of everything that she posts is marketable,
no matter if it's something that's personal private, or if
it's like associated with any business. Everything she does has
money attached to it.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah. So anyway, I don't feel sorry for these guys
one bit. But this is just the way it goes.
And we got another one that it's still ongoing. But
the save it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Hold on to it because we got to go to
a break.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I can't wait, Sam, Okay, let it out now, all right,
it's it has to do with Moanna, and not only Molana. Sayah,
but you guessed it Moana too. Oh yeah, not to
be confused with mohaw Dos, which is the nun sequel.
(28:18):
All right, j let's go out to a line from
Hollywood back after the traffic.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, joscants a line from Hollywood by Hollywood you mean Burbank,
but today Boston might sound a little bit weird because
we're coming through some weird Boston transmissions.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
But uh, let's go. Let's go right to it. Sam.
There is a there's a there's a guy who wrote
a movie called Bucky, Bucky the Beaver or BUCkies. I
assume he's a beaver, but because anybody named Bucky is
is a beaver to me. But there's some some Bucky
(29:01):
movie guy says Molana was stolen from him, and he
I mean any movie. I will tell you any movie
that that Disney puts out. There are immediate cease and
desist letters every movie. Everybody is saying, you stole my
(29:21):
movie because and usually these people that are following these
lawsuits are not players in the Hollywood community. They're not
They're people who are trying to get in. And anybody
can go out and write a script. You can get
on the internet and say like, how do you write
a script? And you follow these easy steps and you go,
(29:43):
you got an idea, do these That's how I first
wrote my first one. Eight steps, just eight. This is
an eight part template that I used and worked out
quite well. But people then they send them to someone
(30:06):
and then they send them to Disney. That's why if
you send something to Disney, they're not even going to open.
It has to come from a credible agent or an
attorney that they know. And this is why this it's uh, actually,
the California Federal jury already said on Monday, or not Monday,
(30:28):
but just a couple of mon days ago that Disney's
uh film Mohana did not infringe on this guy's copyrights
so related to his planned movie about a teenage hero
in ancient Polynesia. And that's I guess you know.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
What similar theme?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I guess, yeah, yeah, So the jury rejected buck Woodhall's
argument that Disney unlockfully copied from a script and storyboards
and other content that he shared with a Film X
executive starting in the yearly two thousands for his film Bucky.
According to a spokesman for the Disney law firm, UH
(31:06):
now what al's eternal, Gustavo Lage, I don't know, said
they were disappointed with the verdict but would eventually evaluate
Bucky's options. And uh, this guy, Bucky lives in Baja
and Taos.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Baja, Buddy, Yeah, Baja.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Bucky first to Disney in twenty twenty, he said, he shared,
and what do we have to have for a copyright claim? Sam,
We will have to have number one substantial similarity, and
number two we have to have access if you can.
And the more the more similarity you have, the less
access you must prove. Okay, the less similarity you have,
(31:51):
the more access you must prove. Now, in this case,
he said, he shared his materials about this teenage surfer
who tied travels to ancient Polynesia with a film executive
named Jenny Marchik, whose stepsister is Woodhall's sister in law.
(32:12):
You're following me, yeah. The lawsuit said that Woodall in
twenty eleven sent a final draft script for Bucky to Marchik,
who is a film a film executive somewhere, and she
allegedly passed it off to Disney. He argued that Mohana
(32:32):
copied Bucky, citing similarities in their plots, settings, and other elements. Now,
Disney argued that they never saw what All's crazy script
in this and they didn't copy it, and they said
that they're not similar enough to support the claims, and
the court already said they weren't. And he asked it
(32:54):
for his lawsuit. He asked for what, one hundred million
dollars and the case, but he was too late because
he didn't do it in time. It was time bard
for some reason. So he could only go after their
video distribution of it because they're still selling copies of
the movie that they stole from him. But okay, so
(33:19):
that's that's that's what he's doing. He's already lost. But
he but he filed another case for more on a
two and that one he's asking for ten billion in
damages that.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
At some point, doesn't it become frivolous, Like you got
shot down on the first one, isn't necessary to launch
a tenfold attack on the second one.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Well, he launched the second one before the he lost
the first one. And this went to trial. So this
guy's nuts if he's going to spend all this money
and go to trial. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It went to a trial. But he thought he was
really going to cash in. He probably borrowed money from
relatives and because he's gonna, you know, finally prove they
took his thing. Thing is like, there's so many stories
(34:06):
floating around, there's so many options that Disney has, They
don't need to go around stealing stories from people. And
a lot of stories are very similar anyway, there are tropes.
That's why they call them tropes. They're similar story devices.
And so these are terrible cases ninety nine point nine
(34:27):
percent of the time, and they're usually filed by lunatics.
This person, you know, could believe in their heart of
hearts that this actually happened, but they should know do
some research to see how many of these things actually work.
And it looks like this guy didn't do any research
and just went off the seat of his pants from anger.
(34:50):
And then a lot of people think, it's like, you know,
I can't get anybody to to pay attention to me
and my creative genius. And then when they see some
thing like Moana or Moana to do well, it just
makes them crazy inside, I think, and they're going to
go they just they're gonna go after them. And you
know what, and also this this person will never ever
(35:11):
work in Hollywood, yeah, after after doing this, just never,
I mean, because this is not what it's just you know, it.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
It's just it's just you know, you you take your shot,
do some research on what happens and and who you know,
it's just Disney executive going to get this from some
weird person to go, oh, this is great.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I'm going to pass it along to who they'd have
to find a writer who wanted to base material for
a movie on stolen stuff or stuff that a that
a Disney executive gave them, which you know doesn't make
any sense either. Writers, you know, come up with their
own original stuff and they and they have you know,
Bay and they and they get it to Disney based
(35:53):
on prior success.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
So anyway, Yeah, that it's really when you're talking about
entire communities of people. I think that's like the main
focus that he has a teenage hero from Polynesia. There's
a lot of teenage heroes from Polynesia that you could
base stories off of there. It's like there's that you
(36:15):
can't I don't know any you can create stories off
of them.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, there's you know, it's just
like there can't just be one Polynesian hero story about
a kid. And plus I don't see I saw Morana.
This guy is a time traveler, a surfer time travel
and he goes back in time and hangs out an
ancient moa. I mean that doesn't. That doesn't remind me
of Moana.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
No, not just on the face of it.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, So that's like and so you you can't get
a lawyer to take a case like this on a contingency.
I don't believe unless he's a moron or she's a
moron or more off, whatever, take your pick. The person
would would The plaintiff has to pay PA for this,
this litigation, and this is hundreds and hundreds of thousands
(37:06):
of dollars. You rack up fifty thousand dollars in a
month easy, something like this. You got three lawyers working
on it, you know, trying to get this case put together.
The depositions, discoveries, interrogatories. This is just insane. So if
you have a movie you think Disney stole it, here's
my advice, write another movie and and and then you
(37:29):
can tell people this movie that I wrote over here
is so good as a writing sample, so good. Disney
made a movie very much like this right afterwards. And
then that person will say, oh, did you see them?
No I didn't, because you know, I'm a writer. I'm
not you know, looking to just run around and sue people.
Look at my other script. Here's my other script. It's
(37:50):
about a you know, a boy that finds a bag
of money, you know, whatever it is. But don't cry
over your over your one script that someone stole, because
they probably didn't steal it and they and you have
a life ahead of you. Now. This guy's life is
pretty much ruined financially and professionally, but we don't get
(38:11):
him on the show. Sam.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Let's let's see if you can find them
Speaker 1 (38:15):
All right, Joscote, leaving you with just a taste of
the greatest song ever written.
Joe Wescalante live from Hollywood. We will be doing two
hours of the business end of show business, like we
do every Sunday from five to seven here on k E.
I B. Sam, Engineer Sam. You are here with me.
Everything good. I'm coming to you from Boston on across
the street from Fenway Park. Sublime is playing at a
(00:33):
concert called Boston Calling tonight and that's over at Harvard,
a big festival on their athletic field. And then we
will first I'll probably go to a baseball game across
the street, but very first, I'm coming to you from Boston. Hey,
(00:57):
I'm three hours ahead. Okay, let's start with the Sean
Diddy trial. Over the past week, this high profile federal
trial seen some significant developments, primarily focusing on testimony from
key witnesses. They put that girl, Cassie Ventura, you know
(01:19):
who she is. She's the one that got kicked in
the video.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah. Yeah, she's the one that swung like the star
witnesses against him.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah. So she's got she has the she wrapped up
her thing, you know talking about She says she was raped, abused,
coerced into these freak offs. So far on the Sublime
weekend tour. There's been no freakoffs and but basically Combs
is facing a racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud
(01:50):
or coersion transportation for the purposes of prostitution. I assume
that's across state lines, and the prosecutors are areing that
he used his business empire to facilitate and hide criminal activities.
This trial will probably go on through late June. H
(02:12):
They you know, they show that video of the girl
getting beat up, showing that this is you know, what
he does. But it, I mean, that's just that's a
simple assault case. A They have to prove in this
thing that he used his business to do this, and
there was a conspiracy and a lot of people are
in on it. It's gonna be hard. So you know,
(02:34):
I'm not entirely sure he'll be convicted in this case
even though, but they and if he is convicted, I mean,
they're you know, I think he might get the bill
Cosby appeal situation from you know, appeelable issues at trial
because they're just throwing everything at him. So many people testifying.
(02:56):
One of the people testified this week was Kid Cuddy.
Are you a fan of Kid Cutty Sam.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I've seen him play live at Coachella a while ago.
He's got some decent songs. I know. The relationship between
he and Diddy is pretty turbulent.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, he used to have a decent car, but then
it was destroyed by a Molotov cocktail after he started
dating Cassie Ventura. And he's suggesting that Combs was involved
in this in a prior home invasion. So that's what
he's up there saying Combs basically threw a Molotov cocktail
at my car. And they had former personal assistants testifying
(03:33):
this week describing buying supplies for alleged sex parties. That's
the Babo oil and other stuff we heard about. And
then people who were in charge of cleaning up hotel
rooms after the freak offs and people testifying to Combs's
abusive behavior. And then though the girl, Cassie Ventura's mother testified.
(03:55):
She said that she was extorted for twenty thousand dollars
and they said they were going to threaten to release
explicit videos of Cassie after she began dating Kid Cuddy.
Now the defense, what's Diddy's defense? They are challenging Cassie
(04:16):
Venture's credibility, portraying her as a willing participant in a
toxic relationship and questioning her motivations, particularly regarding the twenty
million dollars settlement she received from Colmbs. Now, it is
very strange how she got this settlement from Comps for
twenty million dollars and then here she is. You know,
(04:38):
I don't know what the settlement was for. Well, I
guess in those settlements that you sign, like, they'll say,
here's twenty million dollars. You can't say anything about me. Ever,
unless the court of law tells you you have to
say something about me. So they usually have a sentence
in there too, saying unless you're like testifying in court
and you're compelled to, then then you have to do it. Ah.
(05:04):
Other news, Aaron Rodgers has weighed in did you hear
about this? An?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
No, I haven't. I got to hear about this though.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, he was. He was on Joe Rogan and he
openly questioned the silence of numerous A list celebrities, including
Lebron James and Aston Kutcher, who were known for having
attended these parties. I guess uh uh. His main point
is not to necessarily accuse his individuals of any wronging themselves,
(05:31):
but highlighting this like what he calls a culture of
complicity among the Hollywood elites that influential figures avoid speaking
out as serious allegations against did He mount and he
specifically names Lebron James because there was a resurface video
where James once stated it ain't no party like a
(05:52):
did He party, but he wishes he could take that back.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I get the feeling though a lot of times wherever
Lebron goes, his wife tends to go with him. So
if anything, if it may not be the act that
they engage in, but it's the act that they may
be aware of and aren't saying anything that Rogers is
bringing up now, I'm I think Rogers also has this
kind of proclivity to want to get as much attention
(06:19):
on himself as possible, So him mentioning Lebron James's name
is going to make a splash in the media. So,
oh yeah, that's clickbait right there.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah, it caught my eye. He he doesn't care. He
just doesn't give a dame.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Oh no, he doesn't need to. He has he's rich.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah. Is he still playing? Is he gonna play this season.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think he might be done. I think he might
be done. He might try to miss the amount of
comeback but diminished returns at this point.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Maybe that's why he spoke up.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, he tends he has a reputation for speaking up
in the media and saying things that end up becoming controversial.
So this is part for the course for Rogers. It
sounds like there's a reason why he continually has a
microphone put in front of him, because he's known for
saying stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay, Joe Rogan, that's the big one of the biggest
microphones in the world. Yes, okay, So we'll in the
coming up in a little bit, we're gonna talk about
the can Film Festival. And the can Film Festival is
where you know, the all the prestige films go to
get awards, and you know, there's a lot of it's
a movie market. Also people go there to to buy
(07:35):
and sell films for the upcoming year and they just
wrapped up. And so we'll talk about who won, who
are the big winners, and then we'll go to the
top movies for this week and see what Sam saw
and what I saw or what we didn't see. And
ready for traffic. Am I correct? Sam?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, we got a minute or two, but we can
go early.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Okay, Well we'll just go early and then we come back.
We will, we'll do those things. Joe Escalante Live this
time from Boston, not Hollywood. But I'm still I'm still
phoning it in Scalanta live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you
mean Burbank, but right now I'm really in Boston. This
(08:20):
week we wrapped up the seventy eighth Annual Can Film Festival, Sam,
were you there?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
No? Unfortunately I missed it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yes, I wasn't there either. But if you want to
celebrate a bunch of films you're never going to see,
it's a great place to go. And they had a
little sabotage. There was some kind of sabotage that it
shut off the power for the festival.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Really, yeah, like that, like somebody went and on like
hold the plug on it or what happened?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean I felt like doing that a bunch
of times after seeing movies like The Surfer. But I
was isn't me.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Have you ever been to can at all?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I haven't been to the festival. But they had a
music festival. There's there's a music festival they do during January, okay,
and I and I went to that a bunch. It's
called the Meet Him Festival. So you know, I've stayed
in all those hotels, I've uh, you know, been around
the exhibit hall. I actually I had an exhibit there
for for Kung Fu Records. And here's a kind of
(09:28):
funny story. One time I was at the Meet Them
Festival and you know, I'm built up my record label.
It's pretty big internationally. We got our big booth. You know,
people are coming by having meetings. We've got all their
you know, banners and displays, and and then on Sunday,
you know, I have my employees are manning the booth
(09:49):
and I'm you know, hopping on a plane to get
out of town. I think I had a plane to
go fly somewhere to to you know, like continue to
meet my wife or something, to do some traveling. And
as I was leaving, some French authority said where are
you going. I go, I'm going to catch a plane.
(10:10):
And I had a tag that said I was an exhibitor.
I had a badge that said exhibitor. And he goes,
you can't leave because the exhibit. The festival is not
over until four pm tonight or something at Sunday, and
I go, yeah, but I'm catching a plane. My employees
are manning the booth. Don't worry about it. And he's like, no,
(10:32):
you know, there's a little language situation going on. And
they put me in a room for like forty minutes
and interrogated me and kept bringing all these people saying
you cannot leave. I mean, it's this is what this
is what countries without like a bill of rights are.
They just like they will throw you in a room
(10:54):
and lock you there and tell you tell them the
information they need to have. And I was, I was,
you know, I'm going to miss my flight, so I'm
pretty mad and everything. Anyway, the next year, they they
gave me a really nice like suite at the Majestic
Hotel to make it up to me. But still that's
what goes on at places like that. But this week
(11:18):
Can Film Festival, the big winner is a movie that
you're not going to see and it was called it
was just an accident from Iranian filmmaker I'm not lying.
His name is Jaffar that.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I may actually go out of my way to see
this one.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Then, yeah, a scary Iranian filmmaker named Jeffar has won
the can Film Festival. All right, be careful. So he
won the Palm d'Or. And the US distributor is called Neon.
Have you seen that Neon? When you watch a movie
(12:01):
and that logo comes up.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I can't recall if I have, actually.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Because you're seeing Marvel movies. But anyways, it comes up
a lot. And this is like the sixth consecutive time
Neon has won this award. So I mean the prestigious films,
but you know, I don't know how they make money
on them. Other top honors were from this like a
Scandinavian film called Sentimental Value. And yeah, I looked at
(12:34):
all these I looked at the trailer sets. There's really
nothing out there that compels me to see it. There's
one called Serrat that looks me interesting. I don't know
that got the Jury prize, but it just, you know,
nothing that compelling coming out of there this year that
I could see. None of the winners anyway. Now, what
(12:54):
was going on in the US. The US, we have
what some people are saying might be the biggest box
office Memorial Day weekend in history. Sam, Can you believe
that in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Absolutely, I see the people herding into the parking lot
that I park my car, and usually for where I live.
It's crazy because everybody saw it coming. There's two big
movies that came out that everybody wanted to see. It
was the Mission Impossible movie and Lilo and Stitch.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, those are the top two movies of the weekend.
Early estimates due point to a record breaking Memorial Day holiday,
and Lilo and Stitch is potentially going to end up
at one hundred and seventy five to one hundred and
eighty million for the four day weekend, and close behind
(13:49):
I'm not that close is Mission Impossible, which is estimate
to pull in around seventy seven million over the weekend.
There's some holdovers too, contributing to it could be a
three hundred and twenty two million plus Memorial Day weekend overall.
That is Final Destination, Bloodlines, Thunderbolts, and Sinners.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Usually we see this kind of action as in the
theaters on fourth of July Memorial Day. It came in
that things are cooking early this year.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, so it'll be a very interesting to see the
totals It just shows you the movies are it's still
possible for movies not to die, and and we hope
they don't die. I saw a movie this week called
The Chronicles of a Wandering Saint. Okay, it's from Argentina,
(14:46):
and it's a very interesting movie. It's not really it's
hard to see right now, it'll start ending up on
your streaming services. Try to remember it. Chronicles of a
Wandering Saint. It's a crazy story. And I'm going to
give you a couple of spoiler alerts because you're never
going to see it. Anybody listening to this show is
probably not going to see it. It's about a woman
(15:07):
who is It's about church ladies. Okay, okay, church ladies.
They they're a special breed. I mean, I ideal church
ladies almost every day and you know, they're all in
their like sixties, and they hang out of the church
all the time, and they you know, help out. And
you know, the this Catholic church I'm talking about, they
(15:30):
they don't the church, you know, really couldn't function without them.
But they're also kind of a probably a pain in
the ass for the for the priests in other ways.
You know, they want everything done their way and they've
been there for seventy years. The priest comes in and out,
new priests, old priest, but in any case, one of them,
for some reason decides she wants to fake a miracle.
(15:58):
And why I don't know. It's it's unclear. That's like
one of the weak parts of the movie. You don't
really get the backstory. There's a lot of cute things
in it, and it's you know, subtitles from argent Argentina.
But she wants okay, so she's trying to see in
the process of faking miracle, this woman dies and then
(16:21):
we have to deal with whether she's going to have
it or not because she was a dedicated church lady
your whole life. You know.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Well, it depends on what the motivation was for fake
in the miracle. I'm guessing if it was something like,
we need to fake this miracle to draw attention to
starving kids that we have to feed for God, then okay.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Cool, Yeah, it was it was more on that, Like,
it was more I think it was so she could
feel special and and uh, I think it made her
ah like more appreciated around the church. It kind of
(17:03):
reminds me of the lady who who painted that Jesus
in Spain that ended up looking like a monkey. But
I actually went and visited last year. Uh it kind
of reminds me and maybe the lady that did that,
and uh, she wanted to feel special, so she thought,
I will fix this, this chipping painting of Jesus, and
(17:26):
it all went south. And that's what happened here. And
very interesting because they talk about what happens after you die,
and it is not inconsistent with Catholic beliefs what they're
doing after she dies, because there it is basically is
she is she going to become a saint. She lived
(17:48):
a saintly life. And then you get into the bureaucracy
of the afterlife, bureaucracy of of of of sainthood, and
the the the magisterium of the church does say like,
if if you are in heaven, you are a saint.
We talk about saints that are famous, but if you
make it to heaven, you are a saint. You made
it there because you lived your life as a saint.
(18:11):
You might not be famous, you might not be canonized
as a saint by the pope, but you are a
saint nonetheless. Otherwise you would never be in heaven. And
this is all becomes, you know, part of her after
death journey where she makes some poor decisions. I gotta
tell you. Sounds like yeah, so he's prone to poor decisions,
(18:32):
this woman. So Chronicles of a Wandering Saint. I highly
recommend it if you get a chance.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Let's go to break, Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Joiscalante Live from Hollywood. All right, Joa Scalante Live from Hollywood.
By Hollywood, you mean Boston, Sam, cold here?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, it's not too warm out here today either. It
was overcast. You know, we had some hot days and
then we went right back to the cold.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
That said, I hear it's cold here. I was at
Bottle Rock two nights ago, and that's a festival up
there in Napa. It was it was very warm and
beautiful and wonderful and uh, but now here I am.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
There's a lot of intellectual property cases going on. We
love these cases, Sam, We love these cases because you know,
people got their trademarks, they got their copyrights, and people
are always trying to steal. Basically, here's the latest in
an ongoing case. The parent company of Iconic toys, r
us Brand, has escalated its efforts against this company called
(19:47):
vapes are Us what vape our Us? Yes, its owners
in New Haven, Connecticut. And according to this pre litigation letter,
toys r US chooses the best is always the letter
that comes from the people like, how dare you use
our thing? Uh? They accuse VPRs of outright infringing and
(20:10):
diluting its famous trademark. The letter officially calls out vapor
us as bad faith and appropriation of true kids distinctive logo,
the r US designation, Uh, the signature backwards are and
even the color scheme and the bubble font. Can you
believe that, Sam, they took the bubble font?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Did they even bring in Jeffrey the giraft?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
No, but they have Baby G running around all drunk
on gummies and so they they of course, they accuse
VPRs of of attempting to profit from the you know,
the the the good will created by Jeffrey and Baby
(20:51):
G and GG you know, throughout the years. So this
is what happens to these things, you know. Choys US
is emphasizing they want absolutely no association with such business
selling smoking and drug related products, stating that such a
juxtaposition tarnishes their carefully crafted fund Safe Kid Friendly Image
(21:12):
Company asserts the actions constitute a trademark and trade dress infringement,
dilution of their mark, an unfair competition under both federal
and state laws, seeking a permanent injunction. SAM the halt
Vapius's use of their intellectual property, alongside significant financial damages
and the letter and previously demanded immediate cessation of the
(21:35):
infringing uses and citing past cases where they already destroyed
someone called smokes RS. So if you think we're kidding
around here, vapors, just read your history books. We've already
demolished you kinds of people. And you might think, Sam,
what happened to toys r US? I thought they went bankrupt?
(21:56):
How are these guys still you know, running around swiming?
And that's probably what these potheas stock. They probably thought, hey,
there's no toys dress anymore. We can use we can
use this. And but I mean to be honest, haven't
we seen a million RS businesses? You know, yeah, Burger's
RS or everything RS. And it's not like it's not then.
(22:19):
There were probably this stuff before there was toys RS.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah. I got the feeling that they were just doing
it because they I mean, I think they knew that
they went bankrupt, but they also know that the brand
still exists, and I think like some Macy's are now
having like their toy department be Toys or be Toys
r US. They haven't branded as that. Now. The problem
is that these guys are going around. I'm just guessing
(22:42):
that they just wanted to wait for a cease and
desist before doing anything. This gives them cloud.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well, I think they're screwed and this is going to
cost them a lot of money and there's nothing good
will come of it for them because they used to
the font a little bit. So someone bought Toys r
US like a few years ago. They bought the brand,
and they try to rehabilitate the brand. They opened up
a few new stores, like you say, they've got some
like stores within stores. They're trying to protect this brand
(23:12):
and they then they paid money for it and they
can't have these uh Vapors weren't in the good room.
So the problem with the problem that if they would
just call themselves vapor Us and not use the logo,
they probably never would have been on the radar of
Toys rs. But they wanted to use it. All because
they wanted to be clever. They were like, hey, make
(23:35):
it just like toys r US and they did and
they are hodido as they say in the Hispanic community.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Well, it would be like if a place, a weed
shop opened up, like an edible place called mcweed's and
use the exact same font and logo as McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, right, you can go mcweed's. You can have a
way to get away with that. But if you use
the same m and the arches and all that stuff,
that's when you get burned, because that's when it looks
at the look and the feel and now you're you
got and and the damages are are pretty bad in
these trademark cases, so it's nothing to screw around with.
(24:14):
There's another thing that's intellectual property case floating around. This
happens every once in a while celebrities take photos that
paparazzi take of themselves and then they use them on
their Instagram without permission and they get a lawsuit. So
Jennifer Lopez has two lawsuits right now. They allege that
(24:37):
she posted two copyrighted paparazzi photos of herself from a
pre Golden Globes party in January of twenty twenty five
to her Instagram and also to the X platform, and
the lawsuit claims that Lopez's unauthorized use of the images
was commercial in nature, serving to promote her public appearances,
(25:01):
boost user engagement, and highlight her fashion affiliation and brand partnerships.
These paparazzi guys are each seeking up to one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars in damages per photo. According to
plaintiff's Lopez's representatives had verbally agreed to a monetary settlement
(25:21):
after being contacted, but Lopez has reportedly not signed the
written agreement or paid the agreement the agreed upon him out.
This is not the first time Lopez has faced similar
copyright lawsuits for posting paparazzi photos of herself. But I
guess if she likes a photo of herself, she's just
gonna post. She's gonna post it, Sam. If she looks good,
(25:42):
she's just gonna do it.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I got the feelings she has like an intern or
someone controlling the account, and they were just too lazy
to find actual pictures of her that were taken by
her or by her people. So she went online, did
a Google search and just picked whichever pictures looked good
of her, regardless of who took it.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, you're probably right. So I mean, but it begs
a question. Paparazzi people, they're running around, they're bothering these people.
They take pictures and then and and Jennifer doesn't want
them to take these pictures. These guys sell those photos
to the tabloids. They make money. You can't even post it.
That's the outrage that most people would would say, this
is not fair. But this is the way our intellectual
(26:25):
property laws work is if you take a photo, you
own a copyright in that photo, and so you can
she can prevent you from using that for certain uses.
That's why she said. These guys are saying this is commercial.
Their use is commercial. That makes the damages more harder
(26:45):
to avoid because it's not editorial. Now, that would be
the opposite of commercial. Editorial would be like, well, look
at Jennifer Lopez walking out downtown with Ben Affleck. You
know this mean they're back together. That would be like editorial,
we're doing a story, but she's popular. But commercial will
(27:06):
be like putting it on a T shirt and trying
to sell it, making posters out of it. And these
guys might be a stretch, but they're saying she would say, look,
this is editorial. I mean just I just here's me
doing this. You know, it's just a picture of me.
I'm not trying to sell anything. I don't make any
money from my Instagram. They're going to do you.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Well, that's the thing. They may be looking at it
from the perspective of everything that she posts is marketable,
no matter if it's something that's personal private, or if
it's like associated with any business. Everything she does has
money attached to it.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah. So anyway, I don't feel sorry for these guys
one bit. But this is just the way it goes.
And we got another one that it's still ongoing. But
the save it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Hold on to it because we got to go to
a break.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I can't wait, Sam, Okay, let it out now, all right,
it's it has to do with Moanna, and not only Molana. Sayah,
but you guessed it Moana too. Oh yeah, not to
be confused with mohaw Dos, which is the nun sequel.
(28:18):
All right, j let's go out to a line from
Hollywood back after the traffic.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, joscants a line from Hollywood by Hollywood you mean Burbank,
but today Boston might sound a little bit weird because
we're coming through some weird Boston transmissions.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
But uh, let's go. Let's go right to it. Sam.
There is a there's a there's a guy who wrote
a movie called Bucky, Bucky the Beaver or BUCkies. I
assume he's a beaver, but because anybody named Bucky is
is a beaver to me. But there's some some Bucky
(29:01):
movie guy says Molana was stolen from him, and he
I mean any movie. I will tell you any movie
that that Disney puts out. There are immediate cease and
desist letters every movie. Everybody is saying, you stole my
(29:21):
movie because and usually these people that are following these
lawsuits are not players in the Hollywood community. They're not
They're people who are trying to get in. And anybody
can go out and write a script. You can get
on the internet and say like, how do you write
a script? And you follow these easy steps and you go,
(29:43):
you got an idea, do these That's how I first
wrote my first one. Eight steps, just eight. This is
an eight part template that I used and worked out
quite well. But people then they send them to someone
(30:06):
and then they send them to Disney. That's why if
you send something to Disney, they're not even going to open.
It has to come from a credible agent or an
attorney that they know. And this is why this it's uh, actually,
the California Federal jury already said on Monday, or not Monday,
(30:28):
but just a couple of mon days ago that Disney's
uh film Mohana did not infringe on this guy's copyrights
so related to his planned movie about a teenage hero
in ancient Polynesia. And that's I guess you know.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
What similar theme?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I guess, yeah, yeah, So the jury rejected buck Woodhall's
argument that Disney unlockfully copied from a script and storyboards
and other content that he shared with a Film X
executive starting in the yearly two thousands for his film Bucky.
According to a spokesman for the Disney law firm, UH
(31:06):
now what al's eternal, Gustavo Lage, I don't know, said
they were disappointed with the verdict but would eventually evaluate
Bucky's options. And uh, this guy, Bucky lives in Baja
and Taos.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Baja, Buddy, Yeah, Baja.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Bucky first to Disney in twenty twenty, he said, he shared,
and what do we have to have for a copyright claim? Sam,
We will have to have number one substantial similarity, and
number two we have to have access if you can.
And the more the more similarity you have, the less
access you must prove. Okay, the less similarity you have,
(31:51):
the more access you must prove. Now, in this case,
he said, he shared his materials about this teenage surfer
who tied travels to ancient Polynesia with a film executive
named Jenny Marchik, whose stepsister is Woodhall's sister in law.
(32:12):
You're following me, yeah. The lawsuit said that Woodall in
twenty eleven sent a final draft script for Bucky to Marchik,
who is a film a film executive somewhere, and she
allegedly passed it off to Disney. He argued that Mohana
(32:32):
copied Bucky, citing similarities in their plots, settings, and other elements. Now,
Disney argued that they never saw what All's crazy script
in this and they didn't copy it, and they said
that they're not similar enough to support the claims, and
the court already said they weren't. And he asked it
(32:54):
for his lawsuit. He asked for what, one hundred million
dollars and the case, but he was too late because
he didn't do it in time. It was time bard
for some reason. So he could only go after their
video distribution of it because they're still selling copies of
the movie that they stole from him. But okay, so
(33:19):
that's that's that's what he's doing. He's already lost. But
he but he filed another case for more on a
two and that one he's asking for ten billion in
damages that.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
At some point, doesn't it become frivolous, Like you got
shot down on the first one, isn't necessary to launch
a tenfold attack on the second one.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Well, he launched the second one before the he lost
the first one. And this went to trial. So this
guy's nuts if he's going to spend all this money
and go to trial. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It went to a trial. But he thought he was
really going to cash in. He probably borrowed money from
relatives and because he's gonna, you know, finally prove they
took his thing. Thing is like, there's so many stories
(34:06):
floating around, there's so many options that Disney has, They
don't need to go around stealing stories from people. And
a lot of stories are very similar anyway, there are tropes.
That's why they call them tropes. They're similar story devices.
And so these are terrible cases ninety nine point nine
(34:27):
percent of the time, and they're usually filed by lunatics.
This person, you know, could believe in their heart of
hearts that this actually happened, but they should know do
some research to see how many of these things actually work.
And it looks like this guy didn't do any research
and just went off the seat of his pants from anger.
(34:50):
And then a lot of people think, it's like, you know,
I can't get anybody to to pay attention to me
and my creative genius. And then when they see some
thing like Moana or Moana to do well, it just
makes them crazy inside, I think, and they're going to
go they just they're gonna go after them. And you
know what, and also this this person will never ever
(35:11):
work in Hollywood, yeah, after after doing this, just never,
I mean, because this is not what it's just you know, it.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
It's just it's just you know, you you take your shot,
do some research on what happens and and who you know,
it's just Disney executive going to get this from some
weird person to go, oh, this is great.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I'm going to pass it along to who they'd have
to find a writer who wanted to base material for
a movie on stolen stuff or stuff that a that
a Disney executive gave them, which you know doesn't make
any sense either. Writers, you know, come up with their
own original stuff and they and they have you know,
Bay and they and they get it to Disney based
(35:53):
on prior success.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
So anyway, Yeah, that it's really when you're talking about
entire communities of people. I think that's like the main
focus that he has a teenage hero from Polynesia. There's
a lot of teenage heroes from Polynesia that you could
base stories off of there. It's like there's that you
(36:15):
can't I don't know any you can create stories off
of them.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, there's you know, it's just
like there can't just be one Polynesian hero story about
a kid. And plus I don't see I saw Morana.
This guy is a time traveler, a surfer time travel
and he goes back in time and hangs out an
ancient moa. I mean that doesn't. That doesn't remind me
of Moana.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
No, not just on the face of it.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, So that's like and so you you can't get
a lawyer to take a case like this on a contingency.
I don't believe unless he's a moron or she's a
moron or more off, whatever, take your pick. The person
would would The plaintiff has to pay PA for this,
this litigation, and this is hundreds and hundreds of thousands
(37:06):
of dollars. You rack up fifty thousand dollars in a
month easy, something like this. You got three lawyers working
on it, you know, trying to get this case put together.
The depositions, discoveries, interrogatories. This is just insane. So if
you have a movie you think Disney stole it, here's
my advice, write another movie and and and then you
(37:29):
can tell people this movie that I wrote over here
is so good as a writing sample, so good. Disney
made a movie very much like this right afterwards. And
then that person will say, oh, did you see them?
No I didn't, because you know, I'm a writer. I'm
not you know, looking to just run around and sue people.
Look at my other script. Here's my other script. It's
(37:50):
about a you know, a boy that finds a bag
of money, you know, whatever it is. But don't cry
over your over your one script that someone stole, because
they probably didn't steal it and they and you have
a life ahead of you. Now. This guy's life is
pretty much ruined financially and professionally, but we don't get
(38:11):
him on the show. Sam.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Let's let's see if you can find them
Speaker 1 (38:15):
All right, Joscote, leaving you with just a taste of
the greatest song ever written.
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