The SuperCandid Podcast: legal

It's the most popular Christian book series I can remember. Its already spawned several successful movies, and one of the most unusual video games ever.

Well, you might have wondered why there hasn't been a new Left Behind movie in a while. You might also wonder why such popular books would be relegated to no-budget direct to video affairs. So did co-author Tim Lahaye. Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins refused to put their names on the movie, Alan Moore-style. So much so that Lahaye sued Cloud Ten pictures over what he said was a breech of contract over the length, budget (and probably an unspoken dispute over quality). The lawsuit has held up production on any further Left Behind movies.

At long last, the lawsuit is settled, in a rather unusual way. LaHaye has been granted the rights by a judge to remake the Left Behind movies with a new studio. However, if he does not exercise these rights in a certain length of time, then the rights will revert to Cloud Ten and they will be able to continue their series.

I'd say that this is actually kind of a slap in the face to the authors, since it places restrictions on them and gives the advantage to the film company who was being sued in the first place. Anyway, one way or another we're getting more Left Behind movies. Maybe we should finally review the earlier movies so we can be ready.

(News Blaze)

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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has been making a lot of news lately. It was the number 10 movie over the weekend(admittedly in a weekend of lousy movies; No. 1 was The Forbidden Kingdom, a Jet Li/Jackie Chan film, by way of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3-as much as I like Jackie Chan, and occasionally enjoy Jet Li, this looked like crap to me). They are getting enough recognition that the movie dominates the entire first page of Google results for "expelled."

Anyway, I've been following this movie for a while, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it. We were supposed to review it for the podcast last friday, but Don had to go and take a vacation that weekend. So we'll have something next week, Lord willing.

However, I did want to post this interesting news bit, since it's not really related to anything we might be reviewing in the film. The producers of the movie have been hit with two legal complaints regarding material being used without permission in the film.

First, back on April 9 the producers of the wonderful "Inner Life of A Cell" video sent a letter to the producers of Expelled demanding that the animation segment in the film that depicts cellular functions be removed. The charge was expanded to a lawsuit on April 14. You can see a side by side comparison here, and while they do look very similar, I think that if the producers of Expelled can show that they simply based their animation on the same scientific data, then they should be in the clear. However, cutting edge science does have lots of tricky legal issues, and some of it may itself be copyrighted, so this could be a sticky issue. The response from the producers says simply that the claims are "unfounded" and does not elaborate.

The other one seems like it could actually get the producers in trouble. Yoko Ono and the rest of John Lennon's heirs have filed a lawsuit to bar the filmmakers from continuing to use Lennon's song "Imagine" in the film. The producers have countered with a statement on their website, which says:

"Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry. "

As a filmmaker, I have some experience with the fair use doctrine that the producers are trying to use to defend their use of the film. I haven't seen the film yet, but I think that they have a very shakey case. I'm no lawyer, but based on my readings of fair use law, it seems that it is permissalbe to use copyrighted material if you are making a statement about that material.

For example, in a parody film that I made a few months ago, I use a movie trailer and the audio from a television commercial to make a statement on the strange and ludicrious similarities between the two. I initially considered using on the song from the commercial, since that song has been associated so strongly with the brand, but the problem with that is that by divorcing the song from the context it is merely a song. I would still be making a statement about the movie trailer, but what, if any, statement would I be making about the song? I might be able to defend it based upon the song's strong association with the commercials, but it would be a bit of a stretch.

This is a problem that filmmakers often have involving music and fair use. Often, filmmakers will legitimately use video material to make a commentary by, say, juxtaposing video of violence on the news with complaints of violence in video games. This is legitimate, "fair use" of the material. However, if they put a popular rock song over the video, that would be copyright violation, unless they were somehow making a statement about the song as well. I'll have to pay attention in the film to how Lennon's music is used to see if it seems fair use to me.

I do think that any film that markets and positions itself as Christian should be engaged in any legally questionable activities. Christians should be careful in their exercise of freedom not to cause others to stumble. Hopefully the producers of Expelled will be forthright and honest about these issues.

For a brief overview of Fair Use, watch this excellent video: