December 17th Sundance most talked about Documentary CATFISH hits the UK/Irish cinemasbut now it from US that the movie possibly may not all its seems to be and faces a possible lawsuit.Since the movie premiered at Sundance 2010 it has been musch talked about, critics giving it rave review but now Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the movie is more fictional rather than non-fictional and alot of the movie is staged and acting.
Catfish is a documentary created by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman with the movi focusing on Schulman's brother Nev and his facebook/internet relaionship with a girl from Mid western USA and what they find when they visit the girl, is well... shocking. But who is suing the filmmakers and distributors Universal Pictures & Relativity Media? Its Threshold Media who own the rights to a song used by Amy Kuney, who is protesting the movie's use of her song "All Downhill From Here," which Nev's online girlfriend passess of as her own song, Eriq Gardner of THR says:
For some time now, Threshold has been attempting to get filmmakers to pay licensing fees for the song. According to the new copyright infringement lawsuit, the producers have rejected doing so. According to Threshold's LA lawyer, Neville Johnson, the producers claimed that since the song was part of a real-life documentary, it was a "fair use" of the copyright.Since the documentary was picked up the marketing was good in the sense t was only spoon feeding you enough footae to make you go to check the movie out due to its cliffhangar, but if things go Threshold Media way the truth of this documentary (or will it be mockamentary) may now come out and actually could question what could you consider to be documentary and whats not.
But what if those were staged scenes - and filmmakers knowingly exploited a copyrighted song? Wouldn't the "fair use" defense crumble?
