NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - If you are staging a theatrical adaptation of the film "Point Break", 1991 and cannot obtain Keanu Reeves playing a federal agent who goes undercover as a surfer, what are you doing? The answer is in part the subject of legal action.
Playwright Jamie Keeling had its own solution to this problem. Feeling that the role should be played by players who are not trained and unrehearsed, Keeling had audience members to try the role by reading from cue cards. The trick was a success and was one of the few items which is a parody version called "Point Break Live!" a success as he toured the nation.
But the producer of the live version, new Rock, has ceased to pay royalties Keeling. He repudiated an agreement with Keeling, taking the position that Keeling had no right to its script because it was based on the film.
Keeling then sued, saying that it registered a copyright on his script with added elements.
In response, new Rock told a New York Federal Court last month trying to Keeling "to subvert copyright claiming an exclusive protected property of a parody without ever get permission for this copyright property derived from the owner of the work that is being parodié."
On Tuesday, the New York federal judge, Thomas Griesa rejected this argument and said that the prosecution could proceed.
You want evidence that the laws of copyright can get fairly complicated when it comes to issues such as the parody? Judge Griesa noted: "Creators of derivative works often save their own copyright - without permission of the original copyright holder - and then pursue those who create works derived later from the same origin, but whose later derivative works are supposed to be too close to the earlier derivative work and thus infringe on the derivative work" "previous".
It is a mouthful, but essentially, this means that a person who creates a parody can pursue someone else who is also a parody.
New Rock claimed that to make a parody was merely a "fair use" to a claim of copyright violation, but judge Griesa has more respect for the kind of parody, saying that parodies are copyrightable in effect as long as they are original.
The next step in the case may be to discover if the recruitment of members of the audience to play Keanu playing Johnny Utah passes gathering. The next step may be staging a live version of this case.
(Edited by Zorianna Kit)
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