Names in film/video
 

I watched the "behind the scenes" on the Fight Club DVD, and they mention paying a woman in Oklahoma, or somewhere, because her name was the same as the female lead. Do I have to pay everyone that has the same name as my characters? I've looked everywhere I can to find information about this, and I'm lost. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Does any of this make sense?

chris kirby

What?? That's ridiculous!

Isn't this the reason that every motion picture has a legal block
at the end stating that every story, name, place etc. that means
something in the real world is purely coincidental and blah blah,
so that they cannot be sued? I mean, try and makup a name that
no-one has in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD (WWW).... right...

Bad-guy-hasdf2349asdfyh ... original enough?

I dug up a copy and watched it again. The reason they paid was she was the only person in the country with that name. Had there been many more people with that name it wouldn't have been an issue, in the direstor's words. Answered my own question, thanks.

What was the name?

and did she have copyright to her name?haha

These are the sorts of issues covered by "errors and ommisions insurance" taken out by big production companies. It's the reason why, as a screenwriter, I try not to get too attached to character names. It's entirely possible that I will be asked to change them.

Regards

On a similar note. There's this TV series that runs here called Shortland Street and in it is a character called Nick Harrison. A friend of my wife's (called Nick Harrison) was approached by the studio when they started making the show to ask permission to use his name?

Wierd.

Nick Harrison doesn't sound too unique to me...Who knows.

The character's name was Marla Singer, if you care.

Ah... good old Marla. Fun character. Especially if you watched the
delete scenes on the DVD

(snort of disgust at the world)

D'ya think it's too late to change my name to Han Solo?

I think that's taken, but Chewbacca is available.

Jeff

I am not a stalker or anything. But I just couldn't believe there was only 1 marla singer in the country sooo...

I took 30 seconds out of my already boring day to do a yahoo people search.

It came up with 7 Marla Singers...hmmmm ;-)

If you care:
http://teaser.ussearch.com/teaser/te...rchFName=Marla

I know its so interesting