Those who have seen Midnight in Paris will know that Gil, the main protagonist, makes several visits to the past, where he converses with writers, artists, film directors and other such folk.
If this doesn’t describe one of the most useless law suits of all time, I’d like to hear of a more feeble one:
A clearly exasperated federal judge dismissed copyright claims over the use of a nine-word William Faulkner quotation in the Woody Allen film “Midnight in Paris.”
Faulkner is one of many 1920s luminaries to whom “Midnight in Paris” pays homage as its modern-day protagonist Gil Pender finds himself back in what he thinks of as a societal Golden Age.
“The past is not dead,” Pender says at one point. “Actually, it’s not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party.”
The full Faulkner quotation, from “Requiem for a Nun,” is “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Faulkner Literary Rights, as administrator of the author’s literary estate, sued Sony for disgorgement of profits from the 2011 film, plus damages, last year.
Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Mills in Oxford, Miss., threw the case out Thursday.
The judge ruled it was a case of ‘fair use’ and said that ‘the film indeed helped the plaintiff and the market value of Requiem if it had any effect at all’. As a blogger at Outside the Beltway (via which) comments, Faulkner is actually credited with the relevant words.