(no subject)

[spatch]

And in film news, it appears that the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Sing-Along screenings have been lawyered to death. While Clinton McClung (formerly of the Coolidge in Brookline, who'd done a great deal of excellent midnight movie programming) had received permission from Criterion to use the episode at the Coolidge, he'd expanded on the idea and done screenings in New York and had ten more theaters set up. Fox lawyers got wind of that, said "Uh, no" and have served up the Cease & Desist on a silver platter. So if you wanna get together and do "Once More, With Feeling" live, best find a friend with a humongous television set and plenty of room.

I've never really cared much for the whole Buffy phenomenon, myself, and I didn't care to attend any of those screenings, but I know plenty of people who had fun with it, and it's sad to see one of the nicer theater gimmicks in recent memory go the way of the C&D -- especially when it really did amazingly well in the Coolidge midnight shows. I've heard the showings routinely sold out and when the Coolidge's main auditorium sells out, that's sure some box office boffo.

If Fox had any sense, it'd take a cue from the sing-along versions of MGM's Wizard of Oz sing-alongs or even The Sound of Music -- hell, that's a Fox property already!! -- and officially license the screenings, but industry execs and their pet sharks in Legal aren't always the paragon of common sense. Granted, an episode of a television show isn't on par, universal brand recognition-wise, with the Wizard of Oz, but in the right markets (and Clinton totally knew this) the Buffy sing-along event would rake in the money hand over fist.

So it goes.

Comments

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

When we did the Buffy parody play a few years back (and Buffy was still on the air then!) we were *really* careful about who we advertized to because we knew we didn't have the rights to it. As someone who's successfully cheated the Buffy Empire out of royalties, trust me when I say, you need to know how to play the game. They got greedy, and they lost.