Entirely Fictitious

[4thofeleven]

You know those disclaimers at the end of films, “The events of this film are entirely fictitious, any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental, etc.”? What, exactly, is the point of them? I can’t imagine they carry much legal weight; if someone seriously thinks your film is slandering them, the fact that you stuck a little note at the end of the credits saying that you’re not slandering anyone probably isn’t going to meaningfully help your defence… Plus, even if the disclaimers ever had any real benefits, I have to assume that the fact that every single film has an identical disclaimer has probably destroyed whatever meaning they had.

I bring this up only because I happened to notice the other night that Dreamgirls, of all films, has such a disclaimer. I would like to see someone argue with a straight face that the resemblances to real people in that film are purely coincidental…

Comments

[emavalexis.livejournal.com]

Apparently they are an actual form of legal protection and they carry much weight, something that is as surprising to me as I'm sure it is to you. Like you said, in a film like Dreamgirls, which is, in and of itself, seemingly a pretty clear lift directly from true-life events and people, it seems rather preposterous (though I suppose, from a legal standpoint, one could argue that it was the play that lifted those true-life events and people and the movie just adapted the play).

Heh. Either way, yeah, it's a tad ridiculous.