Two eyebrow-raising Hollywood scandals popped up this week, one including an actual eyebrow! Must we make Tinseltown worry about anything other than budgets and insuring Lindsay Lohan?
First up, the battle between Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment and paparazzo Ronnie Adams, who snapped a photo of Robert Downey Jr. on the set of big-budet action flick Iron Man while the movie was still filming.
As producers for the big and small screen continually battle back against potential spoilers, the studio demanded Adams remove the photo from his website, where he had posted it. He refused, but they eventually got to his web host, who yanked his account.
And then … his photo resurfaced. In Iron Man.
That’s according to Adams’ lawsuit, which claims that after all its complaining, Marvel used the copyrighted photo – after removing Adams’ watermark – in a scene in the movie, showing a newspaper article headlined “Who is this Ironman.” Fiscally savvy Adams, filing suit against the studios, now wants to get remunerated for his unsolicited efforts in contributing to this “pivotal scene.”
So that’s one photo scandal. This next one features Tom Cruise and Nazis! And an eyebrow!
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Things are different in Europe. In Spain, maintaining a healthy body mass index is more important than free speech, and in Germany, belittling the Holocaust isn???t controversial so much as it is illegal.
The November issue of German Vanity Fair ran an interview with Horst Mahler, a neo-Nazi whose attitude toward the Jews is uncomfortably retro. Mahler denied the Holocaust in the piece, which is illegal in Germany. Now Vanity Fair is being sued by Arno Lustiger, a Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor.
Vanity Fair has offered no response beyond, ???Eak, this is awkward.???