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March 16th, 2017
On March 16th, 2017 the following information was posted on the Hollywood Reporter website:
'Buckaroo Banzai' Creators Claim MGM Infringed Copyright by Shopping TV Series
by Eriq Gardner
Earl Mac Rauch and Walter Richter say in court papers that the early 1980s deal with MGM was a limited one.
In the second chapter in the legal fight over Buckaroo Banzai rights, Earl Mac Rauch, who wrote the 1984 cult film about a neurosurgeon/rock star who saves Earth from malevolent aliens, and Walter Richter, who directed the picture, bring counterclaims against MGM over its plans to make a television version.
According to original complaint filed by MGM in November, Rauch and Richter have gotten in the way of reprising Buckaroo's adventures for Amazon Studios with Kevin Smith at the helm. After The Hollywood Reporter broke news about the litigation, Smith bowed out. Nevertheless, there's still plenty to resolve, with both sides seeking declaratory relief on ownership and the creators also now adding a counterclaim for copyright infringement.
Rauch says that in 1973, he originally pitched Richter on the idea for a series of interlocking, episodic adventures. Originally, the main character was named "Buckaroo Bandy," initially conceived as a country-western singer and jet-car driver.
In the years that followed, Rauch began writing plots for various episodes, including Buckaroo's race to defeat Mister Cigars, one involving a King Kong-like robot owned by a vicious cartel and another that included the discovery that Adolf Hitler really didn't die in a Berlin bunker but had escaped disguised as a woman and was hiding out in a forbidding Ecuadorian jungle populated by gigantic, hairy humans.
By 1981, Richter says he had formed an independent production company that had over 200 pages of the Buckaroo Banzai saga. It was being likened to Indiana Jones.
Richter's team pitched MGM.
The creators say that MGM was only interested in acquiring a single episode and specifically passed on acquiring Rauch's larger intellectual property rights to the Buckaroo canon.
"All that [MGM's] predecessors acquired was memorialized in an April 9, 1981, agreement, which specifically provides for Counter-Defendants’ predecessor in interest to 'borrow' Rauch as a writer-for-hire from his personal holding company, Johnny B. Good Inc., to write a screenplay and two revisions based on a single episode he had previously referenced in the Agreement...," states the counterclaim (see here).
Naturally, MGM has its own view.
In its own complaint, the studio emphasized the services Rauch and Richter provided were on a "work-made-for-hire" basis with MGM's predecessor maintaining creative control over the Buckaroo Banzai project and contributing copyrightable elements. Alternatively, MGM claims that it was assigned "all exclusive rights under copyright to the screenplay and motion picture, and the characters, plots, themes, dialogue, mood, settings, pace, sequence of events, and other protected elements therein."
After the release of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, with an ending in the form of a message to audiences, "Watch for the next adventure of Buckaroo Banzai — Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League," certain rights (although obviously disputed in scope) passed to different companies including United Artists, Credit Lyonnais Bank-Netherlands, Polygram Filmed Entertainment, Seagrams Universal and back to MGM. And at one point, Warner Bros. was interested in doing something with Buckaroo Banzai. A clouded chain of title may have dissuaded them.
Both sides seem to wish to reboot the property, but they aren't working together.
With MGM attempting a television series, Rauch and Richter are crying foul.
"In its creation, production, marketing, and advertising of the television series described herein, Counter-Defendants have copied the protectable elements of Counter-Claimants’ intellectual property rights in and to the world of Buckaroo Banzai and its characters, themes, other plots, other stories, dialogue, mood, settings, pace, sequence of events and other protected elements, including but not limited the Buckaroo Banzai Copyrights," writes the creators' attorney Kenneth Keller.
They are demanding a permanent injunction as well as available monetary damages.
December 13th, 2016
On December 13th, 2016, the following information was posted on the The Front website:
W.D. Richter shares his side of the new Buckaroo Banzai
franchise dispute.
By JJ Stratford
W.D. Richter is the director of the 1984 cult docudrama, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension! Despite his brilliant work bringing Banzai and his offbeat world to life with writer Earl Mac Rauch, MGM Studios intends to create a spinoff series without their permission. Now living "at the end of a dirt road in Vermont," he talks to The Front about these legal battles, filmmaking that defies all logic, how a (legitimate) sequel might go down, and finally answers the question: "Why's there a watermelon there?"
In 1984 director W.D. Richter and writer Earl Mac Rauch brought The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension to life in a film that would bomb at the box office but become a deep cult classic. One that would go on to influence the future video store generation with the mantra "No matter where you go, there you are".
The hero "Buckaroo Banzai" is a brilliant neurosurgeon dissatisfied with a life devoted solely to medicine. He roams the planet studying martial arts and particle physics, amassing an eccentric group of friends and hard-rocking scientists, The Hong Kong Cavaliers. With his highly engineered Jet Car he can break any dimensional barrier while remaining cool, calm, and collected.
Earl Mac Rauch created the character in the 1970s. For almost a decade before the movie went into production, he built a meticulously detailed world surrounding Buckaroo. The first person to believe in the film's potential was W.D. Richter, who optioned the first Buckaroo Banzai script by helping Mac pay his rent while he worked on the screenplay. He later went on to direct the motion picture and today remains to be one of Buckaroo's most loyal fans.
Despite conceiving of Banzai and his offbeat world, MGM intends to create a spinoff television series without their permission. (Evil! Pure and simple, from the Eighth Dimension!) Now living "at the end of a dirt road in Vermont," W.D. Richter talks to The Front about legal battles with MGM, filmmaking that defies all logic, how a (legitimate) sequel might go down, and finally answers the question: "Why's there watermelon there?"
JJ STRATFORD: I read in the Hollywood Reporter that MGM filed a complaint in California Federal Court against you and Earl Mac Rauch over the rights to the Buckaroo Banzai franchise- the day before Thanksgiving, this year.
W.D. RICHTER: Yes. Well, I'm learning that filing is not the same as notifying the person who has just been... I don't know how to put it... challenged?
So, when did you first hear about a Buckaroo Banzai TV show happening?
I learned the same time anybody else learned. I have a lot of contacts in the world of Buckaroo Banzai. It's a great group of fans, who maintain the Banzai Institute website and Facebook page. One of them emailed me earlier this year and said, "Did you know that Kevin Smith is developing a Buckaroo Banzai TV series for MGM?
I live at the end of a dirt road in Vermont and I don't get that buzz. We waited to see what Kevin Smith was gonna do, and I thought for sure that he would contact Mac Rauch to get him involved. I never expected to be contacted because I'm not an active director now, but Mac is an active writer and is writing books and doing all sorts of stuff. But no call ever came; no contact was ever made.
So, kind of with resignation, we said "I guess, nobody's gonna invite us to participate; let's look at Mac's contract because there are usually residuals in it." We had a good lawyer look at it and they think MGM had simply forgotten to acquire the property. They certainly did not reference the other four stories Mac originally pitched- the Buckaroo Banzai sampler, a group of stories about this small cluster of continuing characters
I consider Buckaroo Banzai to be a realm full of limitless potential, along the lines of Harry Potter. The 1984 film Adventures Across the 8th Dimension! is only a fraction of the Banzai-world. Even within the film itself there are references to the Banzai realm existing beyond the movie. In the opening scene somebody steps on a Buckaroo Banzai comic book and later, mental patients are playing the Buckaroo Banzai video game. These scenes prove that there is a lot more mythology beyond what's seen in the movie
If [controversial Hollywood producer] David Begelman had believed sufficiently in the overall concept, he would have bought the entire universe of Buckaroo Banzai. Instead he said this, "I don't get this thing! Let's develop one script and see how it turns out."
Mac Rauch is kind of an underdog version of JK Rowling. Like Rowling, Mac is gifted with a crystal clear vision of fantastic new worlds. Too bad the studio or his publisher didn't bank on him.
That's an interesting example, because who knows what her original contract said? Maybe they were prescient enough to actually buy the world of Harry Potter, but the situation here is that the studio didn't buy the world. They only bought the original treatment which was 'Lepers from Saturn', which mutated into 'Lectroids from Saturn,' and which changed to, 'Lectroids from Planet 10,' which eventually become 'The Adventures Across the 8th Dimension!"
Let's start from the beginning, before all of this legal noise. All through the 1970s you were a young screenwriter working your way up the Hollywood ladder. How did you first come across the tales of Buckaroo Banzai?
We were all sort of stumbling around at the time, trying to figure things out. Films were changing. We came in at the beginning of The Godfather, so the movies were getting edgier and more interesting. I did a lot of rewrites. I did adaptations that didn't get made. Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dracula almost occurred back-to-back, not that they were wildly successful movies, but it raised my visibility. At the same time Susan, my wife, and I were looking around for talented writers to see if there was any way we could push them forward. We contacted Mac and he moved out to LA . He started talking about this guy Buckaroo Bandy, who he wanted to write about; a country western action hero.After a while, Mac was talking about it so much I said, "I don't know where you're going with this, but you should write it." Susan and I optioned the first Buckaroo Banzai screenplay, unwritten. We gave Mac option money so he could pay his rent and write a script, and then we would see what it amounted to. He wrote five episodes; one was a full screenplay, one was a 57-page treatment, others would be a 25-page script where you could tell where the narrative was going but you would never anticipate how Mac would get there.
The screenplay for Adventures Across The 8th Dimension! is very packed. There are layers of jokes, meaning, and visual references.
Not only did Mac build the realm, he built the banter. There are so many classic lines from the screenplay. He is a truly unique human being. And he's the shyest guy I know too, so this is something I've never been able to get my head around.
He wrote his first novel in high school. Then he took a bus into New York City, with the manuscript, called, "Dirty Pictures from the Prom," and left it on desks in publishing houses, in the sort of places where manuscripts never go anywhere but into the waste basket. But this is a remarkable work. The title is just Mac being ridiculously provocative; it has almost nothing to do with the book. It was a wildly complicated story. You would never think that an 18-year-old had written it.
Critics of Buckaroo Banzai tend to note that the plot drifts, but do movies truly have to have a clear beginning, middle and end?
People have been trained that way. All screenwriting manuals talk about is a three-act play, an exciting event, all that stuff. Mac doesn't write that way, he just sits in front of the page and makes up a story as he goes along, and then he'll rewrite it. He does a lot of rewrites.
The script is so rich in detail that it doesn't matter.
It does take a more creative imagination as a viewer to accept that, without being thrown by it. I'm more stimulated by the unknown. When I don't really get where something's going, I think it's good. I stay with it and it's delightful when it surprises me. Surprise is one of the things that Mac and I spoke about. Don't be concerned if you're gonna get your hero into a corner. Writing by numbers, with outlines that exist before the script's due and before the characters breathe, isn't creative. We've been taught to know exactly what the characters are gonna do next.
While Buckaroo Banzai is centered around the hero, he's surrounded by this really unique group of friends who represent a diverse and harmonious vision of humanity.
It was imperative to me that being on set felt exactly like what you've just described. All these people were collaborating on this grand adventure and being encouraged to take real chances in their areas of expertise. In the film, the president of the United States is given a "short form" declaration of war.
...Too real!
Yes! That came from a prop guy who read the script, and knew somebody had to walk in with an envelope and hand it to the President. I just assumed it would be a blank piece of paper or something with gibberish typed on it, but I try to encourage people to go out on a limb. So, in the rehearsal, the prop guy delivers the envelope, the President opens it up and he starts laughing. I said, "What are you laughing at?" He shows us, 'Declaration of War: The Short Form.' So we added a close up. I have to thank Eric Nelson, the prop guy, for getting the spirit of it and then enhancing it by doing that.
I didn't think that up, Mac didn't, it just came out of the energy of the group, and that's the model for the Banzai Institute, for the Hong Kong Cavaliers, the Blue Blaze Irregulars, it is the way the world should work.
Does the sequel, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League actually exist or is it just a concept?
Oh, yeah. Mac has more information on the villain Hanoi Xan in some ways, than on Buckaroo Banzai! Hanoi Xan happens to be running a very illegitimate criminal organization, the World Crime League, with tentacles all over the world, and he runs it from a very strange lair. He's a freakish kind of crazy guy who may not be mortal.
There are scenes in there that are pretty funny, where he's standing there, trying to pitch this idea as if it's some kind of wacky startup company, to these sinister people. And watching on a video monitor is Hanoi Xan, somewhere in the building, sitting in this strange bathtub full of snakes... you're into deep villainy there! It's kind of spooky. You have the tension between the ludicrous side of Lizardo, who's completely out of control and has probably invented something that won't ever work, and Hanoi Xan who you feel could squash him like a bug. Xan has his minions running all over the world, pulling a lot of very dark strings. Buckaroo's going to have to take on Hanoi Xan, sooner rather than later...
Buckaroo Banzai was not a commercial success but it is a cult favorite and beloved by the fans. How does that sit with you?
There's nothing wrong with having a wildly successful film commercially. It frees you to do more stuff and it gives you financial security. The most important thing I did in Hollywood was make Buckaroo Banzai, and the fact that it's excited so many generations of people, well, that's what art should be doing all the time. If you like Buckaroo Banzai, I suspect you're gonna do good things, because it's a good-hearted movie and it advocates cooperation, fearless exploration, crazy possibilities, and has a strange sense of humor about the way this planet works. We might as well be able to laugh at it as well as take it seriously.
Where did the line, "No matter where you go there you are," come from?
Mac put it in the script, and I've learned over the years that he just makes stuff up. He reads the weirdest books, and whether he read that somewhere or not, I don't know. There is also a dark version of it. It's Lizardo who says, "Character is what you are in the dark." It sounds like a sinister statement, but it's actually true. When you're alone, and you can be as bad as you want, that's the test of your character. Buckaroo is saying a similar thing. He wants you to accept who you are and remember that, "We don't have to be mean, 'cause no matter where you go, there you are
What people respect about Buckaroo is knowing that he didn't always have it easy.
Things go badly for him. His parents were murdered, and so was his first wife. But when he's confronted with these things, I think the whole spirit of the Banzai institute and the movie, and everything Mac's written is, "Don't Panic." You're relying on your creativity half the time, but you're also a reasonable human being, and you rely on your powers of deduction. There's a powerful sense of rationality and penetrating intellect that is at the heart of who Buckaroo is, and that's why he's able to attract all these interesting people around him. He's not an asshole. He's just a genuine guy endowed with all these amazing intellectual abilities, so that he can handle five careers simultaneously, but never brag about them. It comes gracefully to him.
Why is Perfect Tommy so perfect?
Perfect Tommy might seem to have a very limited intelligence but he supposedly designed the Jet Car's suspension system, that's why when he says, "She'll hold, don't worry, she'll hold." You have to feel, "My God, this guy built that car." On the other hand, why is his hair that color? Perfect Tommy had a dark history as a "knight of the broken boulevards", and the Banzai institute is supposed to be a second chance for extraordinary people who've screwed up their lives. If they come there and work their way into Buckaroo's inner circle, they'll realize maybe more than their full potential.
What's up with Lizardo's metabolism? And how did he get addicted to electricity?
Lectroids eat electricity. I'm not sure of the biology, but I know that that's why this guy's sucking on a battery in the back of the van Bigboote's driving. Somehow nourishment is coming through the electricity, whether it's just stimulating them and allowing them to metabolize other stuff they've eaten, I didn't get into that alien biology. But Lizardo is inhabited by Lord Whorfin who was somebody who probably had a massive appetite for electricity. That's why he's in an insane asylum 'cause he's not one person anymore and he's using way too much electricity in that place.
The new president is on line one and wants to talk to Buckaroo. Will he take the call?
Buckaroo is not a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, but Buckaroo is a practicing neurologist. He could look at the president's brain to see if there's some abnormal growth in there pressing on things. Buckaroo could probably go in there and fix it.
One crucial question... what is that watermelon doing there?
Well, we were extremely concerned that Begleman was gonna shut the movie down. Every time we did something we were proud of, he would hate it. He really hated Buckaroo's red glasses, he said, "a hero doesn't wear red glasses." He hated that there was a certain anarchic logic that he couldn't get onboard with. So the watermelon is there just to see if he had gotten so disgusted with us that he wasn't watching our dailies anymore. And it proved to be true, because early on in the movie, he would've shut it down for that little moment of the watermelon. But, he'd given up in despair.
Wait, that's why the watermelon is there? It's a symbol of artistic defiance?
The production designer, driving into work, went by one of those roadside fruit stands and bought a bunch of watermelons. He said, "I don't know what I'm gonna do with these things." During that day, we were blocking out little bits, and wandering around this abandoned factory and there's this amazing machine sitting there, looking as if it's ready to crush something. So I said, "Let's put a watermelon in that." And then they improvised those lines of dialogue, and it became extraordinary.
We never heard a word about it from the studio, so that was our way of recklessly saying, "They're not even looking at our dailies anymore, and we're far enough into the movie that they won't shut it down, so let's just do whatever we want." And that was it, it was license to make the movie we wanted to make. To defy all logic, and just be.
This gives more meaning to the fact that the watermelon is being squeezed...
It's a symbol of getting squeezed, but it's also a test about
the strength of
the watermelon. It can take the pressure. It's saying, "Go
ahead. Squeeze me, I
can take it." I was ready with an answer in case the phone rang;
it was
semi-logical in the context of the story, and it was that the
Banzai Institute
is involved in the development of products, one being a strain
of watermelon
that can be airlifted and dropped by parachute into areas where
people are
starving, and it won't explode on the ground. Watermelon is, in
fact, a very
nutritious large, red, wet object. It was one of many tests
going on in the
exciting Banzai Institute. Nobody ever asked, so we never had to
tell anybody
anything, other than, "I'll tell you later."
November 28th, 2016
On November 28th, 2016, the following information was posted on the Deadline Hollywood website:
Kevin Smith Says He's "No Longer Involved" In 'Buckaroo Banzai' TV Series
There hasn't been a single ruling in MGM's copyright lawsuit for a Buckaroo Banzai TV series, but there's already two clear casualties: Kevin Smith and the show itself, at least for now. After the studio filed legal paperwork November 23 against the 1984 movie's director W.D. Richter and writer Earl Mac Rauch, the Clerks creator went online today to declare "I'm no longer involved" with the proposed Amazon TV series version.
"This is not what I signed up for," Smith said of the legal issues while praising MGM in other respects (watch the video below). "I was caught off-guard [by the lawsuit]. I literally had no idea. It blows, man, because that's the closest I've [come] to having my own show so far."
Additionally, Deadline has learned that with this pronouncement by Smith and MGM's moves in the courts, the project is in limbo at Amazon until the legal matters are resolved. When contacted by Deadline, Amazon had no comment on the series or the lawsuit. As Deadline revealed during Comic-Con this summer, Amazon and MGM had locked a deal for a Smith run Buckaroo TV series intended to debut in 2017.
That's all just paper now, it seems.
In his 18-minute-plus assertion on Facebook Live from Florida this afternoon, Smith said he was floored by The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension pic when he saw it as a teenager and wanted Richter and Rauch to work on his series project. "Without those two dudes, I don't fall in love with that property," he said. "I don't want to make anything unless those two dudes are involved. They had the vision. Like, all we're doing is taking their amazing vision and making a TV show of it."
Later in the video, Smith says: "I'm no longer involved. I don't wish anybody harm; I wish all parties well. I hope these dudes come to an agreement, and if they do and they still want me involved down the road, I'll be here. But why would they?"
Noting that the legal action was "news to me," Smith said, "This lawsuit comes from MGM legal - it doesn't come from any of the people I met at MGM."
He compared the situation to having someone want to remake one of his old movies against his wishes.
"Let's say one day that the people that own Miramax now [said], 'Hey, we want to make Clerks,' " Smith says in the clip. "And I'm like, 'Well, I don't want you to make Clerks - not while I'm alive.' And then they sue me to make sure that they can make Clerks without me being involved. Well, what goes around comes around in life. I'm not saying anybody is wrong in this situation, but what I'm saying is — respectfully to all parties involved - I'm out."
You can see Kevin Smith discuss leaving the Buckaroo Banzai TV
show here
.
November 28th, 2016
On November 28th, 2016, the following information was posted on the Hollywood Reporter website:
MGM Sues 'Buckaroo Banzai' Writer and Director Over Right to Make New TV Series
Earl Mac Rauch and Walter Richter proclaim they own rights -- and have been telling others including Amazon Studios and Kevin Smith's agents at WME.
More than three decades after the cult sci-fi classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension was released in theaters, MGM wishes to produce a new television series of the characters with Kevin Smith at the helm and in conjunction with Amazon Studios. But first, MGM is taking a trip to the courtroom to sort out rights.
MGM has filed a complaint in California federal court against Earl Mac Rauch, who wrote the 1984 film about a neurosurgeon/rock star who saves Earth from malevolent aliens, and Walter Richter, who directed the picture that stars Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Lloyd.
Rauch and Richter "have now asserted in multiple letters to Plaintiffs that they, not Plaintiffs, supposedly own the exclusive right to produce and distribute a Buckaroo Banzai television series," states MGM's lawsuit. "There is now a substantial controversy between the parties with great immediacy. MGM seeks to develop its new television series without Defendants' interference. Accordingly, Plaintiffs bring this action to seek a declaration of the rights and legal relations of the parties with regard to Buckaroo Banzai."
The 1984 film left off with a tease in the form of a message where audiences were told, "Watch for the next adventure of Buckaroo Banzai -- Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League."
The sequel never came, and Richter has spoken up in the years that followed of how "the paper trail for the rights is almost impossible to follow," with properties being passed around in corporate transactions and a proposed Warner Bros. animated version being squashed because of the clouded title.
Through the lawsuit, MGM says Rauch and Richter have been aware since at least 2008 that it was pursuing a television series based on Buckaroo Banzai, and in 2011, the writer and director asserted ownership rights. MGM repudiated the claim, and it would hardly be the last time the two sides would trade letters on this topic.
This past July, defendants' agent Mark Lichtman would again claim ownership, not only in letters to MGM that informed the studio that his clients "are moving forward with their projects regarding Buckaroo Banzai," but also to Amazon Studios and Smith's agents at WME. In response, MGM demanded that Rauch and Richter cease and desist from interference.
Then in August, defendants' attorney Kenneth Keller delivered a five-page letter to MGM's counsel, Robert Rotstein at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.
"We are not claiming the limited rights which MGM might own with respect to the single motion picture, Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, although as is discussed below, there are certainly serious questions even as to the chain of title with respect to that picture and MGM's rights associated with it," wrote Keller. "What my clients own are the overall rights to the world of Buckaroo Banzai, and all of the characters, themes and ideas associated with that world."
Keller went on to explain that in 1981, MGM entered into an agreement with Rauch's loan-out company for a single episode, but nearly a decade earlier, the script writer had created characters, successfully pitched Richter and had sketched out five stories -- "The Strange Case of Mister Cigars: A Buckaroo Bandy Mystery"; "Lepers From Saturn -- A Buckaroo Banzai Adventure"; "A Buckaroo Banzai Thriller -- 'Find the Jet Cart,' Said the President"; "Shields Against the Devil -- A Buckaroo Banzai Thriller"; and "Forbidden Valley."
It's further reported in the letter that in 1981, Richter and others met with an MGM executive and pitched him the entirety of Rauch's Buckaroo Banzai adventures, leaving a copy of "A Buckaroo Banzai Sampler."
"Critically ... MGM passed on the opportunity to option or obtain any rights in Mr. Rauch's larger property, including the other four episodes which he had written to the point or any other rights to the world of BUCKAROO BANZAI," continued Keller's letter. "The Agreement itself specifically defines what MGM was contracting to acquire -- a screenplay (based on a single episode of Buckaroo Banzai) and two revisions -- and the rights associated with that screenplay."
Naturally, in MGM's lawsuit filed by Rotstein, the studio takes a different view.
MGM contends that the services of Rauch and Richter were provided on a "work-made-for-hire" basis," or alternatively, that it was assigned "all exclusive rights under copyright to the screenplay and motion picture, and the characters, plots, themes, dialogue, mood, settings, pace, sequence of events, and other protected elements therein."
The lawsuit adds that MGM and its predecessors had creative control over the Buckaroo Banzai project and contributed copyrightable elements.
MGM also is asserting that Richter violated a publicity provision of his contract by talking to one film website about MGM's lack of rights to the property. Additionally, Richter and Rauch are said to be in breach of this provision via statements made on Facebook.
At the moment, though, MGM is merely seeking declarations from the court that Rauch and Richter can't prevent a Buckaroo Banzai television series, that it owns the copyrights, that Rauch has signed away rights to literary materials submitted in connection with Buckaroo Banzai and that defendants are barred by statute of limitations and estopped from asserting any ownership rights.
Read the full complaint here.
October 15th, 2016
On October 13th, 2016, the following information was posted on the Banzai Institute Facebook page:
A MESSAGE FROM EARL MAC RAUCH AND W.D. RICHTER
Thursday, October 13, 2016
As fans of Dr. Buckaroo Banzai's adventures, some of you may have heard rumors or read in the latest issue of the Banzai Institute's World Watch One Newsletter (10/16) that we are engaged in an ongoing battle with MGM regarding the ownership of rights to both THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION and to the entire Buckaroo universe that Earl Mac Rauch began creating a full decade before the actual movie.
On the other hand, all this may come as news to you. Many of you perhaps are not aware that any unresolved Buckaroo rights issues actually exist because you have quite reasonably assumed for years that MGM "owned" Buckaroo Banzai lock, stock, and barrel. Others of you, even after having read about the current rights brouhaha on many different blogs, may still be confused about the exact nature of our dispute. And, of course, some of you may just wish the whole problem would go away so that more Buckaroo Banzai adventures might appear. If you're in the last category, ask yourselves, "What would Buckaroo do if something he felt rightly belonged to one person was being taken away by another?"
A little history is probably in order. Come with us in the time machine back to March 25, 1981, when the producer Sydney Beckerman received from W.D. Richter and Neil Canton a bound volume they called "A Buckaroo Banzai Sampler" consisting of extracts from no fewer than five separate Buckaroo Banzai adventures. Beckerman read the Buckaroo Sampler and the next day took Canton and Richter into MGM to give studio chief David Begelman a detailed presentation of Rauch's wholly original, multi-episode saga. They left behind a copy of "A Buckaroo Banzai Sampler" for Begelman's perusal.
One day later, on Friday afternoon, March 27, 1981, Begelman told Beckerman that he had taken a shine to one episode in particular, "LEPERS FROM SATURN - A BUCKAROO BANZAI ADVENTURE". It had been presented to him as a 57-page treatment in which Buckaroo squared off against grotesque aliens from another planet who were moving amongst us disguised as Earthlings! MGM wanted to hire Mac to turn that into a screenplay. It was crystal clear Begelman was not proposing that Mac base his MGM script upon all the separate episodes presented to the studio in "A Buckaroo Banzai Sampler"...in much the same way that one would never propose that a script for "The Hound of the Baskervilles" be based upon "The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". All of this is highly significant and, as lawyers say, "foundational".
A problem arises (the root of the dispute) in that nowhere does MGM define in the contract exactly what underlying material was to be the source of Mac's "work". He was definitely not hired to write an Original Screenplay because the MGM contract specifically engaged him only to write a script based on what it called "the Property", which the studio itself defined as "an original story idea by Writer"...an idea, as we know, that came to them in the form of an underlying treatment they never owned because its acquisition was never even mentioned in the contract. Instead, all of Mac's fees were linked directly to his work only on the script itself!
Meanwhile, in 1981, while Mac was writing the first draft of his screenplay, a flurry of real-life events changed the landscape. MGM purchased United Artists and merged the two companies. On July 13, 1982, while Mac was doing revisions on his first draft, David Begelman was removed as chief of MGM/UA. The new administration was wholeheartedly unenthusiastic about BUCKAROO BANZAI and agreed to sign the project over to Begelman's freshly minted independent company, the bankruptcy-plagued outfit known as Sherwood Productions which Begelman would leverage into a complex and chaotic series of mortgages, assignments, and a host of other dubious financial manipulations involving unwitting entities like European American Bank and Trust Company, Continental Illinois Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, Time Warner Entertainment Company LP, August Entertainment, Inc., the Kushner-Locke Company, and many, many more. These bizarre, conflicting and overlapping entanglements hollowed out and threw into great confusion the ownership rights to "THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION" and eventually resulted in the bankruptcy of both Sherwood Productions and Gladden Entertainment (a company Mr. Begelman formed after the collapse of Sherwood Productions). A despondent David Begelman committed suicide on August 7, 1995, in Los Angeles.
So as years turned into decades, the rights to Buckaroo twisted and turned, jumping from company to company, from bank to bank, disappearing entirely at times and then reappearing first in one studio's library and then inexplicably in another's, leaving a paper trail no legal bloodhound could hope to follow. In short, from the moment Begelman lost control of the title, it became, from month to month, anybody's guess who might or might not have possessed documentation proving their exclusive ownership of THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION.
By 1998, yet another MGM administration had reentered the picture, having ironically acquired a bulk library of films from Seagrams Universal that happened to contain a movie David Begelman set in motion seventeen years earlier: THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION. But in 1998, the new MGM team agreed with Begelman's immediate 1982 successors and considered Buckaroo a moribund brand of little worth to the studio. Understandably then, they saw no reason to waste time and resources investigating the spotty rights documentation that accompanied such an apparent loser.
We did take the time, however, hiring at our own expense a nationally respected firm to research ownership of the film, something like a mortgage company doing a title search to authenticate ownership of real estate. Thomson & Thomson's 1999 report made it clear that there were significant gaps in the Buckaroo chain of title -- the same reality that Warner Brothers confronted ten years later. Why would Warners even figure in this controversy? Because in 2009 Warner Brothers, in a potential partnership with MGM, approached us to create an animated television series, based on a concept they dubbed "THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI". When we expressed enthusiasm, their legal team did a thorough search of the chain of title and found too many gaps to proceed with the project. As indicated by the following pair of emails Warner Bros. sent to our representatives, that studio was saying MGM could not, to Warners satisfaction, prove ownership of the title:
WB EMAILS RE: BB TITLE CHAIN
From: Adams, Ed
Sent: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 7:51 pm
To: Jeff Field; Ryan Nord
Subject: Buckaroo Banzai
Jeff and Ryan - I apologize for our inability to connect by phone this week. As I previously mentioned, I passed all of the documents you sent along to our rights department. After their review and analysis, they found two major gaps in the chain of title (and perhaps some minor ones, as well).
1. There is a gap between Credit Lyonnaise and Universal/Polygram.
2. There is a gap between Polygram and Richter/Rauch.
The rights department is doing further research in an attempt to close these gaps. That means we're willing to do the legwork (and bear the cost) to try and figure this out. I am hoping that will be received as good news. For now, WB will foot the bill and see what we can find out. The bad news is that this means additional time while we try to satisfy ourselves that the rights are available. I am not sure how long to expect, but we should probably touch base in about a week. That is all I have to report for now. Clearing the chain of title remains the number one issue for us, but hopefully we are moving in a positive direction. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know. Otherwise, let's try to touch base in a week or so.
Best, Ed
From: Adams, Ed
Sent: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 8:11 pm
To: Jeff Field; Ryan Nord (Business Fax)
Cc: Register, Sam
Subject: Buckaroo Banzai - Chain of Title
Jeff and Ryan - At long last, I am pleased to get back to you with a response regarding the chain of title. I am sorry it took so long, but the rights department has been busy with a number of priorities for other divisions. As we have discussed a number of times, Warner Bros. would require a clean chain-of-title in order to option and move forward with development of an animated project based upon "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension." Unfortunately, because of a number of transfers of the rights in the property, there are gaps in the chain. These gaps need to be closed before we can proceed any further.
1. Agreement between MGM and Sherwood.
2. Mortgage of Copyright from Sherwood to Lyonnais.
3. Foreclosure on the mortgage by Credit Lyonnais showing its succession to the rights.
4. December 1995 assignment from Lyonnais to Alpha.
5. November 1998 assignment from Alpha to Polygram.
There may be additional open questions, but these are the most pressing. My rights team has done as much as it can at this point. After you have had a chance to review the above with your clients, we should set up a time to discuss next steps. I apologize that I am not delivering better news, but I can assure you the rights team worked very hard to create the best outcome they could. I look forward to speaking with you both soon.
Ed
Meanwhile, Mac's contract sat there asserting that no matter who might actually be able to prove ownership of the movie, he, Earl Mac Rauch, still owned the rights both to his treatment for LEPERS FROM SATURN and to the world of Buckaroo Banzai. And what has been MGM's response to Mac's assertion of those rights? "Your claim is baseless. MGM owns all the rights to Buckaroo Banzai." Their lawyers, however, have never pointed out any language in the contract that supports such a grandiose claim. Nor have they pointed to any language that refutes our claim that they failed to acquire even the underlying material upon which the movie was based. In fact, in the several written studio responses to our letters asking for a detailed rebuttal to our claim, MGM has merely resorted to rephrasing, without elaboration, that same defense: "Your claim is baseless. MGM owns all the rights to Buckaroo Banzai."
You might well ask why we have chosen to bring all this to the fore now. For over thirty years we've sat back and watched the ostensible "ownership rights" to "THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION" bounce around the entertainment and financial industries, unloved in libraries thick with more commercially successful films. But now, suddenly, with the release of Shout Video's special Bluray edition of the movie, interest in the potential of the Buckaroo brand has shot up, and MGM would seem to be working with Amazon Pictures to create a Buckaroo Banzai TV series. But they have no interest in involving Buckaroo's original creators. This prompted us to pull out Mac's foundational 1981 MGM contract to see what his rights actually were and if he might, at the very least, be due some sort of royalty payment should the series become a reality. We both now read contracts with far more sophisticated eyes than we did in 1981, and something popped out at us. We hired a top-notch intellectual property lawyer to read Mac's contract to determine if we were misunderstanding what it actually said. We weren't, he told us. Then he looked at the title search and read Warner Brothers' assessment that the chain of title was plagued by numerous "gaps". He wrote a letter to MGM asserting Mac's rights.
And now, Watson, the game is afoot. We suspect there's more than enough here for you to digest, and this is not intended to be a complete statement of our legal position. It is simply a letter to our friends, one that we hope will make clear what the rights issues you have or soon may hear about really are. We'll update you in the near future, as warranted by new events in what Buckaroo would surely call "a developing situation". Until then, thanks, Blue Blaze Irregulars, the Kolodney Brothers, the Rug Suckers, assorted Hong Kong Cavalier fan clubs and auxiliaries...thanks to everyone who is Team Banzai.
By the Oath of the Flying Fish, we remain
...Earl Mac Rauch and W.D. Richter
On October 4th, 2016, the following interview with W. D. Richter was posted on the Film Buff webpage:
BUCKAROO BANZAI Director W. D. Richter: Ancient Secrets
& New Mysteries -
Part 1
October 4, 2016 by Rich Drees
When first released in August 1984, The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension did not make much of a splash. Coming from a studio who was unsure how to market the film's offbeat New Wave mix of science-fiction, adventure and comedy and audiences - The ones that made it to the theaters, at least - weren't sure how to respond. But the advent of the home video boom gave the film an unexpected new life, rising it to be considered as one of the great films of the 1980s. Thirty-two years and a recent blu-ray release with a fairly comprehensive documentary about the film later, director W. D. Richter is still happy to discuss Buckaroo Banzai, stating "It's fun to talk about this movie because it means a lot to a lot of people. It meant a lot to us while we were making it." In this first installment of our multipart interview with the director, we talk with Richter about his journey to filmmaking, how he met Buckaroo Banzai screenriter Earl Mac Rauch and the early days of hearing from Rauch about a character named Buckaroo Bandy who would star in a "country western, action adventure serial with science-fiction elements" he wanted to write about...
Q - Did you ever imagine that 32 years later you would still be having opportunities to talk about Buckaroo Banzai?
WDR - Of course not. I mean, it's just astounding to me. I don't know really what to say other than that we all made this thing kind of recklessly and fearlessly and its really connected with a certain constituency. It's really satisfying because it validates your daring. Take some chances, see what happens!
Q - Was filmmaking something you were always interested in growing up?
WDR - My grandmother used to take me to movies in Connecticut in a fairly small town that had like five movie theaters. It was an amazing time. All small towns are probably like that. We were always going to movies. She was born in Poland, so she had certain kind of American icons. She would take me to Errol Flynn movies, you know, big romantic Hollywood movies. Then as I got a little older, I got interested in horror films, and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe watching some old ones on TV. I used to go to some of those theaters by myself to watch Them and things like that that are in black and white. All those B-movies that came through town. I really was a fan of them.
When I went to college, it never occurred to me that there were film schools. It was a time when I don't know how people thought they got in the movie business. We didn't think about t much growing up. It seemed unreachable. You're on the East Coast and something is happening three thousand miles away. In college, I started learning about the existence of film schools because we had some film appreciation classes, which was really unusual. That said to me you can try to do this, you don't have to just watch it from afar. I was probably going to be an English teacher if I didn't have that opportunity. I had no other grand design.
Q - Ultimately, was it this revelation that lead you to go out to Hollywood?
WDR - I applied to USC, UCLA and NYU. I wasn't thinking only Hollywood. My wife and I - well, we weren't married yet, we got married just after graduation - we took a trip to NYU and it just didn't seem like a place where we wanted to start our lives. So I had to make a choice long distance between USC and UCLA. I was able to not make that choice until we got out there. We looked at both universities and I don't know why I picked USC because at that time it was in a bad neighborhood and its film department was pretty ramshackle. But it appealed more.
Q - So did you and your wife meet when you were at Dartmouth or were you high school sweethearts?
WDR - Yes, you got it. We were high school sweethearts. We went steady our senior year. She applied for a teaching position in LA when we decided that's where we're going. At that time they actually sent recruiters across the country to east coast colleges to try and interest students graduating in education to cross the country. I'm not sure that they do that anymore. But she was able to have a job when we landed, so we had a tiny bit of financial security while I went to film school. As soon as she could, she stopped teaching and joined our company as our business manager and as my investment adviser all rolled into one.
Q - Now I know that Earl Mac Rauch was also at Dartmouth, just a few years behind you. Is that where you met or was that later?
WDR - No, but there's an interesting possibility though. He was there one year when I was there. I was a senior and he was a freshman. Later on we discovered we both saw Arthur Penn do a Q & A after a screening of Bonnie And Clyde. Where he did it was a student lounge that didn't have a lot of capacity. There were a reasonable number of people, maybe twenty or thirty, and we were both there! I have no idea if we sat next to each other or anything except that we were both in that room but never met.
The reason I know him at all is that my alumni magazine gave a review of his novel Arkansas Adios and it sounded wonderful. I ordered it and both Susan and I were reading it simultaneously. I said, "You've got to read this" and she grabbed it. It was back and forth for a week or so. I think I wrote the college to start with to find out who to get in contact with this other alum. I sent him a letter and told him if he wasn't content with what he was doing, I thought that he had a really great shot at writing for the movie business. I had already been a story analyst at Warner right after film school and I had read hundreds of scripts. It was really kind of shocking because I had been a literature major and this was like an alternative reality of fiction. It was strange how terrible these scripts were. There were great ones for sure. But most of them seemed like writers weren't writing them. People couldn't construct a sentence, so I thought if Mac wants to take a shot at this, I am going to extend the offer to say "Come out and I'll introduce you to the few people I know." And he did, he took me up on it.
Q - Through the 1970s both of you worked on some notable films. You wrote the first remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Mac was working with Scorsese on New York, New York.
WDR - That was a difficult time for him. Mac is really not a person who likes to be in public, in meetings and interacting with groups of people. That process was difficult for him. I think Scorsese was fooling around with the script himself, and that was kind of a druggy period in LA and New York. Mac kind of withdrew from the business in a way. He did a lot of writing for producers that he never quite finished. He always second guesses himself. He would send us fantastic material on Buckaroo, we would send him a note or two and it would come back with it totally changed and a lot of great stuff lost. He did that with a lot of other producer/directors, I think. He's just very self-critical. It's wonderful in that way, he's not impressed with himself at all. I am, enormously, but he isn't at all. Then he would withdraw when somebody made the day difficult, rather than say "I'm going to beat this system!"
Q - I think it was only recently that it occurred to me that I didn't recall seeing a picture of him anywhere until Lewis Smith (The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzi's Perfect Tommy) ran one on his Facebook page.
WDR - There's a photo of him on the back of the hardcover of Arkansas Adios. There's a couple online if you really search, because I've found some stuff and tortured him by handing them to him. When we did the blu-ray recently, I had all the transparencies from Bruce McBroom, who was the production photographer. At the end of this movie, nobody cared about the detritus of it, so I grabbed the big loose leaf of all the transparencies and I've guarded them over the years. We had them digitized in order for them to put some on the blu-ray. They sent me a disc and I was going through it and found that picture of Mac and thought that's wonderful. He really does exist.
Q - You mentioned Mac's numerous beginnings of Buckaroo adventures that he would abandon in favor of a new one. When did he first mention this character Buckaroo Bandy? Do you recall the actual conversation? What about it sparked your imagination?
WDR - I have this giant file I am looking at right now because we're in a strange position with MGM about the rights issues of this movie. I've had to do some real digging into my archives and come up with the chronology you're talking about.
When we said "Come out here," I felt like I could introduce him to a handful of people, and I did, like Irwin Winkler and Jay Weston, producers of that time. They kind of carried Mac through development deals. He was living very close. We were renting a small cottage and he was renting an apartment near by. He would come over for dinner a lot and tell us things he was thinking about writing. Not necessarily for us, my company was really just for me as a writer. I know it was a casual conversation. He had this idea for a country western, action adventure serial in effect, and that it would have sci-fi elements. You can't say, "Oh that's interesting" and then move on to other things. "What are you talking about?" I don't know if he had it worked out or if he just started improvising stuff verbally. It got to some point where it sounded intriguing enough, and we knew he needed money, that if we optioned it for I think initially $1500, unwritten, that would subsidize his writing it. And he called that little contract we write up "Jetcar." As he started turning in pages, that title never appeared, it ultimately became Lepers From Saturn - A Buckaroo Banzai Adventure. This was 1973. In September of that year we have a deal contract, a single page agreement to option it for one year when he delivers the screenplay for $1500 right away.
When he first retitled it, it became The Strange Case Of Mr. Cigars, A Buckaroo Bandy Mystery. He kept starting and stopping these things, even though we would say "That's great, here are some thoughts. If you want to incorporate these fine, if not, just keep going," he would come back with something different. He never finished The Strange Case Of Mr. Cigars. Have you heard about it?
Q - Well, I know that some of the other titles were "Get the Jet Car," Said the President and that the draft before the shooting draft was called Shields Against The Devil.
WDR - Yes. This particular Strange Case Of Mr. Cigars had great promise, and he may finish it some day. It's very unclear who owns the rights to all of this stuff now. There was a gigantic robot involved, that was Godzilla in size. Up in the head, these evil people were running it, pulling big levers and stuff. Mr. Cigars was a villain who was going to kill a lot of world leaders by planting exploding cigars at a big conference. I knew where he was going, but he never got there in the script because he started Lepers From Saturn, which he started in a treatment form. He did finish that, a 57-page treatment, Lepers From Saturn - A Buckaroo Banzai Adventure.
And the it just kept rolling. "OK, are you going to write the script for that?" He said, "Let me start it," and it came in with a title page A Buckaroo Banzai Thriller - "Find The Jet Car," Said The President. Through all of these, more details kept coming in. The Hong Kong Cavaliers replaced the Hopalongs as Buckaroo's country western band. Penny Priddy would suddenly appear in a different context and blow through the script, but come back later when he started another adventure. He only got 67 ages into Find The Jetcar, before he was writing Shields Against The Devil - A Buckaroo Banzai Thriller. That he actually went to the end of. It's a 109-page screenplay. He finished that in `75. That's where he changed the name of the Shields, that was the original name of the support group, to Knights of the Blue Shield, and then it became the Blue Blaze Irregulars subsequently.
But through all this, the context of the world was being enriched. Whether the narrative was abandoned or not, there were ideas in there that we did hang on to, like the World Crime League. All that stuff got us to a point where we put together what we called "A Buckaroo Banzai Sampler" which was about ten or fifteen pages of each one of these things, which in some cases was all the pages he had written. A thirteen-page teaser which said "To be continued." We had, in effect, a selling tool, a marketing tool.
Tune in next week for Part 2 of our multipart interview in
which we further
travel the road to bring Buckaroo Banzai to the screen,
including a road bump by
the name of David Begelman...
On October 4th, 2016, the following information was posted on the Film Buff webpage:
Rights Issues Stymie BUCKAROO BANZAI Amazon Series
by Rich Drees
Buckaroo Banzai may be in trouble and this time it is not from the machinations of evil Lectroids from Planet Ten or the World Crime League, but from something far more vexing - rights issues.
In an interview, W. D. Richter, director of the 1984 cult classic The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eight Dimension, revealed that it is possible that the rights to the actual character of Buckaroo Banzai actually lie with screen writer Earl Mac Rauch. And that could impact the television version of the film that writer/director Kevin Smith is currently developing with MGM for Amazon Studios.
"Mac's original contract is about the shortest I've ever seen in the motion picture business," Richter states. "It's about four pages long with a few lines going onto a fifth page. It's for a draft and two sets of revisions based on an original idea by 'The Writer' which the contract calls 'The Property.' And [Mac] is hired to write and deliver a first draft screenplay and two sets of changes, based on 'The Property.'"
In this particular case, "The Property" is a 57-page treatment by Rauch for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, titled Lepers From Saturn. The treatment was just one part of a presentation that Richter and Rauch made to David Begelman, head of MGM at the time. Much of the other material in the presentation, which they titled "A Buckaroo Banzai Sampler," consisted of half-completed drafts of other Banzai adventures Rauch had started in on while developing the overall idea and character. When MGM fired Begelman, he formed Sherwood Productions and was allowed to take the script that Rauch had written for MGM with him as one of his new production shingle's first projects.
Richter elaborates, "Rereading Mac's MGM agreement recently when the new series was announced to see if Mac had any royalties built in, it occurred to my non-legal eye that the document does not acquire 'The Property,' it simply hires Mac to write a screenplay based on it. It's important to stress that the MGM-drafted Agreement specifically defined Mac's 57-page treatment as 'the Property' and that the Agreement never "acquired" it in any of its language because it only engaged Mac to write a screenplay 'based upon' his treatment. In fact, Begelman made it clear to us that he didn't want to get involved in the larger world of Buckaroo Banzai because, as he said, 'I don't know what it is'."
So Richter says that the crux of his and Mac Rauch's argument hangs on the way that the contract specifically defines Rauch's pre-written treatment and the screenplay that Begelman hired him to write as two different things.
"It's perfectly obvious," Richter says, "that the Agreement's simple, blunt language acknowledges the existence of two entirely separate intellectual properties - one they called 'The Property' and one they called 'The Work.' Crucially, 'The Work' is a technical term in the Writers Guild Basic Agreement with all the studios, is defined as only "what the writer is engaged to write", and a screenplay is all that Mac was engaged to write in the MGM contract. David Begelman basically commissioned a screenplay based on a piece of literary material that MGM didn't own and then David Begelman went off and made and released a movie based on it. It's the equivalent of releasing a movie based on a Stephen King book but forgetting to buy the book from Stephen. And a highly regarded property lawyer agrees with us."
"We've asserted all of this to MGM, and they've reflexively disagreed," Richter says. "And I understand that. They're not going to say 'Oh yeah, right! Sorry.' I've gone through all my records and archival material and we've demonstrated that Begelman was clearly not just pitched one episode as if it were a stand-alone movie. He was presented with 'The Buckaroo Banzai Sampler.' He was told it was a whole world, and shown written examples prior to his commissioning the screenplay from Mac."
Richter goes on to explain that the contract in question does not contain what should be a standard clause called 'Conditions Precedent.' Among the many conditions within that standard paragraph is the requirement that the studio has obtained any underlying rights to the property before the screenwriter can get to work.
"I think it was complacency," posits Richter. "They just thought 'Well, it's the same guy.' But they went to the trouble of calling it 'The Property' and only did it once and never acquired 'The Property' in the whole five page document. This could have catastrophic implications for them if we're right."
This is not the first time that rights issues have been a hindrance to continuing the Buckaroo Banzai franchise.
"The history of the chain of title on Buckaroo is just deranged," Richter admits. When Begelman dissolved Sherwood Productions, he sold off much of its holdings to pay off debts. The property bounced around for a while from French bank Credit Lyonnais to Polygram Records and then ultimately back to MGM. But along the way, there are some gaps in the history of the film's rights. In 2009, Warner Brothers Animation was interested in doing a cartoon version of Buckaroo Banzai, but was warned off by Warners' legal department who felt that a clear chain of title could not be established.
"They knew that the motion picture rights to The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension had journeyed around the universe," Richter says. "Mac just found some emails that Warners Animation had sent to us calling out four or five places where the title chain just dropped out. For example, Warner's lawyers discovered that on a specific date the title was definitely in the hands of Company A, yet three years later it somehow 'belonged' to Company G. But the copyright search couldn't discover how the rights had ever made their way from A to G or was it by then to H or even K. Were there five intervening companies? One? What's missing? Where are all these transfer-of-rights documents? Warner Brothers couldn't find them, and I suspect MGM can't either because as David Begelman once bragged to me about how he was actually financing Buckaroo, 'I operate on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know.'"
Richter says, "With this messed up chain of title, if you can't trace it from its beginnings all the way back to MGM, you have to look back and see who's the last person who really owned everything. It's Earl Mac Rauch when he walked into that room, laid that universe on Begelman's desk and Begelman chose to only develop one episode of it and failed to buy either the treatment or any rights to the whole saga."
An email sent to Smith's ViewAskew production company for comment on Friday was not answered.
This page was last updated on February 17, 2019.
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