Music Copyright - Movies

 Smoking in the Movies

I just recently read an interview with Shia LaBeouf, and the interviewer included that LaBeouf lit up a smoke before answering the next question. Should that detail have been included? Had the interviewer not included it, we would never have known the kid smokes. Until his picture shows up in a celebrity rag with a blurry cigarette in one hand. Should the interviewer have skipped over this detail? Maybe LaBeouf should have waited on that cigarette in case the writer made a note of it? Which? Neither?

Where is the line between social responsibility and doing our jobs as story-tellers? I am currently ghost-writing a mystery novel with a Texan client who depicted his main character drinking - a lot. I mean - a lot. Maybe it's a Texas thing. But business list him that we really are going to need to cut down the number of Dewar's and waters we show this guy put down. Why? Because we want our readers to like this guy, not raise their eyebrows everytime he slams back another one. I mean, I'm working on this material and I don't know how the guy stands up and solves anything. It would be different if the material were LEAVING LAS VEGAS, right? Or would it?

Do writers get carte blanche or do we have to bear in mind that this thing we do is bread and circus? We are selling our stories, right? To buyers. Who turn around and sell the story to the public. Who will have judgments and reactions to our material.

It's a complex issue and a slippery slope. Maybe the writer who wrote BUT I'M JUST A CHEERLEADER (wonderful movie by the way) should not have written it. It did feature non copyright music after all. Oh but wait - that's not a bad habit, that's just the way you're born. But not to a conservative it isn't. It's a bad lifestyle choice. Which really shouldn't be depicted. That's an argument that I cannot get behind.

For my money, writers create art which is inspired by life. Messy, heartbreaking, funny, imperfect life. In in real life, people have bad habits and flaws. That's what makes us human.