Hucklebug, Episode 161: RIP Capt. Lou Albano, shout-outs, movies (Bet: the triumphant return of Deadhead Miles; Stennie: Angels With Dirty Faces), lowlights & highlights, fuck-offs and you-rules, Balloon Boy, Favorite Songs by Selected Artists/Humdingers.
Music: “The Hucklebuck,” performed by Otis Redding, Lee Rocker, and Frank Sinatra.
Val Lewton: He was a film producer for RKO, and what makes his movies so distinct is how they accomplished so much using so little. For Cat People he was given just $150k and created something of a horror masterpiece. Even if horror isn’t your thing his movies should be experienced for the pure joy they bring. Every now and then TCM shows a documentary the produced called The Man In The Shadows which is required viewing for some good Lewton appreciation.
Cat People and The Seventh Victim are my personal favorites.
Al Franken: I knew he’d be the real deal. He didn’t run for the senate as a stunt, he really wanted to go in and make a difference. It’s just that it took far too long for him to gain his seat. His first bill passed easily 87-7 and is something that should be near and dear to the hucklebuggers.
http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/senator-frankens-first-bill/
Bright dogs, like bright children, aren’t always easy to train.
I think Al Franken is really smart, but just a little too lefty for my taste. He’s going to get fed up with the Senate, but at least he didn’t go into the House. Most of them are dumber than a sack of hammers with the integrity of a newt (sorry to all small lizards out there).
NTCNTC seems okay today, but he did whack his head of a wall as we were coming home. It’s not child abuse—the kid is just a klutz. He kind of gallops or prances when he walks, which makes him prone to falling over.
I liked Seven (I assume you’re talking about the Morgan Freeman/Brad Pitt one). I don’t like horror per se, but it was pretty good. But I agree that you only need to see it once.
I’m no copyright lawyer, but in general, you can quote smallish passages of a published work under the fair use clause, but not the entire work. I wonder how it works if you’re recording books for the blind? Does that get an exemption? We could claim that…
I actually picked up my kazee to sing “Paint It Black” at you when you were doing the Rolling Stones. That’s still the best opening riff, ever.
I am concerned Al Franken will mean well, but not be willing to nail anybody to the wall. Also, I thought the Franken amendment was about stopping government from hiring companies who have clauses like that in their contracts—not banning the clauses. I have to do some research on that for a freelance gig I’ve got…
The original “Cat People” was not really a horror film—more suspense-thriller. I recommend it greatly. It’s one of my favorites.
Lou Albano—didn’t he play a Mario Brother in a live action TV show? Or was that Ron Jeremy?
I think the general stuff we already tax is fine. I’m a big fan of cutting the military way the hell back. We spend absurdly huge amounts on our military and our biggest enemies are some guys in the desert who *might* get lucky and find a nuke one day. We weren’t this scared of the Ruskies back in the 80s.
Sten, I don’t say you have to see “Seven”. It’s just a movie that all us “movie buff” types have seen. But don’t worry, I won’t report you to the Movie Buff Clubhouse President and get your membership card revoked…THIS time…!
I think “Little Children” is the movie James Earl Haley Jones Osmet (??) won the Oscar for. Kate Winslet was in it—she played “the frumpy housewife” with no irony intended, apparently. That’s a little bit like calling the Mona Lisa a sketch DaVinci did while bored. I liked “Little Children” a lot, despite the bad casting of Winslet (though I think she’s a good actress). The ending was kind of weak, though.
Patrick, sorry about the “the-ing”.
Just heard Soupy Sales died 🙁 R.I.P.!
Regarding Franken’s amendment, I’m doing that aforementioned research right now while listening to you guys and came across this: http://is.gd/4wWwB Here’s a quote: “The amendment, which was passed in the Senate by an overwhelming 68-30 votes, would prohibit federal funding from being used to pay defense contractors that force secretly binding arbitration on their employees in cases of sexual violence, sexual harassment, and sex and other unlawful job discrimination under Title VII.”
So, yeah, doesn’t ban corporations from having the clause just bans the USG from supporting said companies.
However, “The 5th Circuit United States Court of Appeals recently ruled in Ms. Jones’s favor, finding that even when you sign an employment contract requiring arbitration, there are some rights to sue your employer than can’t be signed away, including assault and battery.”
So, there’s that. Still, banning it outright sure would be nice.
Cajun on occasion!
Nicholas Cage is good in some stuff—mostly comedies. But he can still fuck off.
“They’ve got the Famous.” that made me LSOL (Laugh Softly Out Loud), Bet.
Jay is still waiting for you to hook him up with some hep tracks to dance to.
I only saw three tweets about Baloonboy. I was so proud of myself and my followees. Like you said, Sten—it’s a non-story. Did you guys see the video clip where the dad let his kid puke on TV? Rather than walk away from the interview and make sure the kid is OK, he lets his son puke on TV. Ridiculous asshole. This is why I really don’t watch TV anymore.
Lily, I’m not a copyright lawyer, either, but I play one on the Internet.
I’m starting to see how in-house corporate attorneys get the reputation as “The Dept. of No.” I really don’t mean to be a killjoy; please understand, I’m on your side. My goal is to provide some insight on the current state of the law, but also put it into practical perspective.
To Bet’s point—you can read a book aloud or play a record or watch a movie with your friends and family, but you can’t publically perform a protected work. The point at which the circle of friends widens to where a performance crosses the line from private to public is unclear, especially in the digital age. Also, keep in mind, as soon as you record a protected work, that’s a technical, if nominal, violation of the reproduction right.
In this case, while much of what we (and the vast majority of modern pop-culture consumers) do might technically violate a copyright holder’s rights, it generally doesn’t rise to the level of actionable infringement. In other words, I doubt it’s worth the publishers’ /movie studios’/ record companies’ time and effort to come after us for making and trading CD mixes* or even making and sharing (at least among ourselves) our own audiobooks.
Lily is right about Fair Use: you can quote small amounts as part of a larger original work like a review or critique. Those are the “transformative nature and purpose” and the “amount and substantiality” factors in a fair-use analysis—they determine how much of an existing work you can use to make something new. This is why it’s possible, at least in theory, to write a critical review, or better still create a parody, of another’s work. The more transformative your work is, the more of another’s work you can use to create it. Fair use is supposed to be the law’s way of resolving the tension between protection of free speech (1st Amendment) and the protection of IP rights offered to incentivize creation/invention (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Cl. 8).
The reality, however, is that fair use is a defense, not a right. To assert it, you have to concede that your conduct was infringement—that you used another’s work without his or her authorization, but that your use was fair. At bottom, a fair use defense is only as good as your ability to assert it. It’s been said that the only right Fair Use provides is the right to hire a lawyer. This, too, is softening somewhat, at least with respect to individual consumers, with the advent of YouTube—there was a case last year that found a publisher has to consider whether something might be fair use (apply the factors) before sending a takedown notice. It’s still a huge problem for institutions like libraries and schools who (on advice of their lawyers, no doubt) end up paying to license work that they might/should be able to make fair use of, as an extra layer of insurance against being sued. While the development of things like creative commons attribution licenses—where an author allows you to use her work in exchange for credit—provides some hope, there’s no way content-industry leviathans like Disney are going to give anything away ever.
I hope that helps some.
*The advantage of a CD mix exchange over a DIY audiobook, in terms of fair use, is that by selecting the songs and the order, and commenting on those choices, we’re incorporating our own creative content, whereas an audiobook, if all you’re doing is reading the words into a tape recorder, is just making a copy. Now, if you pepper your reading the book with little asides and commentaries, then you get a little more fair-use protection.
For what it’s worth, the category lists that you come up with for us to make the mixes are themselves protected in copyright. If someone were to copy that (your particular expression, not the idea), you could send them a cease-and-desist and bring an action for infringement (assuming you have $50,000 to spend).