{"id":2864,"date":"2024-10-02T19:57:02","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T19:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fleetwood-mac-producer-sues-creators-of-broadway-hit-stereophonic\/"},"modified":"2024-10-02T19:57:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T19:57:02","slug":"fleetwood-mac-producer-sues-creators-of-broadway-hit-stereophonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fleetwood-mac-producer-sues-creators-of-broadway-hit-stereophonic\/","title":{"rendered":"Fleetwood Mac Producer Sues Creators of Broadway Hit \u2018Stereophonic’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA producer who worked on Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours<\/em> is suing the creators of the hit Broadway play Stereophonic<\/em>, claiming they stole material from his memoir about working on the legendary album.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a lawsuit filed Tuesday (Oct. 2) in Manhattan federal court, Ken Caillat and co-author Steven Stiefel call the Tony Award-winning show an \u201cunauthorized adaptation\u201d of their 2012 book Making Rumours <\/em>\u2014 and accuse playwright David Adjmi of \u201cflagrant and willful infringement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStereophonic <\/em>copies the heart and soul of Making Rumours<\/em>,\u201d attorneys for Caillat and Stiefel write in their complaint. \u201cThe striking similarity is readily apparent right from the beginning of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFeaturing the music of Arcade Fire\u2019s Will Butler, Stereophonic <\/em>debuted on Broadway last fall, eventually winning five Tony Awards including best play, best direction of a play and best featured actor in a play.<\/p>\n

\n\tCritics quickly noted the similarities to the infamous story of the recording session for Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours<\/em>, which featured high tensions and heavy drug usage. A reviewer for the Wall Street Journal<\/em> said the play was \u201cfictionalizing Fleetwood Mac\u201d; another critic said the play \u201cisn\u2019t literally about Fleetwood Mac, but c\u2019mon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their lawsuit, Caillat and Stiefel say the hit play \u201cpresents a nearly identical story arc as Making Rumours<\/em>,\u201d told from the same perspective of a sound engineer in a recording studio, about five characters who are \u201cundeniably analogous to the members of Fleetwood Mac.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStereophonic <\/em>is undoubtedly a play based on plaintiffs\u2019 memoir Making Rumours<\/em> because substantial similarities exist between the two works, a reality that has been independently confirmed by those familiar with plaintiffs\u2019 book who have also had the opportunity to review the play,\u201d the duo\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new case presents tricky legal questions. Under U.S. law, historical events cannot be monopolized under copyrights, and nobody can claim exclusive ownership over the real story behind the making of Rumours<\/em>. But specific creative elements of how such a story is told can <\/em>be protected by copyrights, and film, TV and stage producers often license non-fiction books as the basis for their works.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their case, Caillat and Stiefel claim that Adjmi copied those exact kinds of creative choices when he created his play: \u201cStereophonic<\/em>\u2019s audience not only sits in the same place that Mr. Caillat sat, but the show also depicts Mr. Caillat\u2019s wild ride as it is described in Making Rumours<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdjmi is no stranger to copyright litigation. Back in 2014, he filed a preemptive lawsuit over his off-Broadway show called 3C<\/em>, which riffed on the sitcom Three\u2019s Company<\/em>. In that case, filed after the sitcom\u2019s owners threatened litigation, Adjmi argued the play was clearly a legal parody of the earlier show. And he eventually won, securing a ruling that his play was a legal \u201cfair use\u201d of the famous show.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn their complaint, Caillat and Stiefel noted that earlier case, but pointedly argued that such a defense would not work this time around: \u201cStereophonic <\/em>is not a parody, and it is not in any way a fair use of Making Rumours<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Adjmi did not immediately return requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A producer who worked on Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours is suing the creators of the hit Broadway play Stereophonic, claiming they stole material from his memoir about working on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3666,797,3665,1067,1662,799,3667,479],"class_list":["post-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-broadway","tag-creators","tag-fleetwood","tag-hit","tag-mac","tag-producer","tag-stereophonic","tag-sues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}