I happened upon an article on yesterday’s AP wire by Anthony McCartney. It seems that Anheuser-Busch is upset because in the new blockbuster film “Flight,” pilot Denzel Washington is shown drinking their beer. A lot of it. And then behaving irresponsibly. Hmm. A-B wants the filmmakers to “obscure” or otherwise remove the obvious “Budweiser” label as shown. There is a lot of talk about whether or not Paramount Pictures should comply and the possibly hypocritical position of the brewer when they defend their image.
None of this matters much to me. We all know that product placement is rampant in the movie & TV industry. In fact, the competing action-packed Bond flick “Skyfall” is touting the fact that 007 is now seen drinking Heineken instead of his signature martini—a fact that Heineken paid dearly for.
But here’s my deal: AP asked a legal expert, Daniel Nazer, a resident fellow at Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project, for an opinion on the subject. His response? “Trademark laws ‘don’t exist to give companies the right to control and censor movies and TV shows that might happen to include real-world items’,” Nazer told the Associated Press.
If you’re an author and reading this, you might have the same question I had: if Nazer is correct, then why is it okay to display a can of Bud in “Flight” but I can’t have my hero drinking it—by name—in my next book? Clearly, for Matt Farralone in Cape Seduction, Budweiser is a real-world item.
Thoughts?