Suits and Litigation (Civil)

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      in Television

      Bill Cosby Accused of Sexual Assault in Nevada by Nine Women

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      The entertainer, who was released from prison in 2021 after a conviction was overturned, now faces lawsuits in states where the statutes of limitations have changed.Nine women accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a Nevada lawsuit on Wednesday, less than two months after the state changed its statute of limitations for civil cases involving that crime.The women said in the lawsuit that the assaults took place in Nevada between 1979 and 1992, some in Mr. Cosby’s hotel suite in Las Vegas. They said that Mr. Cosby, now 85, had drugged or attempted to drug each of them before the assaults.A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday night. He told NBC News that the plaintiffs in the case were motivated by “addiction to massive amounts of media attention and greed.”The lawsuit is the latest of several to accuse the entertainer of being a sexual predator. He was convicted of sexual assault in a Pennsylvania court in 2018 and began serving a three- to 10-year sentence.Mr. Cosby was released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that prosecutors had violated his rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him. Mr. Wyatt described the court’s reversal at the time as a victory for both Black America and women.But accusations of sexual misconduct have continued to trail Mr. Cosby, who starred for years in “The Cosby Show,” a mainstay of American television in the 1980s and early 1990s. And he now faces several new lawsuits in states where the laws governing statutes of limitations have recently changed.In California last year, a jury sided with Judy Huth, who had accused Mr. Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 1975 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, when she was 16. She was awarded $500,000.Mr. Cosby was also sued in Los Angeles this month by Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy model who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her in that city in 1969, after she and a friend met him for a meal in a restaurant.The California cases were possible because state law has been changed since 2020 to extend, then temporarily lift, the statute of limitations for sexual assault filings in civil courts.A similar process in New Jersey allowed Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, to sue Mr. Cosby in 2021, accusing him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990.In Nevada, the state legislature passed a law in May that revised provisions around some civil cases involving sexual assault. The law allows people who were 18 or older when a sexual assault allegedly occurred to file civil lawsuits. Older state laws had already allowed people who were under 18 at the time of an alleged sexual assault to bring such cases.Some of the nine women who filed the lawsuit on Wednesday have been involved in legal action against Mr. Cosby in other states.One is Ms. Bernard, a former guest star on “The Cosby Show.” Another is Janice Dickinson, a model who appeared as a witness during Mr. Cosby’s Pennsylvania trial, testifying that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982. “Every state should follow Nevada’s lead and eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual assault,” said Lisa Bloom, a lawyer who represented Ms. Dickinson in the Pennsylvania case. “I applaud the courage of these women for demanding justice against Bill Cosby.” More

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      in Movies

      How KIRAC Trailed Michel Houellebecq From the Bedroom to the Courtroom

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      The art collective KIRAC was embroiled in court battles over a film about the author’s sex life. Is the dispute a performance? A marketing stunt? Or a genuine cultural feud?On Saturday night, an eclectic art crowd was gathering outside an industrial garage in Amsterdam East, where Michel Houellebecq, the celebrated French author, was set to speak.Houellebecq had on May 24 released “A Few Months of My Life,” a new book describing a tumultuous period from October 2022 to March 2023 when he collaborated with a Dutch art collective called KIRAC. Together, they worked on a film, shooting scenes that show the married 67-year-old author making out with young women.Although Houellebecq had consented to making the film, he later changed his mind and tried to back out. Beginning in February, he brought court cases in France and the Netherlands to stop the movie from being shown. Last month, an Amsterdam judge upheld Houellebecq’s complaint and granted him the right to see a final cut of any re-edited film four weeks before release, giving him a chance to file another action if he doesn’t like what he sees.In “A Few Months of My Life,” a 94-page autobiographical work, Houellebecq digs deep into his hatred for KIRAC. He names the group’s leader, Stefan Ruitenbeek, only once, describing him as a “pseudo-artist” and “a cockroach with a human face.” Female KIRAC members are referred to as “the sow” and “the turkey.”According to the organizer of Saturday’s event, Tarik Sadouma, Houellebecq had not come to Amsterdam to promote his new book, but to talk about his work generally. As a condition of his participation, Houellebecq asked Sadouma to bar Ruitenbeek and his cohorts from the event.Yet just as the audience took its seats inside, Ruitenbeek burst through the door, dressed as a giant brown cockroach, with bobbing antennae and a furry cape. He was trailed by KIRAC members, one wearing a false pig snout, another filming the whole thing.“I’m here!” cried Ruitenbeek, taking the stage, to a mixture of jeering and cheers. “I’m the cockroach!”A woman taking tickets tried to wrangle the camera from the cameraman and Sadouma shouted for the intruders to leave. Eventually, Ruitenbeek — pleading, “No violence!” — left with his entourage.Michel Houellebecq released a 94-page autobiographical book, “A Few Months of My Life,” about his experiences with KIRAC.Philippe Matsas/FlammarionThis was the latest episode in an ongoing, surrealistic conflict between KIRAC, a fringe art group that posts its films on YouTube, and Houellebecq, one of the world’s most famous authors.Was it a performance? A marketing stunt? Or part of a genuine cultural feud? Who could really tell?KIRAC, an acronym for Keeping It Real Art Critics, is often described as an art collective, but its creative center is Ruitenbeek and Kate Sinha, a writer who is also Ruitenbeek’s life partner. They make films that at first appear to be documentaries, or possibly mockumentaries, typically set in the art world. In them, the boundaries between reality and fiction are often blurred, narratives sometimes conflict and onscreen characters can appear to be playing a game with the truth.It is also often difficult to discern KIRAC’s political views. In one of its films, the Dutch architect and curator Rem Koolhaas is criticized as “macho” and “patriarchal.” In another, KIRAC seems to decry diversity efforts, arguing that the artist Zanele Muholi was given a retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, “only because she is from South Africa, Black and lesbian.” (Muholi now uses they/them pronouns and identifies as nonbinary.)Seen as provocateurs or pranksters, and sometimes art world trolls, KIRAC’s members often deliver critical monologues directly to the camera, usually in the form of articulate academic analysis from Sinha, or mocking insults from Ruitenbeek.“In the broadest sense, we’re just trying to make great films, intellectual entertainment,” Sinha said. “I think we are primarily artists, interested in the object we make, which is always the film.”Sinha in “Time’s Up, Old Man,” a KIRAC film in which she criticizes the Dutch curator and architect Rem Koolhaas.KIRACIn a joint interview, Ruitenbeek and Sinha said they developed the concept for the Houellebecq film with the author and shot 600 hours of footage of him, with his contractual consent. Houellebecq only objected when they put together a two-minute trailer for the work in progress, according to Ruitenbeek and Sinha.In that clip, Ruitenbeek explains that a “honey trip,” or sex holiday, that Houellebecq had planned in Morocco had been canceled because the author feared being kidnapped by Muslim extremists. (Houellebecq has a long history of making critical statements about Islam, and some readers have found Islamophobic sentiments in his books.)“His wife had spent an entire month arranging prostitutes from Paris, and now everything was falling apart,” Ruitenbeek says in the trailer, in voice-over. He then suggests that there are plenty of young Dutch women in Amsterdam who would have “sex with a famous writer out of curiosity,” and invites the author to visit.In a French court, Houellebecq argued that the trailer violated his privacy and damaged his image. He asked the court to make KIRAC pull the trailer from all online platforms, remove any mention of his wife arranging prostitutes and pay her damages. The court rejected Houellebecq’s case.Later, in the Dutch court, Houellebecq argued that KIRAC had violated contract law, and misled him so that he ended up “in a different film than the one originally intended,” according to his Dutch lawyer, Jacqueline Schaap. An appeal judge in that case found for Houellebecq.The film is still unfinished and continues to evolve, Ruitenbeek said. After Houellebecq left the project, KIRAC filmed in and around the court proceedings, as well as shooting other moments, such as Saturday night’s cockroach show.Ruitenbeek said he was now rethinking the material, and a final cut may not come for months.“We started off this project in an open-minded attitude toward each other; we took each other as artists,” Sinha said of the collaboration with Houellebecq. “It feels like he backpedaled and put on a different coat.”Houellebecq last week agreed to an interview for this article, but pulled out after learning that he would not be shown his quotes before publication. (At the event in Amsterdam, he again declined to comment, claiming that he did not speak English, although he speaks it in the KIRAC film.)Ruitenbeek’s over-the-top voice-overs and willingness to play a goofball suggest that KIRAC is going for humor. But, often, the subjects of its films don’t find them funny.“They point fingers at others, but carve out a safe space for themselves’,” said the artist Renzo Martens, who was the focus of an unflattering movie. “From this safe space they are brave enough to cut into other people’s flesh.”Three Dutch institutions that KIRAC has lambasted — the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Abbe Museum and the Kunstmuseum, in The Hague — declined to comment for this article.Salima El Musalima in KIRAC’s film “Honeypot.” More than 1,000 people signed a petition calling the film “a glorification of sexual violence.”KIRACThijs Lijster, a senior lecturer on the philosophy of art and culture at the University of Groningen, said that there is “something threatening in their ways of going about their work. They have a style of filming, and approaching and talking to people, which is, in a way, rather hostile.”It is not just KIRAC’s targeting of artists and institutions that has been controversial. Over time, its films have evolved to enter the realm of social commentary, drawing ire from across the political spectrum.Some viewers saw the group’s 19-minute film “Who’s Afraid of Harvey Weinstein?,” in which Sinha speaks about sexual power dynamics between the American film producer and his rape victims, as dismissive of the #MeToo movement.A leading art school in Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, canceled a KIRAC screening after dozens of complaints from students, former students and teachers about statements in the group’s films that they found sexist and racist. The Weinstein movie was championed on a right-wing populist Dutch blog, Geen Stijl. Suddenly, KIRAC became a magnet for conservative followers.Although Ruitenbeek and Sinha said their personal politics are progressive, KIRAC didn’t disavow the attention, and instead produced a film called “Honeypot.” For that, the group convinced a conservative Dutch philosopher and activist, Sid Lukkassen, to have sex on camera with a left-wing student. The idea was to see if the intimate act would somehow bridge a political gap.More backlash ensued. When an Amsterdam arts center called De Balie screened “Honeypot,” a feminist collective submitted a petition with more than 1,000 signatures that called the film “a glorification of sexual violence.” The petition’s signers also included the right-wing Dutch politician Paul Cliteur and some of his followers.Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with Houellebecq was no stunt. They maintained that they don’t want to be in court with the author, whom they both described as “a genius.”Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times“It was interesting that these two sides teamed up against the film for opposite reasons,” said Yoeri Albrecht, De Balie’s director, who did not cancel the event. “I’ve never seen that happen in the more than a decade that I’ve been organizing events here.”The ambiguity around the group’s motivations only feeds the interest in KIRAC’s work. Many who have been following the Houellebecq affair are unsure whether it’s real or a postmodern KIRAC fiction.“Everyone is wondering, are they playing a game together?” said Simon Delobel, a curator who teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Ghent, Belgium, where he was introduced to the group’s work by his students. KIRAC and Houellebecq were surely “well aware that it can be interpreted as a stunt,” he added.Yet Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with the author was no stunt. They don’t want to be in court with Houellebecq, whom they both described as “a genius.” They just want to be in conversation with him, Sinha said.Ruitenbeek added that when he showed up at Houellebecq’s talk on Saturday, he thought there was a small chance that everyone would laugh and give each other hugs. He was “very happy the day he went to get the cockroach suit,” Sinha said. “After all these intimidating court cases,” she added, “we were back on our own territory again: making art.”Léontine Gallois More

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      in Music

      Mötley Crüe Guitarist’s Lawsuit Says He Was Kicked Out

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      Mick Mars accused his bandmates of gaslighting him and cutting him out of future profits after he said he was retiring from touring.Mick Mars, the guitarist for the veteran hair-metal band Mötley Crüe, filed a lawsuit this week accusing his bandmates of pushing him out of the group and cutting him out of its future profits.The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, details a falling out that the band had with Mars after he announced in October that he was retiring from touring, citing chronic pain from an inflammatory disease that affects the spine.The rest of the band responded, the suit says, by convening an emergency shareholders’ meeting of Mötley Crüe’s main corporate entity to throw Mars out of the band, fire him as a director of the corporation and take away his shares. The lawsuit says Mars has a 25 percent stake in each of the band’s affiliated business entities.“It is beyond sad that, after 41 years together, a band would try to throw out a member who is unable to tour anymore because he has a debilitating disease,” said Edwin F. McPherson, Mars’s lawyer. “Mick has been pushed around for far too long in this band, and we are not going to let that continue.”Mötley Crüe formed in Los Angeles in 1981 and became one of the most popular of the so-called hair-metal bands. Mixing glam-rock theatrics, heavy metal riffs and radio-friendly pop hooks, they were fixtures on MTV in the 1980s and, by that decade’s end, had topped the Billboard 200 chart with their 1989 album, “Dr. Feelgood.” The band’s tell-all memoir, “The Dirt,” which chronicled their rise to fame and rocky history, was adapted into a Netflix biopic in 2019.Mars, 71, whose real name is Robert Alan Deal, joined Mötley Crüe shortly after it was founded and, according to the lawsuit, came up with the band’s name. He was diagnosed at 27 with ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that can cause the vertebrae to fuse over time. The disease has caused his spine “to seize up and freeze completely solid,” the suit says, adding that he is in chronic pain and is not able to move his head in any direction.Last fall, Mars told his bandmates that, because of his “debilitating” ankylosing spondylitis, he couldn’t physically “handle the rigors of the road” and would no longer tour with the band, the suit says. Mars, who last performed with Mötley Crüe in Las Vegas on Sept. 9, 2022, said he would still record and perform with the band in a “residency situation.”After Mars publicly announced the change on Oct. 26, the band issued a separate statement saying that he had “retired” and that a guitarist named John 5 was replacing him.The other band members — Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Tommy Lee — called the emergency shareholders’ meeting, where they sought to fire Mars from seven band-affiliated corporations and limited-liability corporations, the lawsuit says. Those entities — Mötley Crüe Inc.; Mötley Crüe Touring Inc.; Red, White and Crue Inc.; Masters 2000 Inc.; Cruefest LLC; Mötley Records LLC; and Masters 2008 LLC — are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, which demands that Mars be allowed to review the band’s business records. He is also seeking reimbursement for his legal fees.Mars claims in his lawsuit that the band also demanded that he sign an agreement that his share of future touring profits and sales of merchandise featuring the band’s name and logo be reduced to 5 percent from 25 percent, and that he receive no income from sales of merchandise that “named or depicted” his replacement in the band.Sasha Frid, a lawyer for the band, said the lawsuit was “unfortunate and completely off base.” He said that Mars and other band members signed an agreement in 2008 that nobody would receive money from performances if they resigned.“Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything — and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back — the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band,” Frid said in an emailed statement. “Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”The lawsuit sheds light on the band’s tumultuous personal relationships, accusing Sixx, Mötley Crüe’s bassist, of making decisions on the band’s behalf without consulting his bandmates. Sixx also “gaslighted” Mars in recent years, the suit says, telling him that his guitar playing was subpar, that he often played the wrong chords onstage and that he had “some sort of cognitive dysfunction.”Frid provided The New York Times with signed declarations from seven members of the band’s crew, including the band’s production manager, who said Mars’s performance on Mötley Crüe’s 2022 stadium tour was “by far the worst I have ever seen in my years with the band.”“Mötley Crüe always performs its songs live, but during the last tour Mick struggled to remember chords, played the wrong songs and made constant mistakes which led to his departure from the band,” Frid said. “The band did everything to protect him, tried to keep these matters private to honor Mick’s legacy and take the high road.”In his lawsuit, Mars acknowledged occasionally playing the wrong chords on tour, but said it was because of a faulty in-ear monitor that made him unable to hear his guitar. Instead, he accused the other band members, including Sixx, of miming to recordings onstage. More

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      in Theater

      The Enduring Appeal of ‘Wagatha,’ Now on Stage and Screen

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      A dramatization of the trial between the wives of two soccer stars is returning to the West End in London, joining TV shows, podcasts and documentaries about the high-profile spat.With its stage transformed into a green soccer pitch, “Vardy v. Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial” at Wyndham’s Theater in London last November promised its nearly sold-out audience a game, and the two women onstage were both trying to score a goal.But as two pundits ooh’ed and aah’ed from the sidelines, the actresses sparring were not playing soccer stars but the women married to them, caught at the center of an Instagram feud turned high-profile libel case that captured the British public’s attention last May and peeled back the curtain hiding the machinations of British celebrity and the glitzy world of English soccer.“I see it as a comedy of manners,” said Liv Hennessy, the writer of the play, which returns to the West End on Thursday at the Ambassadors Theater. “It’s a theatrical way for us to look at the way people behave in our current society.”The play is just one recent retelling of the real-life case that became known as the “Wagatha Christie” trial, in which Rebekah Vardy, the wife of the Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, sued Coleen Rooney, the wife of the former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, for defamation. The catalyst: Rooney’s accusation, on Twitter, that Vardy had leaked her personal information to the British press.The wives and girlfriends of soccer players — commonly known in Britain by the acronym WAGs — have long been followed by tabloids, but Rooney’s post caused an online furor. Its escalation into the legal realm led to breathless coverage, drawing in powerhouse lawyers and unearthing revelations about both women’s personal lives.The legal side of the long-running saga came to an end last July, with the High Court ruling against Vardy, saying that the reputational damage from the scandal was not libel and ordering Vardy to pay almost all of Rooney’s legal costs, which amounted to about £1.7 million, or $1.9 million.But the case’s power as a story has lived on, with production companies, documentary makers, podcasters and journalists finding the unfolding trial and its cast of characters just too irresistible not to dissect, all helped by the availability of the weeklong case’s court transcripts.“It’s the old adage of: You can’t write this,” said Thomas Popay, the creative director of Chalkboard TV, which produced a two-part dramatization, “Vardy v. Rooney: A Courtroom Drama,” that aired on Channel 4 in Britain last December. “We literally didn’t. We took the transcripts and recreated them.”Alongside the West End play and Channel 4 show, offerings for followers of the feud include a BBC podcast called “It’s … Wagatha Christie” and the Discovery+ documentary “Vardy vs Rooney: The Wagatha Trial.” Rooney has signed a Disney+ deal for a three-part documentary looking at the events leading up to the trial, and the saga is reportedly being considered for a retelling as part of the series “A Very British Scandal.”Rebekah Vardy, left, lost her defamation case against Coleen Rooney, right, in London’s High Court last year. Rooney described how she concocted a sting operation to reveal the betrayer.Daniel Leal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“All of us can relate to the idea of being betrayed — especially betrayed by someone who we trusted,” Popay said. “And on Vardy’s side — we can all relate to not being believed.”In her 2019 social media post, Rooney described how she concocted a sting operation to reveal the betrayer by posting false stories that were visible to a single account — Vardy’s — to test if they would turn up in The Sun, a London tabloid.The popularity of the post led to Rooney being nicknamed “Wagatha Christie” — a portmanteau of WAG and Agatha Christie, the mystery writer — for her detective work. Vardy quickly denied she was the leaker and sued Rooney for defaming her.“We are absolutely interested in people’s misfortunes and what goes on in celebrity lives,” said Adrian Bingham, a professor of modern British history at the University of Sheffield who has studied media and gender issues. The women’s involvement with the soccer world gave their dispute resonance with a wider audience, he added, while the legal case gave the non-tabloid media a legitimate reason to cover it. Producers of the adaptations say they have asked their own lawyers to look over scripts, lest they find themselves accused of defamation.The court transcript itself had moments and revelations that many say were ripe for re-enactment: a phone with key evidence in the form of WhatsApp messages, apparently lost to the bottom of the North Sea; lawyers in wigs formally reading out text messages from the women, some containing profanities; Vardy’s tears on the witness stand after cross-examination by David Sherborne, Rooney’s lawyer.“It was positively Shakespearean in terms of how it went down,” said Popay. “We decided the best thing to do and the most accurate thing to do was to completely recreate the trial by using the court transcripts verbatim.” His company’s show, which was commissioned in May during the trial and aired in December, drew 1.5 million viewers.In the Channel 4 show “Vardy v. Rooney: A Courtroom Drama,” Vardy is played by Natalia Tena, seen here arriving at court.Channel 4Hennessy, the writer of the West End play, also relied heavily on the court transcripts, but took liberties by leaning into the soccer world, structuring the play like a game itself. Reading the transcripts, she said she was struck by the humanity of the two women, who have both been criticized (Vardy has said that people made abusive threats toward her and her unborn baby following that fateful post, while the trial laid bare tensions in Rooney’s marriage and her experience growing up with fame).“It does ask how complicit we are in creating public figures, and tearing them down when they don’t meet our standards,” Hennessy said.Even at a rehearsal in late March, before the play’s official return, it was clear the trial continued to intrigue and perplex even the cast members. During a pivotal scene in which Rooney is grilled by Vardy’s lawyer on precisely why she made the fateful decision to share the feud with the world, the actors broke character to pose their own burning questions: Was that decision one of a calculating woman, or a woman at a breaking point? Why had she not privately confronted Vardy? And what did it feel like to live, as they imagined Rooney did, in a world where one’s image could become a public commodity?Though celebrity gossip can be easy to dismiss as frivolous, the two opponents in the trial were both women from working-class backgrounds who laid out one aspirational pathway for others like them, said Rebecca Twomey, an entertainment correspondent who has covered both women closely.“We like to put people on pedestals — and bring them down,” she said, adding that many people enjoyed a modern-day pantomime. “You might think they’re airhead WAGs, but these are two sharp, intelligent women.”Still, the enduring appeal of the high drama of “Wagatha Christie” is also simple, Professor Bingham said.“The reason people are telling it is not because it’s insightful,” he added. “It’s because it’s a great story — with great lines.” More

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      in Movies

      Johnny Depp Film About Louis XV Will Open Cannes Film Festival

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      The inclusion of “Jeanne du Barry,” directed by Maïwenn, is Depp’s first public embrace by the film industry since he won a bitter defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.Johnny Depp’s first major film since winning a lurid and contentious defamation trial last year — a costume drama in which he plays King Louis XV of France — will open the Cannes Film Festival in May, the festival announced on Wednesday.Depp filmed the period drama, “Jeanne du Barry,” shortly after the trial, in which the jury found that his ex-wife Amber Heard had defamed him when she described herself in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” During six weeks of testimony, which riveted the nation, he and Heard battled over her allegations that he had physically and sexually abused her. Heard initially appealed the verdict, but then announced that she intended to settle the dispute.Since Depp’s victory in court, he has tiptoed back into the public eye, appearing in a fashion show backed by Rihanna and at the MTV Video Music Awards; he also started a TikTok account. But the Cannes premiere is the actor’s first public embrace by the film industry since the trial, where he denied Heard’s allegations of physical and sexual abuse and tried to portray her as the aggressor in the relationship.“Jeanne du Barry” is directed by and stars the French actress and filmmaker Maïwenn, who plays the title character, a working-class woman and courtesan who becomes the favorite of the king. Maïwenn’s film “Polisse” won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2011.Her new film will premiere on May 16, after the festival’s opening ceremony, and will debut in French movie theaters on the same day. Fifteen months after its theatrical release, Netflix will stream the movie on its service only in France.Depp, 59, had also appealed a narrow part of the jury’s decision in the defamation case, in which they held him liable for a defamatory statement that his lawyer had made about Heard. His lawyers said last year that Heard had agreed to pay $1 million to end the case, far less than what the jury in Virginia had initially called on her to pay.His victory in the trial surprised some legal observers, because a judge in Britain had ruled in an earlier case that there was evidence that Depp had assaulted Heard. The British ruling came in a libel suit that Depp had filed after The Sun, a tabloid newspaper, called him a “wife beater” in a headline. The judge in that case ruled that the defendants had shown that what they published was “substantially true.”Nicole Sperling More

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      in Music

      As a Film Revives Elvis’s Legacy, the Presleys Fight Over His Estate

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      After the death of Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s ex-wife initiated a legal battle with her granddaughter over control of the family trust.When the camera panned to Priscilla Presley and her daughter, Lisa Marie, they appeared enraptured.Austin Butler had rekindled the good memories of Elvis with his portrayal in a lauded biopic. And for a few magical minutes on that January evening, Butler was there, on the stage at the Golden Globes, conjuring the voice and radiating the charm of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll as he accepted a best actor award.Lisa Marie clasped her hands around her mouth. Priscilla placed her hand on her heart. Mother and daughter had had their run-ins over the years, but they were together again — nestled at a table, like family.“One of the greatest nights of my career,” said Jerry Schilling, a Presley family friend and business associate who escorted Lisa Marie that evening.But days later, the sadness that has long trailed the family had again taken hold. Lisa Marie, only 54, died suddenly. Within weeks, Priscilla, who had long helped administer Elvis’s estate, went to court to challenge the validity of documents that say her granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, is now the sole trustee.The dispute got underway just as Keough prepared for the release of the new Amazon Prime Video series “Daisy Jones & the Six,” in which she stars. It is unclear what acrimony may arise as the litigation unfolds, but Keough stayed conspicuously quiet when her grandmother urged the public not to view it as a family fight. Keough’s lawyers have yet to file court papers in response.Riley Keough, who stars as Daisy Jones in a new Amazon Prime series, has not responded to her grandmother’s decision to challenge her standing as the sole trustee of the family trust.Lacey Terrell/Amazon Prime VideoReaction has been swift, though, at Graceland, Elvis’s former home in Memphis, where emotions over the Presley family run high. Lisa Marie Bailey, a visitor named after Elvis’s only child, said last weekend that she supported Keough.If the King knew what was happening, she said, standing near where Elvis is buried, “he would be turning over in his grave.”The latest Presley family dust-up echoes the messiness that marked Elvis’s life, which, beyond the hit records and Hollywood films, was filled with its share of public dramas, including divorce, profligate spending and, late in life, a struggle with drug addiction.Despite those troubles, the Elvis brand today continues to take in more than $100 million a year as the licensing juggernaut behind apparel, pink Cadillac plush toys and tickets to tour Graceland. But the family trust receives only a fraction of its proceeds, according to court filings that detail its earnings.In 2005, Lisa Marie and her business manager sold off 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises for roughly $97 million in cash, stock and debt relief, according to court documents — funds that have since been nearly depleted. Still, last year, before her death, Elvis’s daughter drew an income of $1.25 million from the trust, which continues to be worth tens of millions of dollars, according to financial filings. The beneficiaries are now Keough and her two younger half sisters.This weekend, the curious are likely to search for Keough and Priscilla at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, where Butler is a strong contender for the best actor Oscar.Neither camp would comment on whether the women plan to attend.The family today owns only 15 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Elvis’s former home Graceland, a major draw for fans. Brandon Dill/Associated PressSuccess and excess in the house of ElvisWhen Elvis died unexpectedly in 1977, his estate was worth roughly $5 million. His spending had drained his earnings, which had long been limited by his business arrangement with his longtime manager, Col. Tom Parker. He received as much as half of the King’s income, including roughly half the $5.4 million fee that RCA Records paid in 1973 when Presley gave up future royalty rights from sales of recordings he had made, which included the majority of his hits.The money that remained was left in a trust and, after several family members died, Lisa Marie, emerged as its sole beneficiary. Priscilla, who divorced Elvis four years before his death, became a trustee and eventually engineered an overhaul of the estate, turning it into a moneymaker, in part by opening Graceland to the public in 1982.It was a painful but necessary tactic — “like being robbed,” Priscilla said later of watching strangers enter the home. The Los Angeles Times estimated in 1989 that the value of the estate had climbed to more than $75 million and that Elvis Presley Enterprises was bringing in an estimated $15 million a year in gross income.The assets grew to more than $100 million by 2005, according to court documents. By that time, they had been moved into a new vehicle, the Promenade Trust, established by Lisa Marie in 1993. She was its beneficiary; her mother and Barry Siegel, the family’s business manager, served as trustees.Then began what Lisa Marie’s lawyers have called her “11-year odyssey to financial ruin.”Siegel and Lisa Marie would later trade accusations over who was to blame for her precipitous financial decline. In a 2018 court fight, which was eventually settled, Siegel contended that, though the trust received millions of dollars in annual income, “Lisa’s continuous, excessive spending and reliance on credit” drove it into significant debt.In 2005, as the bills mounted, Lisa Marie and Siegel engineered the sale of 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises to a group led by the investor Robert F.X. Sillerman.The deal paid about $50 million in cash. The trust also received $25 million in stock in Sillerman’s entertainment company, CKX, and $22 million in debt relief, according to court documents. The trust kept the remaining 15 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises and the main Graceland house, appraised at $5.6 million in 2021.In 2013, Sillerman sold Elvis Presley Enterprises to Authentic Brands Group in partnership with Joel Weinshanker, who now operates Graceland. Three years later, Sillerman’s company declared bankruptcy, rendering Lisa Marie’s CKX stock almost worthless, according to court documents.And by that time, the $50 million in cash that Lisa Marie’s trust had received was also largely gone, spent on things like a $9 million home in England. In her court papers, Lisa Marie blamed Siegel for allowing that purchase and said he had enriched himself with exorbitant fees and failed to alert her to how dire the financial situation had become.By 2016, her lawsuit said, the trust “was left with $14,000 in cash and over $500,000 in credit card debt.”Siegel’s lawyers were blunt in their 2018 cross complaint, which denied their client was responsible for the diminished assets. “Sadly, since inheriting her father’s estate in 1993, Lisa has twice squandered it,” they wrote. “She now has only herself to blame for her financial and personal misfortunes.”Meanwhile, Elvis Presley Enterprises was churning along. Last year, it pulled in $110 million, at least $80 million of which was generated by operations at Graceland. Another $5 million came from the sale of the rights for the Baz Luhrmann biopic, according to Forbes, whose estimates were confirmed by two people with knowledge of the company’s finances.In addition to the $1.25 million she got last year from the trust, Lisa Marie received a monthly salary of roughly $4,300 as an employee of Graceland, according to a financial filing she made last year. It also listed roughly $95,000 in liquid assets, $715,000 in stocks and bonds, and debts that exceeded $3 million.Priscilla and Elvis were married for six years before divorcing in 1973. GETTY‘Family is everything’Though it’s surrounded now by a hotel and other amenities, Graceland is largely the same home Elvis bought in 1957, at 22, and lived in for two decades. The large, once bustling kitchen remains, as does the pool room and the jungle room, with its waterfall and carved wooden furniture.The audio tour offers visitors a glimpse of Presley family life.“Today, Lisa Marie and her family still have dinner around this table when they’re in town,” the audio intones during a stop in the dining room, where Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding china is displayed on a table near a portrait of Priscilla and a young Lisa Marie.The relationship between mother and daughter had become strained in recent years, according to people close to the family who requested anonymity to describe intimate Presley matters. One family confidante said Lisa Marie became particularly upset in 2016 when she filed to divorce her fourth husband, Michael Lockwood, and felt her mother was siding with Lockwood in the dispute.Still, they sat together at the Golden Globes.Schilling, who escorted Lisa Marie that night, declined to discuss Presley family matters. But he said the celebration of the “Elvis” film and the King’s legacy had been something of a salve for Lisa Marie, helping her “come out a little bit” after a difficult period. Her son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide in 2020.On Jan. 26, two weeks after Lisa Marie’s death, Priscilla filed papers in Superior Court in Los Angeles challenging a 2016 amendment to the trust purportedly authorized by Lisa Marie. That amendment had removed Priscilla and Siegel as trustees. It had also designated Riley Keough and Benjamin, her brother, as co-trustees in the event of Lisa Marie’s death.Siegel had acknowledged receiving notice of his removal as trustee during his 2018 court battle with Lisa Marie. But Priscilla’s lawyers argued that the amendment was invalid, saying that it had never been delivered to her during Lisa Marie’s lifetime as required under the language of the trust. They also argued that the amendment was potentially fraudulent, asserting that Lisa Marie’s signature was “inconsistent” with her usual penmanship. Priscilla asked the court to recognize her as a trustee.Discord in the Presley family appears to have grown since the death of Lisa Marie, left, in January. She is shown with her mother, center, and daughter, Riley, at an event in Los Angeles last year.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressA spokeswoman for Priscilla did not respond to requests for comment on her motivations for the court challenge. But Priscilla, in a statement last month, asked the public to “allow us the time we need to work together and sort this out,” imploring fans to “ignore ‘the noise.’”Keough’s representative declined to comment on the estate matters.Weinshanker, the managing partner of Graceland, also declined to comment but has said since Lisa Marie’s death that he believed it was her intention to have Keough and her brother run the trust.“There was never a question in her mind that they would be the stewards,” he told Sirius XM’s Elvis Radio, “that they would look at it the exact same way that she did. And obviously when Ben passed, it really sat with Riley.”In Memphis last weekend, people touring Graceland said they had been closely watching the dispute unfold. Many have been Elvis fans for their entire lives and have grown accustomed to Presley family drama. Still, some worried that the schism might lead to Graceland’s being sold.Kristie Gustafson, 54, said she grew up listening to Elvis’s music with her mother. “I’m a very family-oriented person, so I would say it’s very important to keep it in the family,” she said, beginning to tear up.“Family,” she said, “is everything.”Nicole Sperling contributed reporting from Los Angeles, Jessica Jaglois contributed reporting from Memphis and Ben Sisario contributed reporting from New York. Sheelagh McNeill and Jack Begg contributed research. More

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      in Movies

      Richard Anobile, Chronicler of the Marx Brothers, Dies at 76

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      He produced many books about film. But Groucho Marx tried to stop distribution of one collaborative effort because he didn’t like seeing his salty and insulting remarks in print.Richard Anobile, a prolific creator of film books whose friendly collaboration with the anarchic comedian Groucho Marx on a project called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” turned sour when Mr. Marx sued to stop its distribution after reading his unedited quoted remarks in print, died on Feb. 10 in Toronto. He was 76.His wife, Elizabeth (Golfman) Anobile, said the cause was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.Mr. Anobile (pronounced a-NO-buh-lay) first entered the world of Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx with the publication in 1971 of “Why a Duck?” (the title is based on wordplay between Groucho and Chico over the word “viaduct” in the 1929 movie “The Cocoanuts”). The book combined blowups of frames from scenes in eight of the comedy team’s films with the dialogue that accompanied them. Groucho Marx wrote the introduction.“The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” published two years later, was a more ambitious project, and it brought Mr. Anobile into closer contact with Groucho, then in his 80s, through an introduction by his agent.In addition to excerpts from his many hours of interviews with Mr. Marx, the book included photographs and illustrations, as well as playbills, reviews, advertisements, family scrapbook entries and pages from film scripts. Mr. Anobile also interviewed the other two surviving Marx brothers, Gummo (who left the group long before they started making movies) and Zeppo, as well as friends like the comedian Jack Benny.The film critic Roger Ebert called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” “the all-time definitive work on the subject.”Writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, the film critic Roger Ebert called the book “the all-time definitive work on the subject.”But Mr. Marx regretted the publication of his raw opinions of people like his brother Chico (“All he could do was shoot the piano keys”); Noël Coward and Truman Capote (whom he tarred with gay slurs); George M. Cohan (“a no-good Irish son of a bitch”); S.J. Perelman, who contributed to the scripts of two Marx Brothers films (“I hated the son of a bitch and he had a head as big as my desk”); and Marilyn Monroe, who had a small role in “Love Happy” (1949), the brothers’ last film.In late 1973, Mr. Marx sought an injunction in New York State Supreme Court to stop the distribution of the book, although it had already been delivered to bookstores nationwide. He argued that it contained “defamatory, scandalous, obscene and inflammatory matter” and that Mr. Anobile had assured him that he was going to turn his raw language into respectable prose.Whatever it was he had said — to paraphrase a song he had sung in “Horse Feathers” (1932) — he was against it.To prove that Mr. Marx said what he had said, Mr. Anobile brought the tapes of their interviews into court. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times in 1974, he recalled cautioning Mr. Marx not to say anything during the interviews that he did not want to see published.He added, “He signed a jacket of the book, ‘This is a wonderful book, Richard, thanks to you.’”Mr. Marx — who staged one of his depositions in a Manhattan hotel suite wearing a shirt patterned with the titles of Marx Brothers films and bearing the slogan “Money talks” — never got the injunction or the $15 million in damages that he had demanded.Mr. Anobile told the blog Brain Dead and Loving It in 2018 that the case was settled after Mr. Marx’s death in 1977.Groucho Marx in 1964. He sought an injunction in 1973 to stop the distribution of “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” although it had already been delivered to bookstores nationwide. He argued that it contained “defamatory, scandalous, obscene and inflammatory matter.”W. Breeze/Evening Standard, via Getty ImagesRichard Joseph Anobile was born on Feb. 6, 1947, in the Bronx. His father, Joseph, was a government worker; his mother, Isabella (Lanzella) Anobile, was a homemaker who sometimes worked in a bakery. He grew up watching old comedies on television and studied film at the City College of New York; he said he directed one film there but grew disenchanted with the courses and got a job in the paid obituaries department of a newspaper.Another job, with the film collector Raymond Rohauer, led him to work on retrospectives of the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy at the supermarket heir Huntington Hartford’s Gallery of Modern Art in Manhattan. In 1969, he published his first book — “Drat: Being the Encapsulated View of Life by W.C. Fields in His Own Words” — about the comedian with the bulbous nose and misanthropic screen persona who starred in films like “It’s a Gift” (1934) and “The Bank Dick” (1940).It was the start of an unusual publishing career. Mr. Anobile went on to combine movie frames and dialogue in books that ambitiously reconstructed complete films, including “Casablanca,” “Psycho,” Stagecoach,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Frankenstein” and “Play It Again, Sam.” He used the same formula to describe “verbal and visual gems” in the films of W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.He continued to publish into the 1980s, when he realized that people were more likely to watch a film on videocassette than experience it through a book-length, frame-by-frame reconstruction.He soon moved into television production — where he had wanted to be since he was in college — and worked largely as a postproduction supervisor on movies like “Liberace: Behind the Music” (1988) and “Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story” (2004), and series including “Murdoch Mysteries.” He was also the associate producer of some TV projects and, last year, a producer of episodes of “The Kings of Napa,” a series about the wine business on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN channel.In addition to his wife, Mr. Anobile is survived by his stepdaughter, Tamara Kruger. His two previous marriages ended in divorce.When Mr. Anobile began work on “Why a Duck?,” he recalled, he envisioned creating a short, simple book, like “Drat,” filled with quotations and stills from Marx Brothers films. Instead, it became a detailed 288-page book, with scenes matched to their dialogue.“I became so involved with their comedy that I began having guilt feelings about hatcheting my way through their films, plucking one line here and one line there and pawning it off as representative of their humor,” he wrote in “Why a Duck?” “So, faced by the bulk of what I had already accumulated, I decided to do what no one had tried — compile as complete a volume as possible by attempting a literal translation from celluloid to paper.” More

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      in Theater

      How These Sign Language Experts Are Bringing More Diversity to Theater

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      As productions increasingly include characters and perspectives from a variety of backgrounds, deaf and hearing people who translate the shows for deaf audiences are trying to keep up.Zavier Sabio didn’t have much exposure to theater growing up. But when he was asked to join the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of “A Soldier’s Play” and help make the show — about race relations in the military in the segregated South — accessible to deaf theatergoers, he decided to give it a shot.“I really wanted to present this story, as well as the interpretation, through a Black lens,” Sabio, who is Deaf and Black, said through an interpreter. To do that, he also relied on his knowledge of Black American Sign Language (a variation of American Sign Language) and Black Deaf culture.Sabio joined the 2020 production as a co-director of artistic sign language, or DASL, a position that some shows fill in order to create a more cohesive theater experience for deaf audiences. DASLs collaborate with American Sign Language interpreters who specialize in theater, translating the script into ASL and establishing how to perform the signing — while staying true to the spirit of a show. That also entails accounting for representations of race in source material and casting.Amid a racial reckoning in theater, the work of DASLs and theatrical interpreters from a variety of backgrounds has become increasingly sought after in the past few years — both by deaf audiences and theatrical productions. But while there have been efforts to recruit more diverse interpreters, the push for better representation is not without challenges.That became evident in November, when Keith Wann, who is white, filed a lawsuit against the Theater Development Fund and its director, Lisa Carling, accusing them of discrimination. In the suit, Wann charged that a job offer from TDF — for theatrical interpreting for “The Lion King” on Broadway — had been retracted because of his race. A spokesperson for TDF, a nonprofit organization focused on making theater more affordable and accessible, declined to comment. The show, which has a racially mixed cast, draws on African imagery.Some deaf people took to social media when news of the lawsuit (which was eventually settled) broke, calling for more alignment along racial lines between productions and those providing interpreting services.“The interpreting field itself is very white-dominated,” said Kailyn Aaron-Lozano, who has worked as a DASL for “My Onliness” at the New Ohio Theater and “Sweeney Todd” at IRT Theater, speaking through an interpreter.Aaron-Lozano, who is Deaf and Afro-Latina, explained that having theatrical interpreters and DASLs who are BIPOC (an acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color) can have a big impact on the audiences of the productions that focus on those groups. “We are screaming for more BIPOC individuals to be in these positions,” she said. “There are not enough BIPOC interpreters who can fit the roles — and to better understand those nuances and those cultural pieces.”Jina Porter, a hearing theatrical interpreter and a person of color, said that when there is a mismatch between the interpreting team and what is happening onstage, it can be jarring for deaf viewers. “I feel like you should look at the team and then look at the show and feel like they would all kind of be in the same place together,” she said.Porter said that ensuring more diversity in theatrical interpreting is also a matter of providing equal access and opportunity. “That’s just the way the world should be,” she said.Patrice Creamer, a Black and Deaf theater artist who also works as a DASL, says that not every show requires a perfect racial match of actors and those making the show accessible. (She is currently a DASL for “The Lion King” but was not named in Wann’s lawsuit.)But having that alignment, Creamer said through an interpreter, can help the viewer form a more immediate connection with a show. That was the case, she added, with her work in the 2000 Broadway revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” where she interpreted for the role of Mary Magdalene, played by Maya Days, who is Black.“I played that character so that the Deaf audience could really take everything in with their eyes,” she said, “since their focus isn’t as much on what is happening on the stage, but on what’s happening with the interpreter.”Having deaf people whose first language is ASL working in artistic sign language direction brings a whole other perspective — a deaf one — to a production, Michelle Banks, a Black actress, director and writer who is Deaf, said through an interpreter. DASLs can also have a say in hiring, and can choose interpreters who are a better fit for the characters, the culture represented and the chosen signing style, Banks added.Banks has served as a DASL on shows including Camille A. Brown’s Broadway revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” which starred Alexandria Wailes, a deaf and mixed race actress, and incorporated ASL into the fabric of the show.“I worked with Deaf actors, but I also worked with hearing actors,” Banks said of “For Colored Girls.” “So it’s not just Deaf culture that I brought to the production, but also the Black Deaf culture. And I did that with signing that showed that specific culture that is specific to the Black Deaf community.”She described one scene, for example, in which Wailes signs in Black American Sign Language, or BASL, which relies in a unique way on body language and rhythm. Onstage, Wailes’s signing became almost sensual, she said. “It was totally different from everyday conversational ASL.”“It became a lot more emotive,” Banks added. “There was a lot more feeling in that.”Sabio, who also incorporated BASL in the interpreting for “A Soldier’s Play,” said that for authenticity, he also researched and used signs from the historical period in which the play is set.Monique Holt, a professor in the theater and dance program at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., who also works as a director, actor and DASL, said that although more diversity exists in theater these days, there are not enough interpreters from diverse backgrounds — especially those who, like her, are Asian and Deaf.Offering more training opportunities and scholarships for those hoping to have a career in the field could make a difference, added Holt, who also mentors people interested in becoming artistic directors for sign language.Banks believes that theatrical interpreters can also be more thoughtful when booking interpreting roles and “really do some self-assessment: Am I the right person for this role? Am I the right interpreter for this job?”Theaters that provide interpreting should be part of the solution, too, Creamer said, adding that some of them tend to rely on a narrow group of established interpreters who are predominantly white. “They don’t have people of color on their list,” she said. “And there are excuses: ‘We can’t find them. We don’t know where they are.’ But how hard are those people really looking?” More