Posted on 04/23/2008 1:18:57 AM PDT by Fred Nerks
Copyright feud over 'awesome' Lennon footage Footage of John Lennon smoking pot, writing songs and discussing putting the hallucinogenic drug LSD in Richard Nixon's tea is the focus of a court case starting in Boston next week.
The case pits Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, against the Massachusetts-based company World Wide Video which claims ownership of nine hours of raw footage of the former Beatle and Ono. It was filmed just weeks before the "Fab Four" broke up in 1970.
World Wide Video wants to release the black-and-white footage as a two-hour film titled Three Days In The Life.
Rolling Stone magazine dubs it "awesome John Lennon footage you might never see."
The company, which paid more than $US1 million ($1.05 million) for the footage after legal costs and other expenses, nearly premiered it last year at the private Berwick Academy in Maine. But they abruptly scrapped the screening after the school received a stop order from Ono's lawyers, who assert copyright ownership of the videotapes.
World Wide Video has filed a suit in the District Court in Boston against Ono for copyright infringement.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 30.
According to court documents, World Wide Video said it bought 24 original videotapes and their copyrights in 2000 from Anthony Cox - Ono's husband before her marriage to Lennon in 1969.
Cox shot the footage at Lennon's estate in England for a documentary he planned to call Portrait.
The footage, recorded from February 8 to 11, 1970, shows Lennon composing two hits - Remember and Mind Games - along with a candid discussion of his drug use and scenes that World Wide Video describes as "intimate and no-holds barred."
World Wide Video asserts that shortly after purchasing the videotapes, along with 10 copies, they were stolen in 2000.
The company filed a separate civil suit a year later against a New Hampshire man who agreed to return the copies and locate the originals, court documents show.
The original videotapes are now held by Ono, whose lawyers claim in a countersuit that she purchased them legally from World Wide Video through a Florida man, who has been named as a defendant in the Massachusetts company's suit.
"The decision that should be made in the case is who in fact does have the copyright," Joseph Doyle, World Wide Video's lawyer, said in a telephone interview.
"We're saying that we legitimately own the copyright to this film."
Jonathan Albano, Ono's lawyer in Boston, declined to comment on the case.
- Reuters
“Rolling Stone magazine dubs it “awesome John Lennon footage you might never see.””
That sounds like something we would hear from Rolling Stone magazine. What a waste of trees.
I’m rooting for Ringo to be the last surviving Beatle. THAT would be poetic justice....
Lennon. Lenin. Different spelling; same idea.
Is Pete Best still alive? Now THAT would be karma.
Awesome Lemon Footage Ping!!!
(But this can’t compare to the humble/Eaker lemon footage...)
Way back when, Roald Dahl wrote a short story in Playboy about this very kind of incident.
Dahl had a doughy DAR woman present Nixon with flowers laced with a powerful aphrodisiac in a public setting with lots of audience...and described the hilarious aftermath.
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