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- BUSINESS, Page 50He's Got Their Number, Almost
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- A writer scores against a studio, but where's the money?
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- "I'd hire the devil himself as a writer if he gave me a good
- story."
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- -- Sam Goldwyn
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- Movie moguls crave good scripts, but they hate to pay for
- them. So goes the age-old gripe among disgruntled Hollywood
- screenwriters, but it took an outsider like columnist Art
- Buchwald to put the allegation to the test. In a star-studded
- courtroom drama, Buchwald cast a bright light on the
- machinations of Hollywood's power brokers. Last week a Los
- Angeles judge ruled that Paramount Pictures used Buchwald's
- script proposal as the basis for its 1988 blockbuster Coming to
- America and failed to pay him accordingly. Paramount plans to
- appeal.
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- The dispute goes back to 1983, when Paramount agreed to buy
- the rights to Buchwald's proposal It's a Crude, Crude World,
- a tale of an African royal who ventures to the U.S. and falls
- in love in a Washington ghetto. Paramount renamed it King for
- a Day and began developing it as a vehicle for Eddie Murphy,
- but abandoned the project two years later, having paid Buchwald
- a total of $17,500.
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- Murphy then wrote a story outline called The Quest, about
- a black prince searching for true love, which eventually became
- Coming to America. Buchwald went to see the picture while
- vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, and was struck by its
- similarity to his proposal. Murphy, who received screen credit
- as the creator of the story, testified in a written deposition
- last month that he conceived the idea for the film in the wake
- of a painful romantic breakup. But Judge Harvey Schneider ruled
- that the parallels were substantial and that Paramount and
- Murphy had known about Buchwald's original story, although he
- stressed that his verdict was in no way meant to "disparage
- the creative talent" of Murphy.
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- For Buchwald, the hard part will be getting the money he
- thinks he has coming to him. Judge Schneider ordered the studio
- to pay $250,000 to Buchwald and Alain Bernheim, who was
- originally scheduled to produce the film. In the next phase of
- the trial, Buchwald and Bernheim will try to establish a dollar
- figure for the 19% of the net profits promised them in the 1983
- contract. Trouble is, the studio claims that while the movie
- took in more than $300 million at the box office, it has made
- no net earnings -- at least according to the arcane accounting
- of Hollywood.
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- It will be up to Buchwald and his lawyer to find the profit.
- Joked Buchwald: "We suspect it's in Gloria Swanson's dressing
- room." Of the $300 million gross, half was kept by theaters
- showing the film. The rest went for shooting the picture (one
- cost estimate: $40 million), distribution fees charged by
- Paramount ($50 million), studio overhead ($5 million), film
- prints and promotion ($15 million), Murphy's salary ($8
- million) and other expenses.
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- One sizable outlay was probably Murphy's guaranteed piece
- of the box-office take, which was calculated as a percentage
- of the gross and may have exceeded $15 million. Hollywood's
- megastars demand a slice of the gross because they know that
- most films will never pay any earnings to holders of net-profit
- percentages, which Murphy has derided as "monkey points."
- Before Buchwald's case is over, Hollywood neophytes may get a
- first-class education in how the power players operate.
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- By Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles.
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