Acquiring Rights
Of all the questions I’m asked, this one is the most common:
“Hey, how did you get the rights to perform ____________ on stage?!?”
It’s a simple question with a complex answer, so let me — briefly — explain some routes we’ve taken over the past 20 years to acquire the rights to various shows:
We've contacted the legal departments at various motion picture studios. That’s meant getting on the phone and bugging various people at Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal Studios, etc. In general, we start with the film. If you own the VHS or DVD of an old film, have a look at the case and see which movie studio produced it. Start by contacting the legal department of THAT company. Generally speaking, whichever film studio owns the rights to a movie usually (but not always) holds the rights to any derivative works based on the film. That usually (but not always) includes the radio show version of the film.
We've searched online and found data about who owns rights and how to license them. Sometimes, that leads us to companies like Playscripts which manages the rights to performing the Howard Koch script for "The War of the Worlds", a script we perform from time to time.
In some cases, as our name and brand have spread, owners of some radio shows have contacted us FIRST saying "Hey, we'd love you to perform our shows!" It hasn’t happened a lot, but it’s been lovely.
In some cases, the copyright over the original has elapsed or, in the case of "It's a Wonderful Life" and it’s bizarre story that includes a Supreme Court ruling, the copyright only governs the film, not the radio show. In those cases, we proceed to perform our version of the show.
In some cases, family attorneys refer us to members of the actual family in question, which is how we obtained rights - among other titles - to perform “The Philadelphia Story” and “Mars is Heaven”.
But what happens if, after all of our research, we can't discover who owns the rights to a particular piece of radio history? Or what if we THINK we know who owns the rights, but can't validate that information?
We perform the show anyway.
We do so with some very important caveats, which try and honor the original artists:
We only hold one or two public performances. We’re not looking to make a name off of other artists; we’re just fans of OTR and want to help keep their work in the public’s consciousness.
We don't film those performances, although we do sometimes record the audio to share with other OTR fans.
We don't charge enough money to make a profit. As our shows now cost $4000-$6000 to produce, our only real goal is to simply break even and give the public something fun to do.
We almost ALWAYS parody the original which, under law (as we understand it), changes the ability of a copyright holder to create a valid claim against us.
Parody is protected speech but it's a complicated issue as this article describes. We feel that our performances fall under the "Fair Use" doctrine and VERY clearly fall under the concept of "parody". Those of you who have seen our shows know that we always poke fun at the ridiculous sexist and racist language of these old radio shows, along with some other outdated or odd language and situations featured in these old gems. Our great joy is taking scripts that were designed to be dramatic, scary, loving, warm, or mysterious and turning them into rip-roaring comedies. This changes the nature of the original artwork, of course, which is why we feel that fall under the protection of parody law.
However, I can’t state this enough: I’m not an attorney. I’m an artist. The matter of legality is one for each old-time-radio troupe to decide for themselves! I offer our approach, not to recommend doing what we’ve done, but to simply explain our process so that you all might know.
I hope this has been helpful.
David Koff
Artistic Director, Fake Radio