Actor Harry Shearer, who you know as Derek Smalls in the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap, is currently suing French company Vivendi SA, the film's rights holders, for $125 million. Shearer says the company has been withholding millions upon million in profits from him over the years via manipulative accounting and oversight in control, and has filed a lawsuit in the federal court of Los Angeles, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Here's what Shearer has to say about his lawsuit via his own site, Fairness Rocks.
“Almost 40 years ago, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner and I created the somewhat legendary band Spinal Tap,” said Shearer. “We thought there was something real and really funny about the characters, and between that inception and the theatrical release of This Is Spinal Tap in 1984, we poured ourselves into nurturing and perfecting the paean to rock loudness that has entertained so many people, even today. But despite the widespread success of the film and its music, we’ve fallen victim to the same sort of fuzzy and falsified entertainment industry accounting schemes that have bedevilled so many other creators. In this instance, the fraud and negligence were just too egregious to ignore. Also, this time, it was personal.”
Shearer further alleges that “Vivendi and its subsidiaries – which own the rights to thousands and thousands of creative works – have, at least in our case, conducted blatantly unfair business practices."
Vivendi did not respond to requests for comment in the Wall Street Journal article or a recent CNBC article, though the lawsuit was filed on October 18. So this isn't an ongoing thing just yet.
