Of course, when things go to court, you can never predict what will happen. A lot depends on the bias of the judge, the whim of a jury, who has the best lawyers, and so on. Justice does not always prevail.
So, I’m not making a prediction here, I am just saying that in my mind this is an absurd, frivolous lawsuit without any merit whatsoever and I hope it gets thrown out of court right off the bat. (Oh, damn, I still can’t do links. Which means I can’t attach pix, either. Never mind. I’m sure you’ll be able to find the story. And you, like everybody else on the planet, already know what Scarlett Johansson looks like)
She is suing a novelist, and the novelists publisher, for using her name and her image without her permission. Well, not exactly her image. A description of her image. The book, called La Premiere Chose qu’On Regarde (The First Thing We Look At) is about a struggling young model who happens to be a dead ringer for Johansson, and that causes her all sorts of problems.
First, let me state that I am a big fan of Scarlett Johansson. I think she is gorgeous, a great actress, and I have no reason to believe that she is anything other than a fundamentally decent person. I just think this lawsuit is ridiculous.
For one thing, she should be flattered that the writer chose her. He could have written a book about a struggling young model who looked exactly like Julia Roberts, or Natalie Portman, or any other woman in Hollywood who is famous for being beautiful and it would be the same story. (It all sounds a bit like fanfic, but it is a best seller in France and the author, Gregoire DelaCourt, had another bestselling novel which is going to be made into a film)
But, she’s not flattered. She’s pissed off. Or maybe just greedy, but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one. That’s O.K. She’s entitled to be pissed off. She’s not entitled to money, and she’s not entitled to force a retraction of the book. That would be ridiculous.
The article I read about it had a picture of Johansson right at the top. Did they expropriate her image? Basically, she’s saying that people aren’t allowed to talk about her. (There’s an easy way to make that happen, if she really wanted to. Just stop making movies, appearing on talk shows, or giving interviews. In a year or two, the public would forget about her.)
I think the law is pretty clear on this (although it may be complicated by the fact that the novel is in French by a French author so I don’t know if the case will go to court in the U.S. or in France, and I don’t know what difference that will make) If the author didn’t say anything about Johansson that was untrue and/or malicious, then no harm/no foul.
I will be following this case with a great deal of interest. Might even read the book, once it gets translated into English.
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