Marc Boal won the Academy Award for writing the Hurt Locker, however he’s in a world of hurt himself- a real life soldier is suing him. In a recent edition of the Slate.com, Brian Palmer’s explainer column, looked at this explosive issue. Jeffrey Sarver is suing because the character played by Jeremy Renner is reminiscent of him, but is portrayed as more reckless and dangerous.
Palmer asked “How much must he have in common with the guy in the movie in order to bring a defamation suit? Just enough to be identified by any reasonable person who knows him.”
The character is a composite character, however the plaintiffs will argue that he has several traits in common with Sarver. He was the one who actually came up with the term “hurt locker’ that became the title.
The standard is something called a "reasonable viewer" test. Still suing a studio is much like Avatar's Na'vi taking on the marines. We’ll have to see how this one plays out. I suspect that it will be defused out of court.
The character is portrayed as being married to a character played by Evangeline Lilly. He certainly isn’t complaining about that.
Comments
what a boob. Sarver's trying to cash in on that Oscar gold.
I don't think this qualifies as identity theft.
Sarver is lying (or at the least very mistaken) when he claims to have originated the phrase "hurt locker". It goes back to the Vietnam war; an AP story from 1967 described soldiers using the phrase.
Considering the enormous amount of script theft in Hollywood (Amistad, Coming To America, The Terminator, Driving Miss Daisy, Shakespeare In Love, etc.) Sgt. Sarver's case certainly has merit. Hollywood thinks that just because everybody is enamoured of the movies that script thievs can steal whatever they want and nobody will do anything about it: "So you had your life's work stolen from you, so what? Ha, ha!" In the aggregate, script thieves have stolen billions of dollars. That's a lot of stolen tax money. The matter of script theft needs Congressional investigation.
Honestly what the hell is this guys problem. Ya it does not qualify as identity theft. Him coming up with the title is similar to the ' i invented that.. no really i did' -theory. *bleh*
Hollywood has always written scripts on subjects that were like.. something. Duh of course they will be similar to something, somewhere, someone. Um, we're all human, everyone has experienced something similar in a hollywood film (or other) at some point in their lives or known of something similar to another. Let sleeping dogs lie, enjoy the film or don't, see it or don't. Loosely quoted by Mel Gibson about the passion of the christ. there's always someone complaining about something. i wish ppl would just relax for crying out loud..
Actually I was with Sarver in Iraq. He didn't come up with the term. He used the pee out of it in front of that reporter. The reporter asked him what it meant and isn't it funny how the title comes from the only guy he was embedded with for like 30 some days in Iraq? Don't worry, the picture with the Colonel is out there and crazy how that same officer is a General now and I am sure he still has the photo especially if they pull him in to testify. Remember? The scene where he calls him a "cowboy" or was it a "wild man"? Boal is full of crap and lied to everyone in the unit.
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