The Lawnmower Man is perhaps the only film adaptation of the written word resulting in a movie that is so astoundingly, mind-numbingly bad as to inspire the original author to sue the movie studio to remove his name from the credits. Thus, copies of The Lawnmower Man (and its sequel, The Lawnmower Man 2) are required, by law, to not mention the name of Stephen King.
Everyone knows that the book is always better than the movie. It's one of those inviolable natural laws. However, some adaptations are better than others, and historically, certain authors have gotten the short end of the stick in this department. Stephen King, stylistically unremarkable but nevertheless capable of spinning a good yarn when the mood strikes him, falls into this category. Film adaptations of King's thrillers are notoriously clunky, uninteresting, and sometimes literally painful to watch (one exception being The Shawshank Redemption, which even my cynical little heart must admit is a kickass flick). He has attached his name to such cinematic travesties as Pet Sematary, Cat's Eye, and an untold number of Children of the Corn movies. On rare occasions, King adaptations have a sort of campy charm (as anyone who has witnessed Arnold Schwarzenegger in a spandex unitard in The Running Man can attest), but mostly, they're pure crap.
Yet, Stephen King has never had any qualms (at least, none that he made public) about slapping his name on these movies. Indeed, he makes cameo appearances in many of them, and often contributes to the screenplays of these putrid, quivering masses of bad taste. There are more than 50 films and mini-series based on Stephen King novels or short stories. Obviously, the dude is not above making a buck. So what made The Lawnmower Man worthy of litigation? For litigate King did, in a lawsuit that set several precedents and provides an interesting (and often mandatory) case study in trademark law for law students across the nation.
The Short Story
The original short story "The Lawnmower Man" first appeared in the May 1975 issue of Cavalier magazine, but was most widely read as part of the 1978 collection Night Shift. At less than 3500 words, or about 10 pages, "The Lawnmower Man" is relatively short for King (no one shall ever accuse him of minimalism - it is not at all unusual to find that a Stephen King short story has metamorphosed into a novella while you weren't looking). Certainly not the sort of meaty story one would think appropriate for expansion into a full-length feature film.
It's a charming tale of Harold Parkette, a suburbanite who is loathe to trim his lawn after an unfortunate mowing accident involving a neighborhood cat the previous summer. Finally, after the neighbors start cracking jokes about meadow gardening and small woodland animals begin taking sanctuary in his overgrown backyard, Harold's conservative sensibilities are sufficiently offended to prompt him to place a phone call to the first landscaping company he finds in the local newspaper.
When the lawnmower man shows up, Harold finds something discomfiting about the fat redneck's appearance, though he can't exactly say what. Shortly afterwards, he spies a gigantic self-propelled lawnmower cruising his yard, with a portly, naked, cloven-footed man crawling behind it, eating everything that spews from the mower, be it fresh grass clippings or a woodchuck turned ground chuck after a trip through the blades. When Harold attempts to call the police, the lawnmower man, a minion of Pan, decides to offer an impromptu human sacrifice to his pastoral god, executing hapless Harold by running him over with the demonic lawnmower.
Neat. But is it really movie material?
The Movie
Shortly after "The Lawnmower Man" was published, the British company Allied Vision acquired the film rights to the story. The idea of a movie adaptation would languish for several decades, until the early 1990s when Allied, through its North American distributor New Line Cinema, kicked the project into development and production without consulting King. In March 1992, the film, fully titled Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man and proudly displaying the legend "Based on the short story by Stephen King" on all promotional posters, saw wide release in American theaters.
The movie stars Pierce Brosnan (back when he was recognized as Remington Steele rather than James Bond) as Dr. Lawrence Angelo, a scientist experimenting with a combination of wacky drugs and virtual reality as a means for enhancing intelligence. Having already taken his techniques to their limit in chimps, Angelo wants to commence with some highly illegal research on a human test subject. Enter Angelo's developmentally disabled gardener, Jobe Smith (played by Jeff Fahey). As the experimentation gets under way, Angelo's methods do indeed make Jobe smarter, but they also turn the retarded landscaper into a preternaturally intelligent, evil egomaniac with godlike powers, hell-bent on destroying the cruel, cruel world that is so unforgiving to "special" people like Jobe once was.
Right.
The Lawsuit
Every so often, one hears about a writer, musician, or other artist suing some movie studio or fellow artist for substantially borrowing ideas without properly crediting the original creator of said ideas. It is much more unusual to hear of an artist suing to disassociate himself or herself from a particular work, but that is exactly what Stephen King did when he filed a lawsuit against New Line Cinema and its parent company Allied Vision in the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York.
As the practical basis of the lawsuit, King's lawyers rightly alleged that the movie had absolutely no relation to his short story, other than the title and the fact that both had a lawnmower somewhere in there (although the movie did so only incidentally). Stephen King wanted no part of the film, and claimed that by falsely crediting him, Allied had maliciously tarnished his good name, causing "irreparable harm" to his reputation. In fact, King submitted copies of negative reviews from film critics as evidence.
The legal basis of the case stemmed from the Lanham Act, an influential piece of legislation dating from 1946 that forms the bulk of federal trademark law in the United States. Essentially, King argued that Allied's actions constituted false or misleading advertising, as defined by section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, which states, in part:
Any person who, on or in connection with any goods or services, or any container for goods, uses in commerce any work, term, name, symbol or device, or any combination thereof, or any false designation of origin, false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact which
- is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such with another person, or as to the origin, sponsorship or approval of his or her goods, services, or commercial activities by another person, or
- in commercial advertising or promotion, misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of his or another person's goods, services or commercial activities,
shall be liable in a civil action by any person who believes that he or she is likely to be damaged by such act.
When the case was first presented, the judge agreed with King, and issued an injunction ordering Allied to strike all mentions of the author's name from both the movie's credits and any related advertising. Additionally, the production company had to pay King $10,000 a day in damages until they complied with the order. Predictably, Allied appealed the district court's decision in the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals, choosing to dive into a quagmire of legal nitpicking. They used a two-pronged defense, separating the issues of possessory credit and "based upon" credit.
The argument defending the possessory credit (i.e. Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man) was shaky at best. Possessory credits are generally reserved for directors, producers, or screenwriters. Allied claimed that moviegoers could easily discern that Stephen King had held none of these positions, and therefore, would not be confused as to King's contribution (or lack thereof) to the making of the movie. The flipside of this argument, of course, is that if King had nothing to do with the film, why would one give him a possessory credit at all? The Second Circuit court upheld the previous decision to strike the possessory credit from all materials relating to the movie.
The "based upon" credit was a different animal altogether. Allied admitted that the film deviated significantly from the original short story, but stated that the screenwriters had been "inspired" by King's story. While the district court had found that the movie and the story were "fundamentally dissimilar," the Second Circuit court overturned that part of the decision. The original contract for the movie rights included a clause stating that Allied must credit King if they chose to make a movie that is "substantially similar" to the short story. After reviewing all relevant material, the circuit court judge ruled that, despite Stephen King's protests, the two works were similar enough to justify the "based upon" credit.
The Aftermath
The lawsuit set precedent not so much because of the court's final decision, but because of the tests the courts used to determine whether Stephen King's short story and the movie were similar enough to justify crediting King. In the first go-round, the Southern District court used the "likelihood of confusion" test as outlined by the Lanham Act, which concentrates on the differences between the two works. The court concluded that enough difference existed to label the works as fundamentally dissimilar.
In the appeal, the Second Circuit court decided to use the "substantial similarity" test, which, as the name implies, concentrates on the similarities between the two works. This type of test is generally used in cases of copyright infringement (i.e. where the plaintiff alleges the defendant did not credit them, the exact opposite of the King case). The movie does have a scene in which gardener Jobe uses his psychic powers to murder a man using a lawnmower. The scene is not important to the movie's plot, and the film overall contains an absurd number of differences from the short story. However, because the movie contains some minor plot elements that are similar to the short story, even just peripherally, the judge ruled that the works were substantially similar, justifying the "based upon" credit. Experts on trademark law have come out en masse to criticize this particular application of the substantial similarity test, but, so far, the precedent holds.
Interestingly, although the final decision was partially in favor of Allied, the production company chose to remove all references to Stephen King, including the "based upon" credit, when they released the movie to video. Even though the movie did poorly both critically and commercially, Allied released a sequel in 1996 (creatively titled The Lawnmower Man 2) revolving around the further misadventures of Jobe Smith, despite the fact that the character died at the end of the first movie. The second movie did even more poorly at the box office (the original grossed $32.1 million, the sequel grossed a paltry $2.4 million), probably due to the lack of publicity (negative or otherwise), and some ironic changes in casting - in the sequel, Jobe Smith is played by Matt Frewer, who got his start as the pimpdaddy of fledgling VR playing the computer generated Max Headroom in the 1980s.
Note: Before you accuse me of literary snobbery, I must admit that I'm a fan of Stephen King. I've read almost all of his work, and have seen many of the adaptations. Several noders have messaged me defending this movie; others have messaged me to tell me that I didn't slam it or the short story hard enough. Still others have reminded me that there are good King adaptations other than The Shawshank Redemption (most notably The Green Mile and The Shining, based principally on the strength of the lead actors). My original point was not that Stephen King sucks. However, a significant number of his film adaptations do suck hard, and quite a few of them also deviate from his original written work, yet he did not sue over any of them. I wanted to point out exactly the circumstances that allowed King to do so regarding this movie. Yadda yadda yadda.
Sources:
http://vls.law.vill.edu/students/orgs/sports/back_issues/volume1/issue1/king.html
http://www.medialawyer.com/lec-unfr.htm
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/indexL.html
http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/tiplj/volumes/vol1iss2/tayon2.html
http://www.craphound.com/nonfic/lawsuits.html
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