364 / 432
GAZETTE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER
1994
Entertainment Industry
Contracts: Negotiating and
Drafting Guide
By Donald C. Farber, General
Editor, Matthew Bender, New York,
Freephone Service from Ireland 1-
800-55-8830, 5 volumes, filed with
all previous releases and current
through to release number 19, May
1994, hardback, US$820.
Laughter is good medicine. Laughter,
on a regular basis, lowers blood
pressure and produces enzymes that
reduce the risk of heart disease. At
least so it is said: but the writer is not
a medical doctor. The US poet Ella
Wheeler Wilcox (1850 - 1919)
penned the immortal lines:
"Laugh, and the world laughs with
you;
Weep and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its
mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own."
Whatever about the foregoing, one
matter is certain: the entertainment
business has made many laugh and, to
use a terrible cliche, has facilitated
many, including entertainment lawyers,
in laughing all the way to the bank.
The electronic age is bringing us
increased leisure time. The
entertainment industry - whether it
makes us laugh or cry - has a
magnificent potential for growth: new
technologies are being announced
constantly. The rhetoric is sometimes
Utopian and almost breathless. To
paraphrase another writer, the rhetoric
of the entertainment industry is deeply
ingrained in the militaristic and sexual
metaphors of strategic advances and
big bangs. Certainly, the
entertainment business has potential
for lawyers.
The five major entertainment
340
industries are covered in these
volumes. In relation to book
publishing, contracts are included
relating to standard author - publisher
contracts, collaborative arrangements,
permissions and licences, publishing
rights, and more.
In the volume on film, there is a broad
discussion on film contracts together
with forms of agreements and
commentaries concerning the
acquisition and sale of rights,
production and financing, licensing and
distribution, profit participation terms,
legal fees and other related matters.
The volume on music includes
contracts involving name selection of
recording artists, personal and
business managers, agents'
agreements, live performances and
tours, artists and record companies,
music publishers, and more.
The television volume examines
television contracts and contains
commentaries and contracts covering
acquisition of rights, co-production
activities, financing, employment,
production, home video and more.
The volume on theatre explores the
theatre business and provides
contracts covering start-up activities,
obtaining a property, organising and
funding the producing company,
theatre unions, licences and theatre
organisations.
The volumes contain hundreds of
contract forms and also provide
practical step-by-step guidance for
each major entertainment field. There
is also a special background section
which sets out information about how
deals are made and negotiated, how
the industry is structured and how to
avoid costly pitfalls.
Each of the five major volumes in the
set is written by an expert in the
particular entertainment field. For
example, Donald C. Farber serves as
both author of the theatre section and
the general editor of the entire set of
volumes. He is a partner in the law
fifm of Tanner Propp Fersko &
Sterner in New York city and is a
leading entertainment law specialist.
Entertainment Industry
Contracts:
Negotiating and Drafting Guide
is a
monumental work and could be
described as the entertainment
lawyer's bible. It is an indispensable
guide through the international
entertainment jungle and can be
adapted to suit the needs of lawyers in
different jurisdictions.
Dr. Eamonn G. Hall
•
Criminal Law: Cases and
Materials
by Peter Charleton, Butterworth
Ireland Ltd, Dublin 1992, 636pp,
softback, £39.50.
In his preface, the author says the
purpose of this book is to provide an
introduction to the principles of
criminal law as they apply in Ireland.
This modest enough aim has certainly
been achieved, but the book goes
much further. This is for two reasons.
First and foremost, the author's own
text unusually for a volume of cases
and materials, is very extensive. When
one considers the quality of that text it
is no exaggeration to say that it
constitutes the rudiments of a first-
class text book on Irish criminal law.
Certainly if one were to follow the
author's own suggestion of reading
the work from beginning to end
(rather than dipping into it) a good
grasp of the principles of criminal law
would be achieved.
Secondly, the author has approached
the examination of what the law is in
an enquiring and, at times, critical
light. He laments the paucity of Irish
decisions on many subjects, which he