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Posted by Faye Bell on April 05, 2001 at 22:39:22:
I am a little late in posting it, but just in case you did not read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's article regarding the court case, here it is.
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PARODY OR THEFT?
Lawyers for Margaret Mitchell estate face off in court against 'The Wind Done Gone' to defend Scarlett's sanctity
By Jill Vejnoska and Bill Rankin and Don O'Briant
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writers
As God is their witness, it's a parody.
Lawyers for publishing giant Houghton Mifflin strode into an Atlanta courtroom Thursday morning and insisted with all the swagger and confidence of Capt. Rhett Butler himself that a soon-to-be-published novel by a Nashville writer is a parody of "Gone With the Wind."
To clear up any confusion, in fact, Atlanta attorney Joseph Beck told U.S. District Judge Charles Pannell that the cover of Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone" will be revised to include the description, "A provocative literary parody that explodes the mythology perpetuated by the Southern classic."
That may not be good enough for the estate controlled by two nephews of "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell.
SunTrust Bank, acting as trustee, filed a lawsuit last week calling Randall's novel "a blatant and wholesale theft" of Mitchell's epic classic and seeking to stop its scheduled June release.
The first step came Thursday with a hearing on the trust's request for a temporary restraining order. New York lawyers Thomas Selz and Maura Wogan stressed the urgency of the issue and requested several times that an order be issued Thursday. Yet at the end of the three-hour hearing, Pannell said he expected to rule within two weeks.
Pannell might have felt slightly overwhelmed by a hearing that featured a phalanx of lawyers on opposite sides of the courtroom; references to such disparate entities as The New York Times' publication of the Pentagon Papers and a rap song by Luther Campbell of 2Live Crew; and copies of Mitchell's and Randall's books being waved around.
Calling "The Wind Done Gone" a parody may buy Houghton Mifflin the legal breathing room needed for publication, based on several precedents Beck cited. In any event, it seems a departure from the publisher's already released promotional materials, which variously describe Randall's saga of the mulatto half-sister of Scarlett O'Hara as "a brilliant rejoinder" and "a book that gives a voice to those whom history has silenced."
Actually, Selz suggested, it's none of the above.
"The issue here is the theft of critical characters and the use of those characters to tell their story, with additional story elements added," Selz said about Randall's book, which features characters named "Other" and "R." who are clearly meant to recall Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. "That's the very definition of a sequel."
The Mitchell trust has the say-so over who writes sequels to the 1936 classic, most notably approving Alexandra Ripley's critically panned, commercially successful 1991 book "Scarlett." Those allowed to write sequels to "Gone With the Wind" have paid handsomely for that right, Selz said. As for Houghton Mifflin and Randall, he said, "They wish to reap what they have not sown."
In a lengthy hearing laced with references to Harry Potter, Superman and other pop culture icons ("Will we now be faced with a situation where James Bond is being retold from the point of view of Q?" Selz asked), the seriousness of the proceeding was conveyed by the presence in the courtroom of Randall, who sat at a table with Houghton Mifflin Executive Vice President Wendy Strothman. Randall's husband, Nashville attorney David Ewing, watched intently from the spectators' gallery. No members of the Mitchell family appeared to be present.
Since the lawsuit was filed, Randall hasn't commented publicly, beyond issuing a written statement through Houghton Mifflin. That policy continued Thursday, with Strothman saying after the hearing that it was "not the time" for Randall to talk about the book or the lawsuit.
But she did anyway.
"My comment is my book," Randall said, twice, just before stepping into an elevator with her husband and the Houghton Mifflin contingent.
Randall picked up another big-name supporter Thursday morning when former Atlantan and best-selling novelist Pat Conroy said he'd read an advance copy of "The Wind Done Gone" and considered it "great."
"I sympathize with Miss Randall and I will be glad to testify for her," Conroy said from a pay phone at Savannah International Airport on his way to start a cruise to Egypt and Portugal. "When I was dealing with the Mitchell estate lawyers, I felt like a Yankee at the first Battle of Manassas."
In his preface to the 60th-anniversary edition of "Gone With the Wind" published in 1996, Conroy wrote that he had become a novelist because of Margaret Mitchell's epic work. Yet he fell out of favor with the Mitchell estate in 1999, and plans were shelved for a proposed sequel told from Rhett Butler's perspective because of what Conroy said were plot restrictions being imposed on him.
Conroy said he feels Randall's pain.
"Not only have I read it [Randall's book] and 'Gone With the Wind' with great care, I also have read the U.S. Constitution," Conroy said. "The ACLU should be the ones defending Miss Randall."
While Conroy's big Butler book never came off, plans are moving along for another sequel to "Gone With the Wind." A spokesman for St. Martin's Press said Thursday that a writer has been selected, although the publisher was not ready to reveal a name or any information about the plot or publication date.
Concerns about the effect that publication of "The Wind Done Gone" could have on authorized sequels and other "Gone With the Wind" spinoffs are not the Mitchell estate's only worries. Without a restraining order, lawyers said, they feared that copies of "The Wind Done Gone" would show up in bookstores or on the Internet before the scheduled June publication date.
Pannell predicted that whichever side loses the case would appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here.
But for Conroy, the verdict's already in.
"Scarlett would admire 'The Wind Done Gone' as a great way of making money," Conroy said. "And Rhett would admire it as a great way of stirring things up."