FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 27, 2005 Contact: Jessica Robinson, (415) 626-2060
Last week, CounterPULSE,
a community arts space in San Francisco, found
itself in the middle of a controversy. It concerned a musical production
of
a popular television show. A new nonprofit theater company, The San
Francisco Halloween Show, booked CounterPULSE on the dates Thurs.-Sun.
Oct.20-23 and Sun. Oct. 30 for a series of live performances of an infamous
musical episode of a long-defunct TV series.
A few days before
the first show was to be staged, a "cease and desist"
letter arrived from 20th Century Fox, the Hollywood corporation that owns
the copyright to the show, which had already seen a massive response with
“sold-out” advance reservations due to loyal fans with a sense
of humor and
speedy internet connections. The actual writer of the show, Joss Whedon,
when contacted later, gave his consent to the show going forward. This
morning The San Francisco Halloween Show informed CounterPULSE that FOX
has refused their request letter asking for permission to present their
show to
the public at the CounterPULSE theater.
When CounterPULSE
contracted with the San Francisco Halloween Show,
CounterPULSE had no knowledge of their lack of copyright permission. It
is
standard practice to post on the CounterPULSE website the basic information
of all shows taking place at CounterPULSE on the website calendar, whether
they are presented by renters or by CounterPULSE curation. When first
informed of the problem with the San Francisco Halloween Show, CounterPULSE
agreed to cancelling the shows and removing the website listing. The SFHalloween
Show was allowed to put updates, including their entreaty to FOX,on the
CounterPULSE website so the public would be informed of what, if anyshows,
might take place at the theater.
CounterPULSE is not
in any way connected with the San Francisco Halloween
Show. In keeping with the mission of the organization, CounterPULSE did
wish
to support The San Francisco Halloween Show’s grassroots efforts
to share
its take on pop culture with the public and regrets any show having to
be
cancelled.
As an arts
organization committed to creativity and the free flow of
information, CounterPULSE is interested in the controversy from the
standpoint of the ownership and use of creative expression.
CounterPULSE invites the public to come to a free forum on Thursday December 1 from 7-9 pm to discuss copyright issues, the public domain, and the relationship of creativity to a shared but privately owned cultural environment.
The mission of CounterPULSE
is to provide support and resources for
low-income and emerging artists, serving as an incubator space to create
socially relevant, diverse, grassroots art and activism.
CounterPULSE * 1310 Mission St * San Francisco CA 94103
As a courtesy,
we have allowed The San Francisco Halloween Show to publish their press
statement here:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 27, 2005 Contact: Patrick
Simms
From the Cast & Crew of the San Francisco Halloween Show
This morning FOX informed us that their business department said "thanks but no thanks" to our request for permission to use the Buffy the Vampire Slayer teleplay and to present our show to the public. So our show remains cancelled. In the future, we will seek prior permission to use any copyrighted teleplays.
CounterPULSE, the theater that we contracted with to present the San Francisco Halloween Show, had no knowledge of our lack of copyright permission. Our group, being ignorant of these issues until we received a letter from FOX, weren't aware of any issue for which we needed to notify the CounterPULSE theater. Once notified by FOX, we, with great regret, notified the theater, and cancelled our shows. CounterPULSE allowed us to correct our post on their website calendar, and to post updates in our efforts to seek permission from FOX since our group does not yet have its own website. CounterPULSE was generous to share their resources with us, and we, the San Francisco Halloween Show, wish to thank them heartily.
It has come to our attention that the public may think that CounterPULSE is connected to the San Francisco Halloween Show. This is not the case. The San Francisco Halloween Show is a new, not-for-profit theater company that rented space at CounterPULSE to stage our show. CounterPULSE had no contribution to our show except to allow us to post our information to their ongoing website calendar, a service they offer to all renters. We regret having tested CounterPULSE's faith in us as a theater group with these legal difficulties, and greatly apologize to them for our mistakes. Considering how quickly we notified them and rushed to alleviate the situation, we can only hope they would still consider renting to us in the future.
We wanted to share the timeline of action, so that it is clear we did
everything we could as quickly as we could:
When we received FOX's cease-and-desist letter on Friday, October 14 at
5pm, we were stunned. Nonetheless, we immediately complied. On Monday,
we asked CounterPULSE to remove all references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer
on their website and posted a temporary update to the public of what was
happening, and informed FOX that we had done this. On Tuesday, we confirmed
that we had cancelled the performances we had planned and that this was
posted on the CounterPULSE website. We continued to try to seek information
from FOX on the possibility of gaining permission to go forward with our
shows. We also received word that Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, supported
our efforts, and sent an email to FOX encouraging them to give us permission.
On Wednesday, FOX let us know that Joss's opinion didn't change FOX's
business department's decision in any way. FOX suggested that the business
department might reconsider our request for permission if we apologized
for not getting permission in the first place and wrote a specific request
letter. We delivered this letter to FOX on Thursday. CounterPULSE was
kind enough to let us post the public letter to their website so FOX would
see we were making our apology and request public. Today, one week later,
we were told of FOX's "thanks but no thanks" decision.
Again, we apologize to those who were eager at the prospect of attending
our now cancelled shows. We thank you all for your continued support.
We hope that we will be successful in gaining permission sometime in the
future from FOX, so that we could present gems of pop culture to the San
Francisco public.
Sincerely,
The San Francisco Halloween Show
Cast & Crew