Bourne Co. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation et al

Filing 34

DECLARATION of Paul M. Fakler in Support re: 28 MOTION for Summary Judgment.. Document filed by Bourne Co.. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit Exhibit A, # 2 Exhibit Exhibit B, # 3 Exhibit Exhibit C, # 4 Exhibit Exhibit D, # 5 Exhibit Exhibits E-G, # 6 Exhibit Exhibit H, # 7 Exhibit Exhibit I, # 8 Exhibit Exhibits J-K, # 9 Exhibit Exhibits L-M, # 10 Exhibit Exhibits N-O)(Fakler, Paul)

EXHIBIT B

RICKY BLITT

ge i
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

BOUR co.,

Plaintiff,
vs.
TWNTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM
CORPORATION, FOX BROADCASTING
No. 07 CIV. 8580 (DAB)

COMPAN, TWNTIETH CENTURY FOX
TELEVISION, INC., TWNTIETH
CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMNT,
INC., FUZZY DOOR PRODUCTIONS,

INC., THE CARTOON NETWORK, INC.,)

SETH MAC FAR, WALTER MUPHY,)

Defendants.

DEPOSITION OF

RICKY BLITT

TAKN ON
MONDAY, MACH 10, 2008

Reported by:
Daryl Baucum, RPR, CRR, CBC, CSR No. 10356

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RICKY BLITT
Page 10
pi tching it to them.
2

Q.

Was there a tLme that this particular episode

i was assigned to you?
4

A.
Q.

Yes.

.5

And when did tha t happen?
It happened before we -- there is always a

6
7

A.

procedure called story breaking where all the writers

8 9

get together and we work out the outline of the story
before a writer is sent off.

10
11 12

I remember at the beginning Seth came to me and
said he thought my sensibility was a little bit offbeat.

So he said Seth had a idea for this Jewish episode and
he just said "I think you should wri te it."

p
14
5

So I was paying extra attention. We were all
in the room breaking the story knowing I would have the

16
17

responsibili ty of wri ting .
Q.

I "

So he just thought that your sensibilities,

18 your style, was a good match?
19

A.

When I said the thing about the Special

"

20 Olympics, he knew that I was somebody who writes things
21 tha t could be like, oh, my god, and when you heard them

22 go oh, I see, there is actually -- you know, that it
23 could be handled delicately whatever.

Q. At this point in the creation of the episode,
25 was there a title associated with the episode?
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FUCKY BLITT
Page 11

A. Very early on before I went off to write the
3 totally broken, the writer would go off to write it.

draft, we would break a story, and once the outline was

4 From the beginning, I knew that I was going to
call it "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein. "
6 7

Q.

And why was tha t?
Early on in the story, breaking story, one of

A.

8 the things that was floated out is -- I think Seth or
9 somebody had talked about how it would fun to parody,

10 you know, like the "When You Wish Upon A Star" just to

11 get at the total innocence of it with this ridiculous,
12 out-there kind of lyrics that we would put in that body

13 which got me thinking okay, that would be a funny title.

H If they're going to go in that direction with
1 tha t kind of parody, then it got me thinking of the
ti tIe, you know, "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," which

17 is sort of a parody of that "When You Wish Upon A Star".
18

Q.

And where would that conversation have taken

19 place?
20

A.

In the writers room. In the writers room, when

21 everybody gathers together to work out the outline of a
2 story, what they do is put a bunch of index cards and
3 work out the story beat by beat, moment by moment.

24 So to be honest, I can't a hundred percent
25 rememer the chronology of who said what, but I rememer
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RICKY BLITT
Page 12
it being discussed it would be funny to have

since

2 it i s like a fairy tail, why not go after the song that IS

3 almost iconic for the innocence of another era, and that

4 would be "When You Wish Upon A Star."
,)
c

Q.

And was that concept discussed later on as the

6 story went on repeatedly or was it just at the beginning

7 you talked abou tit?
8

A.

It was more at the beginning because later on,

9 when I went off to write the script -- my specialty

10 isn i t wri ting music or lyrics. So I kind of left that 11 part of the script bare.
2 So in "Family Guy," you would take -- there
13 three or four writers will go off into another room and
14

they will write it.

So it sort of came into play later

15 on when people wen t off to wri te that song and then pu t

16 it into the script.
7

Q.

And who

do you rememer who went off and

Ifl wrote that song?
19

A.

Seth was involved, and that that i s just too

o hard to rememer, unfortunately, because I would only

2) rememer something which if I was involved in that
22 group, but they broke into a smaller group.
23

Q.

So you weren i t directly involved in wri ting the

24 lyrics to "I Need A Jew"?
25

A.

No, no.
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RICKY BLITT
Page 15
innocence of somebody -- him dreaming of this Jewish

2 person to come in and make all of his dreams possible

3 for him and his son and all like that.
.1

Q.

So did you have lead -- other than the part of

5 the lyrics of the song that was done by another team,

6 were there any parts of the story as it developed that

7 were done primarily by people other than yourself?
8

A.

No, the way it works is when you finish a

9 script, you hand it in. As I told them before, my
o expertise wasn i t the song. So I was going to leave that

11 bare and let them do it, but other than that, what you
1 do is you hand it in and then all the writers gather

13 together to punch it up and to improve jokes and to do 14 things, but everything else represented at least tweaks 15 on what I did originally.
16

Q.

Were you involved in the standards and

17 practices clearance process for the episode?
18
9

A.
Q.

No.
When was the idea for actually having the song

20 in the episode first conceived?
21

A.

The way I rememer it, it was from the very

22 outset that we were thinking of this fantastical story,
23 and it just became -- it was one of the first thoughts

24 that was floated out, that it would just be funny to do

25 this.
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RICKY BLITT

Pa 16
1

If we i re going to do something as silly as
somebody thinking that it's -- having some racist views

3 or ignorant views on Jewish people, that it might be
4 funny to put tha t in the body of the mos t pure and
5 6

innocent and sweet and almost saccharin song
represen ting another era.

So it was from the beginning, because that Is 8 why -- that i s how I think I came up with the title of
9 "When You Wish Upon Weinstein." It i s like since the

10 title came even before the first draft I wrote, it

11 was -- okay.

12 They're talking about if they want to use that
13 song and invoke that kind of innocence, the

14 juxtaposition of what he is saying with that kind of 15 innocence, then that informed my choice of a ti tIe 16 almost from the beginning.
17

Q.

Now, do you view the content of the episode as

18 antisemitic?
No, emphatically not. I am Jewish and I 20 wouldn't have done it -- the joke was clearly -- and
19

A.

21 it's always the test. When I told you about the Special

22 Olympics thing, at the end of it, we didn i t get any
3 controversy.

24 We even had a rabbi actually look at the script
25 before and he said this is fine, this isn i t offensive.
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RICKY BLITT

Page i 7
Q. Were you involved in that process?
2

A.

No, I was informed that they would do things

3 like that, but once again, as sort of a junior writer on
4 the show, I was never privy to those things directly.
Q. Did you hear about more than one rabbi that was

6 asked for their opinion?
7

A.

Tha t , I wouldn't know.

I think everybody knew

8 that our heart was in the right place, that they were

9 doing something that was so overwhelmingly clear

1 () unless somebody is antisemitic or has hate in their 11 heart, there was no question about it, that it was this 12 Jewish man is totally reasonable and Peter is an idiot, 13 an ignorant for person, for thinking that all people 14 were going to be the same.
1 And unified by that, we just knew that was __

just we didn't -- didn i t fear in the right place wi th it.
18

we knew our heart was

Q.

So how would you describe the overall theme of

19 the episode?
20

A.

About somebody having an ignorant view,

stereotyping people and learning a lesson at the end

tha t - - it even says it in the dialogue at the end, "I
got what you are saying Lois, the Jewish are no better

24 or no worse."

25 It's not the wayan ABC after-school special
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HICf"Y BLITT

Page 18 1 would do it, but it's getting at a nice theme in an edgy

way.

3 (Plaintiff's Exhibit 30 was 4 marked for identification.)
5 BY :M. FAKER:
(,

Q.

I would like to show you a document I have

7 marked as Plaintiff's Exhibit 30, and let me know if you

8 have seen this document before.
9

A.

Yeah, I actually rememer signing this, also.
And what is it?

10 I rememer, yeah.
11

Q.

12

A.

Somebody had called me at the time from

1 20th Century Fox. To be hones t , I don't rememer the

14 specific as to why they needed this, but I just
5 understood them to say this is a standard thing that you

16 need to do. And I rememer explaining even to whoever
17 it was that called me -- I said, "By the way, that's the

18 one part of the episode that I didn't write," but they
19 just said no, this is just an umrella thing we need for

20 whatever purposes they did. And I just took it on faith
21 that there would be nothing wrong having explained that

22 when they said they wanted to sign that I figured that

3 is fine.
24

Q.

And this was signed a few years after the

25 episode was written?
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RICKY BLITT

Page i 9
1

A.

What year does it say? 2003, yeah.

I mean I

2 left the show in somewhere between 2000 and 2001, i

3 think. I think that I left because this is at least a
4 couple of years after I left the show.
5

Got you. 6 Is the song "I Need A Jew" related to the
Q.

7 overall theme of the episode?
8 9

A.
Q.

Yes.
How?

10

A.

Well, it's -- I guess it speaks to his -- the

11 ignorance of his views, the fact that he thinks 12 something will solve his problems and that he's looking
13 at it in a stereotypical kind of way.
14

Q.

What -- what things does the song make fun of?
Well, it makes - - it sort of makes fun of

15

A.

16 ignorant views on a religion in the body. That i s why

17 the song was so important for us -- in the body of the

18 most innocent, pure, sweet and saccharin kind of song.
19

Like anything

doing it another way would have made it

20 appear ugly. We got the comedic value of it. It's like
21 Archie Bunker singing some of his views on people which

22 comes out of ignorance and you are doing it under the

23 body of a fairy tale song.
24 I can i t think of any more sweet and hopeful and
25 pure song than "When You Wish Upon A Star."
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RICKY BLITT
20
1

Q.

So do you think the song makes fun of the

2 original "When You Wish Upon A Star"?
3
4

A.
Q.

The song? Sorry, the song?
"I Need A Jew," do you think it makes fun of

5 "When You Wish Upon A Star"?
6

A.

It's just weird because you can describe it in

7

different ways.

It i S not like -- there i s a type of

8 parody that is done when you are mercilessly trying to

9 mock. Wha t you are doing here, it's more like you are
10 using it in kind of a wink to evoke the other things
11 that you are mocking with, you know, his ignorant views

12 sung in that song. 13 It i s like -- you know, it i S not intended to
14 skewer the song and just say we think it i S a bad song
15

and we're making fun of it.

It's the perfect song

16 because it's of another era and it's a song about
17 wishing, and usually you are working for world peace or

18 the world to be perfect, and this guy is wishing for a
19 Jew who is good with money to come into his life.

20 So it's like that's the juxtaposition that
21 makes it funny, and, you know, it's just sort of like a
22 direct through-line that when you are parodying

23 something, you just need to put it in the perfect body
24 or else it won i t work, and that was the perfect body for

25 us was the song.
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RICKY BLITT
Page 21 Would you say it was a perfect vehicle to make
the ignorant -- Peter Is

1

Q.

fun of the antisemitic

3 ignorance?
4

A.
Q.

Absolutely, yes.
Are there any other things that the song makes

5

6 fun of?
7 8

A.

You know --

MR. ZAVIN: Objection; he already testified

9 tha tit makes fun of the song, itself. Tha t was his

10 first testimony.
11

MR. FAKLER:

I just asked are there any other

12 things that the song makes fun of.
13

MR. ZAVIN: Other than the two he has testified

14 to?
15

MR. FAKER: Exactly.
THE WITNESS:

16

I don't believe so. Keep in mind

17 for me it would almost be totally conjecture because I

18 wasn i t in that room writing the song, but just as a

19 comedy around the show just seems like that as far as I
20 under stood it, that's what we were us ing it to parody.

21 BY MR. FAKER:
22

Q.

And how does the audience get the joke when

23 they experience the song in the context of the episode?
24

MR. ZAVIN: Objection. Obviously, he can't

25 answer the question how the entire audience gets the
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RICKY BLITT
22

1 joke.
2 3

MR. FAKER: You can answer the question.

MR. ZAVIN: Are you saying he is competent to

4 answer that question?
5

MR. FAKER:

I am saying I asked the ques tion .

6 He can answer it in the deposition. We can argue with
7 the judge about whether it's admissible or not.
8

MR. ZAVIN: If you know how the entire audience'

9 is getting the joke, you can answer the question.
10

THE WITNESS:

I can only answer to how I think

11 they should, and I think they should get the fact that
12 we're making fun of an ignorant person's views.
13 BY MR. FAKER:
14

Q.

So is it the outrageousness of the lyrical

15 content that is sort of the cue to the audience this is 16 not to be taken seriously?
7 Is that what you mean?
18

A.

And helped along by the song we are using here

19 is sweet, innocent, pure, and here is lyrics that are
20

impure, here is lyrics that are small and ignorant.

21 that's sort of it.
22

So

Q.

Now, you said you weren't involved in - - were

23 you involved in any conversations wi th people at Fox 24 about justifying the content of the __
25

A.

No.
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