Flight: The Booze

Well, I think it's kind of silly. I'm sure the film does not portray that the character is an alcoholic because of the brand of alcohol he drinks. That just happens to be what he's drinking.

Brands are about money. Had the film been less popular, the company might not have cared.

That and it is free press regarding their product. Typical coat tail riding, IMHO.

The article says the pilot is shown drinking more than one kind of liquor, so they're not pointing out a single company or beverage and saying "This is bad!!!" And the last time I checked, any company with a clearly displayed logo or name on screen (in this case billboard and on the beverage itself) has PAID to be featured as advertising. Did they not know that the character was an alcoholic? Did they not think that a movie featuring an alcoholic might involve said alcoholic ingesting alcohol?

The general guideline is usually:

While Bob was enjoying his rice krispies, zombies attacked! <--- allowed

They traced the zombie plague back to contaminated boxes of puffed rice cereal <--- allowed

Everyone remembers that it was rice krispies that started the zombie epidemic. <--- not allowed

From the article:

Despite the companies' dissatisfaction with their inclusion in the film, experts say there is little they can do about it legally.

Trademark laws "don't exist to give companies the right to control and censor movies and TV shows that might happen to include real-world items," said Daniel Nazer, a resident fellow at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project. "It is the case that often filmmakers get paid by companies to include their products. I think that's sort of led to a culture where they expect they'll have control. That's not a right the trademark law gives them."

Jay Dougherty, a professor at Loyola Law School, said the use of brands in films has generally been protected by the courts, even when the companies aren't pleased with the portrayals

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I'm no expert in trademark law or anything, but I think the company would have to prove that the film / story willfully maligned their product through dishonest or disingenuous presentation. If Denzel's alcoholic in the film (which I've seen) had called out Budweiser as especially harmful for some reason, for instance, they might have a case. The fact that he's an alcoholic character who happens to drink Budweiser among many, many other brands and types of alcohol isn't something they can legally take issue with, it seems.

There's a solid reason filmmakers usually ask for permission to show brand name products up close and personal. However a lawsuit might go, it wasn't smart for this movie to do otherwise.

Yeah, I bet the filmmakers are writhing at all that free publicity.

Cyia said:

the last time I checked, any company with a clearly displayed logo or name on screen (in this case billboard and on the beverage itself) has PAID to be featured as advertising.

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I read an article about this earlier today that suggested companies don't necessarily pay to get in this way.

Although product placement, where companies pay producers to have their brands seen on-camera, have become ubiquitous in movies and television, experts say studios are not obligated to get permission before featuring a product in their work.

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Article source: http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/budweiser-seeks-removal-from-flight

The article went on to say that Budweiser and Stolichnaya had not been contacted for permission, and presumably did not pay to get their products featured.

I don't think we need to worry about Bud and Stolly getting all upset. If it went to court and it was decided, say, it was defamatory to portray alcoholics drinking particular brands of alcohol, then we might have to worry. But so far it's just noise.

shadowwalker said:

My take was that the companies hadn't been asked or notified, at least according to that article (accuracy always a question, of course). But they seem to be saying if they had known the context, they wouldn't have approved it.

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The problem with contacting companies is that legal departments almost always say 'no', because that's the legally safest route. I've had it happen twice in two different contexts.

As they say, it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. Just stay clear of disparaging a named, trademarked product.

Budweiser pays all kinds of money for ads, that portray, as far as I can see, a bunch of drunks drinking. And now they're complaining because somebody else is taking them up on it?

Anybody can sue anybody for anydamnthing, and it's up to the judicial system to sort it out. Which, in this instance, it will, and mepredicts that some form of monetary settlement will be negotiated among these huge corporate entities, the attorneys involved will make money, and that will be that.

caw

"We would never condone the misuse of our products, and have a long history of promoting responsible drinking and preventing drunk driving," McCarthy wrote.

Maybe it's just my years of covering drunk driving crashes with bloody Bud cans strewn about the wreckage that have me scoffing at PR drivel like this. And I can type that without fear of a successful lawsuit because I have the photos as proof. Not that I don't love to drink as much as the next guy, but such statements sound too much like the old tobacco lobby.

shadowwalker said:

I don't know - seems like they've been doing the 'don't drink and drive' and 'drink responsibly' ads for quite some time. Seems kinda like blaming lawn mower manufacturers because some idiot runs over his kid.

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I appreciate the idea of freedom of choice, and that we're all grown-ups, but I admittedly come from the radical, far side of the argument. If lawn mowers were killing more than 30,000 kids a year, we'd probably be relying on goats to trim our lawns.

I like goats. Unless they start killing, too. Then it's time to eat them.