MOVIES : COMMENTARY : Who Laughs Last? : After the Buchwald vs. Paramount rulings, all parties put on their best faces, but the winner was the status quo

There’s a folk tale about the laws of nature that goes something like this:

An asp asks a turtle for a ride across a river.

“No way,” says the turtle, “you’ll bite me.”

“I’d be crazy to bite you,” the snake says. “If I bite you, you’ll die and I’ll never get to the other side.”

The turtle can’t deny the logic of this and tells the snake to hop aboard. Halfway across the river, the snake bites the turtle on the neck. Just before losing consciousness and sinking, the turtle asks his passenger why he did it.

“I couldn’t help myself,” says the asp, “it’s in my nature.”

The roles of the turtle and the snake were reversed, briefly, in Los Angeles Superior Court last week, where Paramount Pictures was ordered to pay Art Buchwald and Alain Bernheim $900,000 for their contributions in 1983 to what became the hit Eddie Murphy comedy “Coming to America” in 1988.

The lawsuit, which consumed three years and an estimated $6 million in combined legal expenses, is regarded by some in Hollywood as a historic event, establishing a legal precedent that will send abused writers stampeding to the courthouse while the major studios scurry to reform accounting practices more creative than anything they’ve ever put on the screen.

Don’t count on it.

Writers and producers negotiating from positions of weakness will continue to make deals they shouldn’t make, and the studios will continue to cut them out of the action whenever they can. They can’t help it, it’s in their nature.

To recap what has been a long, complicated and chronically boring case, Superior Court Judge Harvey A. Schneider made three separate judgments:

1--That “Coming to America” did indeed evolve from a two-page synopsis presented to Paramount by humor columnist Buchwald and movie producer Bernheim in 1983. The studio had optioned the story, originally titled “King for a Day,” and agreed to pay Buchwald $65,000 and 1.5% of net profits for the story, and to pay Bernheim $200,000 and 17.5% of profits for producing.

2--That Paramount’s accounting formula, an industry-wide practice that limits the likelihood of any film ever reaching net profitability, is “unconscionable.” Specifically, the judge said it was unfair for the studio to dictate terms on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, a ruling that Paramount has promised to appeal.

3--That the Buchwald-Bernheim synopsis was worth nearly $1 million, even if the books showed that the film, which grossed $350 million worldwide, was foundering (hold those chuckles now) in a sea of red ink.

Whatever comes from the Buchwald Case, as it is now known, Paramount’s behavior demonstrates the disdain that Hollywood management has for people who negotiate without power. People with power make deals that guarantee them fees and percentages of “gross profits,” the money received by the studio directly for the rental of films.

Art Buchwald may be the sharpest political satirist in America, but in Hollywood, which has chewed up and spit out the likes of William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, he was just another chump with his hat in his hand. If he’d gotten Eddie Murphy interested in the idea first and Murphy told Paramount to buy it for him, Buchwald and Bernheim’s agents could have negotiated real money for them.

Murphy, who earned about $20 million from “Coming to America,” referred in court to net profit shares as “monkey points.” Net profits in most capitalist endeavors is what’s left after the costs of making and selling the product are paid for. In Hollywood, net is what’s left once a film’s income has covered every item that the studio can dream up to charge against it.

Monkey points is what Buchwald and Bernheim were promised nine years ago.

When Buchwald and his partner sued, Paramount first denied that “Coming to America” evolved from their idea, even though both were about an African prince who endures culture shock while wife-hunting in the United States. Then, using an argument that seemed to draw the line between petty theft and grand larceny, the studio said that even if the idea was stolen, it wasn’t significant.

Think about that. The idea . . . wasn’t . . . significant. Plato would have loved this outfit.

You might think Paramount would have been on firmer ground saying the idea in this particular case wasn’t significant. Buchwald hardly had the makings of a column, let alone a movie, and without Eddie Murphy’s then-massive popularity, it’s unlikely that “Coming to America” would have been made.

But, hell, Buchwald ran it by them and they went for it. The least they could do is live up to the deal.

The value of ideas can’t be quantified by how bad or good a movie turns out, anyway. Ideas are the starting points for all creative ventures--”Next stop, China,” said Columbus, setting off for the Caribbean--and they’re worth something.

Although Buchwald and his lawyer, Pierce O’Donnell, were claiming victory this week, the relatively small award ordered by Schneider looks more like a victory for the status quo. A $900,000 award for one of the 50 highest grossing pictures in history can’t be too encouraging to those out there rifling through their contract files looking for unpaid profits from films that earned hundreds of millions of dollars less.

True, the Buchwald vs. Paramount precedent might cut the legal fees and litigation time to a fraction of those incurred in this case, and the studio budgets for nuisance suits may be loosened up. But who’s going to risk whatever future they might have in a tight-knit company town on the chance that they might win enough to buy a new word processor?

Writers and producers who are already in The Club, who have negotiating clout, are way beyond the net profits trap. They get big fees up front, or percentages of gross receipts, often both, and can cluck along with Murphy about the have-nots waiting out there for their monkey points to kick in. One reason there are so many bad movies is that club members get paid before their movies are even finished, and whether or not they’re any good.

The anger that this system generates among those trying to break in is well-exorcised in “The Player,” a Robert Altman movie scheduled for release next month. Adapted from the novel by Michael Tolkin, “The Player” tells the story of an ambitious studio production executive whose contempt for creative people prompts one frustrated writer to torment him with death threats. The executive hunts down and kills the man he thinks is responsible, then spends the rest of the movie trying to get away with murder.

Tolkin, an unproduced screenwriter when he wrote the novel, obviously intended his fictional executive as a metaphor for the amorality of the film industry, and his cynicism is validated by the exposure of Paramount’s behavior throughout the Buchwald episode, and the arrogant gloating of its attorneys and other interested players afterward.

How do you force people who have power to deal honorably with those who don’t? Is there a way to legally close the loopholes that allow studios to invent ways to hide real profits?

Maybe the lessons of the Buchwald Case could be codified as the Buchwald version of the Miranda rights and read to every newcomer who shows up at a studio to pitch an idea.

You have the right to remain silent.

Any statement you make can and will be stolen from you.

You have the right to talk to an attorney before and during any meeting.

If you cannot afford an attorney, you can use one of ours. (Just kidding, babe.)

And if we make a deal, expect us to try to beat you out of every dime we can.

We can’t help ourselves. It’s in our nature.