PARRON LAW ® | Entertainment and Sports Blog

How embarrassing is too embarrassing? Sure, we've seen Snooki, Sitch and the rest of the cast of MTV's reality juggernaut Jersey Shore , get drunk, fall down, get up, get drunk again, fall down again, fight, have sex, get even more drunk -- you get the picture. But at some point the behavior that doesn't fill them with the least bit of shame (inexplicably, some would argue) actually does embarrass those who put up with or flat-out enable the insanity they wreak. Like, say, the state of New Jersey itself. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made headlines Monday axing a $420,000 television subsidy which his state was granting to MTV to keep the shooting of the Jersey Shore cast's shenanigans safely in place. The tax credit for the upcoming season of Shore were announced a couple of weeks ago and instantly decried by Italian-American groups, who've maintained since day one that the show promotes the worst kind of stereotypes. And with that no doubt in mind, Chr...

At first glance it's the kind of thing that probably leaves you wondering where she gets off -- how someone could dare to try to prevent another aspiring female star from even looking like her. But take a second look, in more ways than one, and the $20 million lawsuit that Kim Kardashian is now bringing against Old Navy is a little more complicated than that. In the end, it may very well have merit and, regardless, it says plenty about the state of fame in our current culture and the fierce drive by those who have it to protect it. If you're not aware of the case, Kardashian is suing Old Navy over a new commercial that she says features someone who looks uncannily like her, a casting decision that she believes was anything but accidental. Kardashian's attorney calls it a violation of his client's intellectual property -- in this case, Kardashian's very image -- and aims to hit Old Navy hard for the infringement. While to the average person the suit may seem fri...

So, what have we learned this week? Here's a hint: It's something New York Congressman Anthony Weiner learned the hard way (no pun intended). If you want to keep something private, don't let it get anywhere near the Internet. At this point, no matter what your politics are, I don't think anyone would argue that what Anthony Weiner did was monumentally stupid. We could debate for years what drives supposedly smart people in positions of power to somehow believe that they'll never get busted engaging in behavior that someone with the IQ of a hush puppy would know is a personal and professional cataclysm waiting to happen. Who knows, maybe if you insulate yourself for too long at the top and breathe only the thinned-out air up there you forget that everyone has to yield to the laws of physics; no one is immune to them. Maybe Weiner convinced himself that as a firebrand politician the camera seemed to love, he could talk his way out of anything. Maybe he just wasn...

If you're planning on being one of the millions sure to see The Hangover Part II over the long Memorial Day weekend, great news... it's actually going to open as scheduled. A good portion of the movie-going public probably never knew this but there's been a legal battle raging behind the scenes that was very close to stopping the Warner Bros. tentpole film in its tracks. And it all had to do with a tattoo. The fact that it happens to be a tattoo that's instantly recognizable and which plays an integral part in both the movie and its promotion was precisely the point; it's why such a stink was being made in the first place. Basically here's what the trouble was about: A tattoo artist named S. Victor Whitmill, who used to work in Vegas but who now lives in rural Missouri, sued Warner for violating his copyright by using the Maori-inspired tribal art he designed for Mike Tyson's face on another character in the movie. (If you've seen the trailers, you k...

Last Thursday I was fortunate enough to be able to participate as a panelist at the American Bar Association's Second Annual Legal Symposium on the World of Music, Film, Television and Sports, which was held at the W Hotel on Miami Beach. The name of this year's event was "From Hollywood to South Beach," and the specific panel I was a part of examined music and television around the world, with my input focusing mostly on the TV end of the spectrum. The entire thing was interesting and informative, to say the least, plus, hey, the Situation from Jersey Shore was there as one of the guest speakers, so you can't really argue with that kind of entertainment value. (For the record, he's a good guy and pretty sharp businessman.) During our discussion, my panel managed to get on the topic of not just social media but guerrilla marketing and how a lot of celebrities and would-be celebrities -- as well as the outlets that promote them -- are making it work for them...

A couple of days ago I finally got around to seeing "Tron: Legacy," the sequel to the 1982 cult classic from Disney that you might say was the Patient Zero for an entire generation of films using CGI effects. For those who never saw the original movie (my friends and I loved it as kids) it centered on a computer whiz named Kevin Flynn, played by a young Jeff Bridges, who gets trapped inside a game he created and has to fight his way out by assuming the role of one of the game's characters. In addition to making you never look at those little guys you're controlling in your video games the same way again (while you can just shut the game off and walk away, it's apparently life and death for them) "Tron" was one of those rare movies you walked out of thinking that you'd never seen anything quite like it. It wasn't a great movie by any means, but it broke a whole lot of new ground both in terms of the way it was made and the future it predicted in w...

A couple of days ago on my personal Facebook page I posted an old video from Bow Wow Wow, the seminal track I Want Candy . That started a debate among the commenters over an inarguably hot topic for elitists, purists and the simply nostalgic: What, if anything, killed music? There have always been cookie-cutter acts out there, bands thrown together by greedy and opportunistic promoters and musicians exploited by Svengali-like managers. But it seems like now more than ever, the entire recording industry has become one big dodge aimed at cranking out formulaic music, attuned to pounce on any bandwagon, and existing solely for the purpose of raking in piles of cash -- often at the expense of the artists some say it's doing nothing but taking advantage of. Thanks to the Internet and social media, it's easy to create a buzz or a viral sensation (sometimes that sensation creates itself; see: Rebecca Black) and with the use of Pro Tools and the dreaded auto-tune in the studio, the...

Last week, Boston College of Law Professor Ray D. Madoff (no relation to Bernie, one would hope) wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times on the subject of publicity and identity rights. Titled "The New Grave Robbers," the essay essentially decried the relatively new phenomenon of estates asserting control and copyright privileges over culturally prominent figures well after those figures' deaths. The example Professor Madoff uses right off the bat: does marketing a wig made of wild white hair and a bushy moustache qualify as an "Einstein costume," and would the unauthorized selling of such a costume mean the estate of Albert Einstein, who's been dead for more than a half-century, could sue in court? According to Professor Madoff, who wrote a polemical book called Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead , a person's identity shouldn't be able to be sustained legally long after he or she has died. She asserts that this real...