The Battle over A Bouquet for a Kill in May 2007
During May shooting I realized more and more Lydie had planned to push me out of my own project. After completing short version in April Lydie, Roswitha and I have met in a restaurant and we agreed that we are going to shoot a 90 minute version. I wanted to wait with shooting till Cannes Filmfestival was over as we were trying to get more money to do it bigger, but Lydie insisted we had to start as soon as possible with the 90 minute version and she already had talked to Michael Worth her former co-star of Acapulco H.E.A.T. to come over to Germany in early may.
Later Lydie and Roswitha claimed this meeting had never took place and they never agreed to shoot with me a long version, but there are witnesses who can confirm. We met at Lydie´s birthday at a German Freemason´s Lodge to celebrate Lydie´s birthday and Lydie and Roswitha there told everyone we had agreed to shoot the 90 minute version, that Michael Worth will come from Los Angeles and Lydie even told Hans-Jürgen we need to shoot new scenes at his apartment what they finally did in may.
Lydie went back to Paris and I prepared the may shooting in Berlin.
I was shocked when Lydie mailed me a new 48 page version of my original around 100 page script. This was far too short for a 90 minute movie and her re-writes made no sense at all. I discussed this with Michael Worth and he agreed on most of what I said. (I still have all the emails). Michael Worth who is also an experienced producer and I emailed about the questions what camera and technical equipment we are going to use and Lydie went furious when she learend Michael Worth and I discussed script and technics. Lydie had abolutley no knowledge of HD cameras, PAl, NTSC standards, 24p or 25p and Michael Worth knew all about and so I considered it a good idea to discuss this with Michael but Lydie insisted she as a director has to decide who is allowed to talk to whom about what. I am the producer and I do not take orders from directors unless they are Alfred Hitchcock or Lubitsch.
When I did not Greenlight Lydie´s new scriptversion she run amok and started shooting without my permit and Roswitha supported her. Lydie obviously had already made plans to push me out of the project and had talked to Avi Lerner behind my back. First she had told me she wanted Avi Lerner to come in as a co-producer to get additional money to do it better and bigger but I realized she wanted Avi Lerner to come in to buy me out.
She mailed me an email asking me to give her all my receipts and claimed Avi Lerner had asked her to do so. I did not believe her.
She finally admitted she wanted Avi to buy me out and then emailed me a new contract she had wrtiten and wanted me to sign the project over to her. (She had realized she cannot take the project to Mr Lerner as long as I own the copyright).
Lydie wanted me to leave the project and give her all the rights. She wanted only to give me a coproducer´s credit and she even wanted all the writer´s credits for herself, leaving me just a credit "based on an idea by Michael Huck". If you are a little bit familiar with copyright laws you probably know according to US copyright law "ideas" cannot be protected. Nice try, Denier.
The second trap she wrote into that contract was that she has to fully reimbourse me in the event if the long version is sold to American Television. Looks good at first but isn´t if you know that most low budget productions are never sold to television and only distributed on dvd or video. So in this case she could have made lots of money with dvd sales and I would not get one cent IF NOT SOLD TO AMERICAN TELEVISION. I alsow would get nothing according to this conctract if sold to German, French or other television.(However she made a mistake again and did write American television NOT US, so what if sold to Brazil ???) Then there are some clauses like the sum will not exceed $ 5000 . I have spent much more than this sum on the project. And what about Jörg and Vonny who also invested in the movie and cast and crew?
Actually in the worst case neither I nor anyone else besides Lydie would get money. Not a good contract.
Jörg and I set up another contract which made sure everyone involved in the short and long version would get a share of profits in case the long version is made and sold. Lydie had not to pay one cent in advance, only if sold but then everyone would get a share. Lydie refused to sign this contract and I refused to sign hers.
So all the work cast and crew did on this project so far did not get us anywhere.
It is my job as a producer to somehow release this project.
photo: Copyright 2007 by Jörg Peter
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