Winning Film Festivals: Putting Paris Hilton in Your Indie Short Film

One of the sure fire ways to get your indie film noticed online and at film festivals is to have someone famous in it, someone like Paris Hilton. In fact, the current state of the high profile indie film festivals like Cannes, Sundance, and Tribeca almost insist that if you want your film screened, that you have cast someone famous in it. Of course, casting paris Hilton in your short film, outside the rare chance you know Paris Hilton, usually involves spending money that indie filmmakers don't have. There is a workaround and that's simply to create a character named after Paris Hilton in your indie film, thereby you are insinuating that Paris Hilton is in your film. I am using the term "indie" specificaly to refer to no-budget filmmakers without a studio backing.

There are serious legal considerations in trying to put Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan in your indie film, all of which you need to be aware of before you attempt this because you can be setting yourself up for a possible lawsuit if done incorrectly. The main concepts you should understand are slander, defamation of character, and the right to privacy are all about and how they relate to Paris Hilton. There is also the legal consideration when someone famous has actually trademarked both their name and image.

For this article, I am going to speak about possibly putting Paris Hilton in particular in your indie short film. If you can avoid falling into anything which would cause you to be held liable, you can create an indie film which the title alone would get people to watch your film. That's what you want, you want that hype and buzz about your indie film to affect people the moment they hear your title. If you can get that, you are already close to getting their attention for watching your film. Hype and buzz sell more films than quality, story, or acting ever has. Let's me explain the legal side of it first.

In law, defamation is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation. If your film in anyway provides a false and damaging image to Paris Hilton, while funny, you may be setting yourself up for a lawsuit. Even if what you are saying is true in a sense, the fact you are still saying something damaging will give her legal grounds to stop you from screening your film. A case in point is the recent film Superstar about Karen Carpenter that was blocked from screening by her brother. Nothing in the film could be said to be "a lie" but the image it portrayed of her brother was enough for him to stop screenings.

Slander is defined as defamation in the form of text and Libel is defamation in the form of fixed written media. In this case, your film would be guilty of libel. If you made comments in public about Paris Hilton in regards to her person, which would be slander. While your film may be funny, and fall into the grounds of parody, and as such protected by the first amendment, that is something you would have too argue about in court.

Every person has a right to privacy, but celebrities like Paris Hilton, because they are public people, have willingly given up a portion of their right. This is why Paris Hilton's name and image can be published in magazines, about her activities in public. Because of this, while news agencies can report on Paris Hilton's activities outside of her house, follow her around, take photos, they cannot go inside her house, they cannot report on things she does in a private setting, especially if they don't have evidence.

If you did manage to get footage of Paris Hilton, you cannot use her image in your film without her permission, despite her being a public person. Even images of her, photos and posters, would be considered a violation. You can allude to her presence, you can make comment about her apparently being in the room, but to actually show her would be a legal consideration.

The right to privacy extends to the general public as well, which I will explain just so you can be aware of the legal situation. Filming a public beach is fine, but using that footage in a commercial film or a film festival film, would require you to get a release from everyone you filmed. Better to have it staged with extras than just random shooting, if you intend for your film to go to festivals.

Now, the work around I mentioned was to name one of your characters Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan or after some other popular person. This of course would then be looked at as to how close this person resembled the actual celebrity, but names alone are not protected under law. Another way to work around the legal problems is to allude too the celebrity being in the film by the other characters but never actually seen on screen (think of Lilith on Frasier, often talked about but never actually seen). As long as you don't commit any defamation about the actual celebrity, you are not going to be held legally responsible for defamation.

Either one of these tips will allow you to work around the fact you don't have the actual star in your film, as well as raise the hype/buzz factor of your film. People will identify with your film faster and be more willing to watch it because they identify with your film. Remember that film is an art but movie making is a dirty, cut throat, take no prisoners business that means you need to use every trick in the book you can too get ahead. Anything you can do that can raise the hype and buzz factor of your film has to be done because the movie going audience is saturated with films at the moment.