In-Reply-To: James.D.Peterson.4 AT ND.EDU -- Wed, 14 Oct 1992 15:30:54 CST James Peterson asks about the story behind Fred Wiseman's refusal to grant permission to use frame enlargements in Benson & Anderson, REALITY FICTIONS (SIU Press, 1989) and Anderson & Benson, DOCUMENTARY DILEMMAS (SIU Press, 1991). I don't want to be unfair to Fred Wiseman, who is not on this network, and whose films I admire, but the simple version of the story is that Fred at one point told us that it would be no problem for him to supply us with images and permissions. Later he demanded that he be allowed to exercise oversight and approval of our text as a condition for such permissions. We of course refused, for the sake of the project's integrity. I believe that Fred's problem was that he found our account of the TITICUT FOLLIES case not sufficiently sympathetic to his own public version--though we have always felt that our treatment was even-handed, and have always advocated release of the film. Fred had earlier refused permission to use frame enlargements from HIGH SCHOOL on grounds that it would violate the privacy of his subjects--hence, I used line drawings to illustrate the analysis. The HIGH SCHOOL essay was originally printed in SPEECH MONOGRAPHS in, I think, about 1980. I believe, from earlier research on another project, that Society for Cinema Studies is generally correct in interpreting copyright law to say that some frames from a film may be used by a scholar under the doctrine of fair use, since they are really in a different medium. But in the REALITY FICTIONS project we saw no point in dragging the matter out and risking that the university press would be dragged into a lawsuit. Yes, it did seem ironic that a filmmaker so dependent on the protection of the First Amendment would take this position, and threaten suit. The world of documentary ethics is full of ironies. In any case, he was protecting what he saw as his interests. Tom Benson Penn State t3b@psuvm