I was sitting here today thinking about this in my line of work i work with loads of lookialikes and things like that and also our band plays lots of corprate events and some of these events have film themes such as laurel and hardy, Elvis ive seen Back to the future themes james bond. But never a Ghostbusters theme. Some of these events have people just walking roung meeting and greeting people and belive me there on very good money. Ive been doing some fishing and i think there could be some room for GB events. But my question would be if i did get some interest would anyone in the U.k be interested in doing it ???
The subject of being hired out for events came up in the Game promotion topic: LINK
Suffice to say, from my understanding, if we did it for anything other than free, we could get sued. I encourage you to read the posts, near the top of the third page.
We have been going out as Jake and Elwood the Blues Brothers show for years and never been sued. Also i can honestly say ive been in the show 15 years and seen other film people hired for events and they too have never been sued as its all in the wording of how you do it. For instance there are two guys that do all the Star wars characters and they go out as the troopers of storm and the other ones are lord vader and Yoder i know its spelt wrong but thats how they do it. Same as in our show we are not allowed to use any blues brothers movie script yet we can wear the gear and play the songs.
but like you i see no reason why we should get sued, i mean i Dan akroyd or harold ramis was against the idea, thats fine, but i still dont see why Sony would have a problem with us, apart from the PS3 game coming out, but then surely that would be the same 4 all other systems,
I would definately be interested in this, but it sounds like your miles away. i already do this 4 partys and weddings, i have 4 good star wars suits, Vader, Stormtrooper, Darth maul and chewie whos in my pic.
im getting my flight suit finnished and im hoping 2 do a charity event as a GB, i thieres alot of interest in it, ill add ghostbuster 2 my list of costumes available.
on a off topic apparently i look like david tennant, every 1 says so, perhaps i should buy myself a brown suit lol, personally im not so sure, though my pic doesnt do me much justice,
every1 loves blues brothers, my dad went 2 see a show and said it was gr8.
Through experience think I may be able to provide some insight into this. I’m a member of the UK Garrison, a costuming club, we mainly have Star Wars costumers but we also do many other film related, including GBs. We recently did a show at the National Space Centre in Leciester. We used the Space Theatre and the show was based around a ghost invading the space centre and the GBs turn up to capture it. It was properly scripted show that took advantage of the space theatre’s huge dome and we had a ghost projected on it that we interacted with. Mainly aimed at kids, was good fun and first time I’d done any acting since I was at school
Now, although we were dressed as GBs the Space Centre couldn’t advertise it as Ghostbusters for copyright puropses. And I;m sure that if any Sony reps were in the audience they could have caused the Space Centre some trouble with having peoples dressed as GBs in their theatre. The same goes for Star Wars characters. All images, costumes and props are copyrighted and remain the intellectual property of Lucasfilm. Luckily for us George Lucas recognises our club and even supports us. The main reason been that all the events we do ,we do for charity. We don’t charge, we ask for a donation. We raise around 40k each year for children’s charities.
It’s highly unlikely that GL would go after any inviduals who are making money dressing up as SW characters but he has shut down a lot of prop makers who were known to him who were making and selling SW costumes. The latest was Andrew Ainsworth.
If you were to start a business, hiring yoursleves out as GBs or other characters I would be careful. It’s suprisng how tetchy film companies get about people making money from their intellectual property. And even if you think you’re small enough to go unoticed i’;s worth remebering a lot of people who have received Cease and Desist orders have thought the same. Good Luck!
BTW Elwood , were you the Blues Brother’s who were at the National Space Centre with the Blues Brother car and had a proton pack on the back seat?
how do you go about joining Garrisons, id be interested in that, heres my armour, i heard theres strict rules on the type of armour u can have to join,
mine is A New Hope accurate, i also have orange shoulder pouldron, and macro binoculars, i also have voice amp
im am about 6 foot 4, so im not a little short for a stormtrooper, and with boots on i make quite a good darth vader.
No we were not the Blues brothers there but that would of been my friend Rich who owns a Dodge Monaco and exact replica of the blues brothers car, hes a good friend of mine. As i said in last posts we get away with our act because Blues Brothers is a funny one
We cant use film quotes or lines.
We dont go out as “The Blues Brothers”
They have not copywrited Hats shades or suits"
We changed our names by deedpoll to Jake and Elwood Blues.
5 All the song the BB did are cover versions so we pay ppl rights to perform the songs.
So the idea of mine was as these companies hire theme nights out such as bond that goes out as “double oh seven stars”
Things like that it was an idea of mine but i suppose a problem is the proton pack is actually a copywrited prop and that is were a problem could occur and also the logo. Se in our show we use no logo’s either.
Elwood
P.s a long time ago we had an attourneys letter cant go into too much detail but because we changed our names by deedpoll we can go out as Jake and Elwood .
Im always on a mission, The best thing also from doing this show is we got a signed photo from Dan Aykroyd with the Ghostbusters on it saying " To the boys were ready to belive in you"
And also a few years back performed with the original Blues Brothers Band.
Rock and Roll,
Elwood
oh yeah forgot to mention im even wearing the shades on my driving licence,
I suppose if it’s for charity work it will be fine. The Arizona Ghostbusters are doing OK.
As discussed in the video game thread, I’ll be working on “The U.K. Ghostbusters” website pretty soon and I was thinking about this sort of thing. Getting UK 'busters together for charity events would be awesome.
Ive been in the entertainment business for 16 years and im sure there would be a lot of call for Gb things as ive said even now Laurel and Hardy lookalikes still work even seen Robocop at one event im gonna ask a few agencies i have worked with to see if there would be any interest. Even if it is for charity id still enjoy doing it. Im also gonna contact my Equity and ask them were the official land lies on the matter as there opinion is the real one that matters so if i find anything out i will let you all know.
