Ah, America, apparently land of the free and in many regards this is quite true; especially when it comes to suing. Actor Frank Sivero (Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas) is suing the The Simpsons for a whopping $250 million, claiming that the minor mobster character ‘Louie’ is based on his likeness and that he never gave his permission to use it.
He claims that he was known to The Simpsons producer James L Brooks and lived next to the series’s writers while he was working on his character Frankie Carbone for The Goodfellas. The suit goes as far as saying:
“They saw each other almost every day… They were aware the entire character of Frankie Carbone was created and developed by Sivero, who based this character on his own personality.”
Now I am not sure how that works, were the writers privy to his creation of the Frankie Carbone character – a character he claims was created from scratch and not one based on Scorsese’s script? I get the impression that he is looking for some a crap load of money, seeing as he also sued a sandwich store for naming one of its menu items after him.
Last Updated: October 23, 2014
Alien Emperor Trevor
October 23, 2014 at 14:17
This probably isn’t going to end well for him. Who’s going to parody this first? The Simpsons or South Park?
Weanerdog
October 23, 2014 at 14:51
I am pretty sure that regardless of who developed the character, the rights to the character would belong to the studio.
Spaffy
October 23, 2014 at 16:45
Looking at his filmography, how else is he going to get paid