Substantially Similar--A Blog on IP Issues, Writing and Film

Memories of the D.C. 1968 riots

by John Aquino on 04/01/18

Just after 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, civil rights leader, was assassinated. My family heard the announcement on the television news that evening and were again shocked. Five years before, John F. Kennedy had been similarly assassinated. Kennedy's death caused the nation to mourn a leader who had inspired the world with his youth and energy. King had spent and given his life seeking equality for all peoples. His death, however, brought a different type of reaction.

Washington, D.C. appeared at the time to be two cities. A commission that was asked to investigate the causes for riots in Detroit and Newark the year before concluded that the U.S. was moving toward two societies, one black and the other white. As the city approached the end of the turbulent 1960s, Washington, D.C. was 70 percent black. The segregation that had divided the nation for 100 years after the Civil War was finally being addressed by advocacy organizations, the courts, the White House, and Congress, but injustices were still widespread. Tensions were high. King's murder was the powder keg.

The next day, I took the H2 D.C. transit bus to Catholic University where I was studying. I went to my two morning classes and at lunch discussed the assassination with my friends Harry and Mary Anne. I remember describing how the night before I had heard over and over on the news King's voice saying, "And he's allowed me to go up the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land." His powerful voice, heard again and again on the television, rather than becoming repetitious, grew in meaning and resonance. I said I remembered from the Bible that Moses did not get to the Promised Land but that the Lord allowed him to climb to top of Mount Nebo and to see the promised land of Israel spread out before him.

After my last class, and unaware, I got on the westbound H2 bus for home in Tenleytown. We went down Michigan Avenue until it turned into Columbia Road. As we passed the cross road of 11th street, we saw what looked like a parade of men and women with coats and dresses draped over their arms from stores that had been looted in reaction to King's death. Younger men and some women were carrying or pushing boxes labeled television sets and washing machines. Ahead, we could see that the street had been blocked by D.C. police cars and sawhorses. Our driver quickly turned left and tried to find his way around the blockade. Passengers pressed their faces against the bus windows and craned their necks to see what was happening. Someone shouted he could smell smoke from fires, but I didn't smell anything. My eyes were fixed on the road ahead. As a result of our driver's searching for unblocked roads, we were once again passing bus stops, but they were for another route. Our driver stopped for a little old lady, who got on and sweetly asked, "Do you go near the zoo?" "Lady, I don't know where the hell I'm going," he muttered. But he doggedly got us back on the H2 route, and drove up Porter Street, 34th, Connecticut Avenue to Van Ness, and Wisconsin Avenue to Tenley Circle.

Once we were all home, our family sheltered in place for the next three days, watching for news of the riots on television. There were 13 deaths, 1,200 fires, and over 1,100 buildings damaged or destroyed. My Dad was especially shaken by images of fires burning throughout his adopted city.

He had moved to Washington from his birthplace in Erie, Pa. to attend Georgetown University and received his B.A, in 1922 and his law degree in 1925. He decided to stay in Washington, about which the poet Ernest Kroll asked, "How shall you act the natural man in this/Invented city, neither home nor Rome." In my Dad's lifetime, Washington acquired the Lincoln Memorial, whose construction he watched during his lunch breaks from his Georgetown classes, and the Jefferson Memorial. But few except for the African-American population were natives and the city's government was run by appointed commissioners rather than elected officials. Dad's law practice focused on the Italian American community with a base at Holy Rosary Church on 3rd Street in Northwest. Trying to support five children, he acquired properties with the plan of turning them into parking lots. I remember my brother Jim and I used to go with him on Saturdays when he drove to the Italian market ,A. Litteri, off 6th Street N.W., where he shopped for sausage and tomatoes, and then to his parking lots where he would collect the weekly returns from the African-American men who ran the lots. We'd sit in the car and wait and wait and watch him sitting on folding chairs, telling stories and laughing with the men. But he also worried about the neighborhoods, and in 1956 he moved the family from 12th and Ingraham, a neighborhood a mile or so north of where the riots were taking place in Columbia Heights and the Shaw neighborhood, to further west in Tenleytown.

As he heard the news about the riots, Dad became very quiet, both because of the destruction and loss of life and property and because he knew his properties were in the riot areas. Three were in the Shaw neighborhood, and Dad had fought the good fight for them against the D.C. government and its then governmental structure of appointed commissioners (which was later replaced by the structure of an elected mayor and city council). When he bought the sites in 1956, they were zoned as commercial. But after a poorly publicized hearing that he didn't attend, he found they had been rezoned as residential. Dad's practice didn't get a lot of publicity. But if you google his name you will find the case Aquino v. Tobringer, 298 F.2d 674 (D.C. Cir. 1962). The appeals court upheld the district court's judgment that the commissioners acted as reasonably as they needed to. When I was in law school, the case was cited as an example of how hard it is to fight city hall.

Those properties were undeveloped, caught in the riots in Shaw area, and rendered worthless. His existing lots were empty lots and were undamaged, but the businesses around them were burnt out and no one was parking cars around there.

My Dad was ill from April on and he died in September. A year or so later, the D.C. government informed my mother that it was taking over my Dad's properties under eminent domain for the price of $1,000, which was 1/20th of what he had invested in them. She went to the attorney who had shared an office with my Dad and asked for his help. After a few months, he came back to my mother smiling and said he had gotten the price up to $2,500, of which he would take $1,000 as his fee. My Mom received $1,500.

My Dad's lost properties were just a small part of the burned and abandoned businesses that were caused by the riots and left the city with charred, empty shells over vast parts of its geography. They resembled areas bombed during a war. The city lost its peace, its dignity, and the voice of Martin Luther King, who had urged peaceful change. Protests about President Johnson's Vietnam War followed, and the idealism of the Kennedy years had morphed in to a murky metropolis filled with suspicion and distrust. A few years after the riots, I married and moved out of the city in which I was born and settled in Maryland. My mother stayed in the house in Tenleytown, and my wife and I visited her once a week. But we were tourists in a city of which I was no longer a part. Last year, after my mother died, we sold the house in Washington.

Fifty years after the riots, there has been some progress addressing the injustices that had helped spark the anger and violence that occurred in Washington and other cities. But many injustices remain. It took a long time, but the areas destroyed by the riots have finally been restored and bettered. But these traditionally black neighborhoods have been marketed to affluent young whites. The median home price in the Shaw area is $731,400, which is about the value given to our old 1,500 sq. ft. townhouse on Ingraham Street; both are almost $200,000 more than the media home sales price in the city and $500,000 more than the U.S. median home price. The percentage of African-Americans in the city is now just under 50 percent, compared to 70 percent soon after the riots. Many of those who fought for change and cried injustice 50 years ago have not benefited from the restored neighborhoods and stress that inequities remain.

Robert Kennedy, former U/S. attorney general and brother of the late President Kennedy, toured the riot area on April 7, 1968, stepping over debris and shaking hands with residents. Three days earlier on the night of the riots, when he was in Indianapolis, he spoke to those who had rioted or, in Indianapolis, were thinking of rioting. He quoted the Greek dramatist Aeschylus, who wrote in his play Agamemnon as translated by Robert Fagles, "In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the [awe-filled] grace of God." Two months later, almost to the day, he too was assassinated, dimming the immediate power of his optimism. But we can still strive and pray and hope that the wisdom will come.

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A Stage Version of "Mockingbird": What Is the "Spirit of the Novel"?

by John Aquino on 03/25/18

There are, of course, legal considerations in the development of a contract in which an author conveys the right to transfer his or her work into another medium. There are also, as a blogger noted recently, "pr considerations." The two have come to a head in a lawsuit concerning Aaron Sorkin's stage adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lee signed a contract with Rudinplay for a stage adaptation of her novel that gave her approval rights of the playwright, the right of script review and to make comments that the playwright would consider in good faith, and the agreement that the script could not "derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the play or alter its characters." Having been notified that Lee believed that the script derogates or alters characters, Rubinplay agreed to discuss it with Lee. Lee died, her estate reviewed the script by Sorkin on her behalf, and raised concerns. Dissatisfied with the response, the estate filed suit.

Attorneys not connected with the lawsuit who have been asked to respond have mostly suggested that Rudinplay may have the better argument. The agreement clearly gives Lee and her estate veto power as to the choice of playwright and does not give them veto power over the script, only the right to review and comment. Rudinplay has indicated that the agreement is clear that it is the final arbiter as to whether the script derogates or alters characters.

The agreement reflects the fact that those producing a play are prone to avoid being put in a position of having the play production process grind to a halt due to an objection by the author or her estate. The play development process is based on collaborations with actors, set designers and the director. Script changes may result from those collaborations and from initial audience reaction when something in the script just doesn't work.

Sorkin has also indicated that his view of the characters may have changed. When he was first approved by Lee as the playwright, he said in an interview that he couldn't imagine changing such beloved characters as Atticus Finch, the attorney who defends a black man for murder in the segregated south. By the time he finished the script, he said in an interview that at the end of the play Atticus isn't the man people may remember from the novel. Sorkin may have been influenced by Lee's sequel to Mockingbird, which was published shortly before her death, Go Set a Watchman (it was actually written first and put aside), in which Atticus is seen years later as somewhat bitter with mixed views on minorities in the south.

On the other hand, a few attorneys commenting suggested that the contract makes little sense if the producer of the play can say, Thank you very much for telling us you think the script violates the spirit of the novel, but we have decided to ignore you. And nowhere does the agreement define "spirit of the novel," making the phrase, at best, ambiguous, which would require interpretation by a court or mediator.

The parties may settle, or it could go to court. The play is scheduled to open on Broadway in nine months.

One blogger in a thread in which I participated wrote that Rudinplay's strong position is unworkable from a pr perspective. Will the audience go to see a version of a beloved novel that those representing the author have disowned? When I have given workshops on the topic of my book, Truth a Lives on Film: the Legal Problems of Depicting Real Persons and Events in a Fictional Medium, the question would often come up, Should I contact the relatives of the deceased person portrayed in the film, even though, as I pointed out in the workshop, relatives normally cannot sue for libel on behalf of a deceased person (another way of saying it is that the dead cannot sue for libel)? I usually respond that it's usually a good idea to do so. I remember a young attorney standing up and saying, "That's crazy! You can end up with a brother-in-law telling you what to do!"

I responded that it may seem counterintuitive to seek our a possible argument. But the alternative is if you ignore the family they will get in the internet and say, "Do not see this movie (or play)! It is travesty of our loved one's life!" That will be picked up my the media, and your project is damaged. And even if there is a contract involved--the family signed an agreement but hates the script--they may risk a breach of contract suit to try and push the filmmaker to a settlement.

This is not an easy issue for filmmakers. By an analogy, as the blogger suggested, the producers of the play face the same problem.

As I've written blogs on legal cases over the years, there has seldom been a legal situation that decides everything. Each situation is different. Sometimes the parties settle and there is no legal decisions. But the situations raised often provide guidance to those entering into an agreement.

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Marie Curie and Henrietta Lacks: Two Icons of Medical Research

by John Aquino on 03/19/18

There are men and women who have changed the course of medical research, many of them unsung. I would like to mention two, not unsung, but I will try to address their contributions freshly and newly.

Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1935) was a physician, chemist, and professor, the winner of Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, discoverer of two elements, polonium and radium, developer of the theory of radioactivity, coiner of the term "radioactivity," and the creator of mobile radiological units that treated over a million soldiers on the front lines during World War One. Her achievements are so vast and have affected so many fields that her specific contribution to medical research--x-rays, stationary and mobile--has too often been taken foregranted.

The specific prompt to my thinking of her again was the March 12 episode of the NBC television "Timeless" in which the time travelers encountered Marie and her daughter Irene, who later also won the Noble Prize in chemistry, when they were working with mobile radiological units on the battlefields of France. For a change, the television treatment of these historical figures was pretty accurate. She founded the Curie Institut in Paris, in 1920 and in 1935 in Warsaw, both of which exist today. The former is a leading research institute in biophysics, cell biology and oncology and runs a hospital specializing in the treatment of cancer. In 2013, the latter performed the first full face transplant..

Marie's achievements would have been remarkable for a male. But, Marie, who shared her first Noble Prize in 1903 with her husband Pierre (1859-1906) and Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), would not have been named in the award had her husband not insisted, telling the Swedish Academy that Marie had originated the research, conceived the experiments, and developed the theory of radioactivity. In mentioning her contribution, the president of the academy, quoted the Bible's Book of Genesis when God says: "It is not good that man should be alone. I shall make a helpmate for him." When President Warren G. Harding greeted her at the White House in 1921, he said, "We lay at your feet that testimony of love that all generations of men were wont to bestow on the noble woman, the unselfish wife, the devoted mother."

The 1943 movie Madame Curie was supervised by her daughter Irene, who had script and casting approval (she chose Greer Garson over Greta Garbo to play her mother). It pretty much ends with Pierre's death, but what it shows, although compressed and romanticised, is fairly accurate.

The movie doesn't show that Marie's achievements came at a high price. No one in her lifetime fully understood the effects of exposure to radium. Today, a dental x-ray requires the patient to be covered by a lead-lined apron and the technicians leave the room. When Marie met President Harding in 1921, he handed her the 1 gram of radium that had been developed to that point in the United States. She walked around with test tubes of radioactive isotopes in her pocket and worked at a desk that had the test tubes in a drawer. She died in 1934 at the age of 66 from aplastic anemia caused by the effects of radiation exposure. Her notebooks, papers, and even her cookbook are considered too dangerous to handle 84 year after her death and are stored in lead-lined boxes. Researchers wishing to examine them must wear protective clothing.

Marie Sklodowska Curie should be remembered in the history of medical research for her great achievements and sacrifice.

Henrietta Lacks should be remembered for the gift she shared with the world and what was done to her.

She was born in Virginia but spent most of her life in Baltimore. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951 at Johns Hopkins University, the only hospital in Baltimore that would treat Afro-Americans.. During her ultimately unsuccessful treatment, the hospital took samples of cancerous and non-cancerous cells from her and gave them to researcher George Otto Gey. Asking permission of a patient and/or her family was being done in 1951, but not routine and evidently was not done in the treatment of patients such as Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta died at the JHU hospital on Oct. 4, 1951.

Although cells cultured for laboratory research were known to last only a few days, Gey found that Henrietta's could be divided many times without dying and so could be a continual source of research. Having discovered this, Gey sent his assistant to the autopsy room where Henrietta's body was and had her take additional samples from her body, again without permission. It evidently never occurred to them to ask. Gey named the cells "HeLa," not as a tribute of any sort to Henrietta, but because it was his practice to name a sample with the first letter of the patient's first name and the first two letters of her last to distinguish that sample from others.

The HeLa cells ability to reproduce quickly led to their being used in such medical breakthroughs as Jonas Salk's polio vaccine and were soon mass produced for research use. Johns Hopkins didn't inform the Lacks family that their mother's blood was saving countless lives. (Later, a JHU researcher reportedly told a member of the family they were instructed not to tell for fear of a lawsuit.) JHU researchers came to the family at the end of the decade when the cells had become contaminated and asked for samples from family members to isolate the cells again. But they never told them why. A BBC film crew, however, interviewed the Lacks family in 1998 for a documentary on Henrietta Lacks called The Ways of All Flesh, and the family was invited to a JHU reception When some family members were told that the HeLa line was being used all over the world, they wandered around the reception asking whom they should see for their share of the money.

I was recently prompted to revisit Henrietta Lacks by a March 12 New York Times Magazine story about women who should have received obituaries but didn't. I first learned about her in 2010 when I was writing about medical research and read a review of Rebecca Skloot's book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in the (London) Times Literary Supplement. The book appeared to have been reviewed in the UK before the U.S., and it was easier to order the book from a UK bookseller, which I did. When I attended a conference for a story and heard a speaker mention Henrietta Lacks, I wrote the story and added a sidebar citing material from the book. The sidebar was not published because I was told everybody knew about her already, although the book had just been published.

I was given an assignment to write about her in February 2017 about a lawsuit from a Lacks family member. The Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun reported that a Maryland attorney was going to sue JHU on behalf of one of her sons. This was occurring shortly before an HBO movie based on the Skloot book was due to be broadcast. The only problem I had was that all there was was the two newspaper stories. I called the attorney to ask when the suit was going to be filed, and he didn't return my calls. In my voicemails, I said I was trying to find out what his cause of action was going to be because it wasn't clear from the newspaper stories. The stories had suggested the family should be recompensed for use of their mother's property. But, I said in the voicemail, legal precedent such as Moore v. Regents of Univ. of California, Washington Univ. v. Catalona, and Greenberg v. Miami Research Hospital Research Institute suggested that a patient doesn't have ownership rights in a body part that is removed in the course of regular diagnosis and treatment. Again, he never returned my calls. I did write an article in June 2017 in which I included comments from attorneys about how difficult such a suit can be.

Over a year later, according to court dockets, a suit of the kind announced to the Post and Sun has not yet been filed. It still could be. But it also could be that it might not be possible to obtain financial compensation for the Lacks family.

There has, however, been recent though tardy recognition for Henrietta Lack's contribution to medical research. The HBO movie was broadcast on April 22, 2017. Morgan State University in Baltimore gave Lacks a posthumous honorary doctorate in public service in 2011, and she was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2014. Henrietta Lacks has also become a patron saint of the importance of informed consent in medical situations. She is an easily referenced example.

But Henrietta Lacks is best remembered for the gift with which she was born. Like a young girl who was born with a beautiful soprano voice, Henrietta was born with cells that, if properly treated, will not die and have saved or enhanced the lives of millions.

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Using Films in Other Films: Copyright Issues and the Public Domain

by John Aquino on 03/01/18

I have taught copyright courses and workshops for filmmakers and often have been asked the question, when they want to use a scene from another movie in their movie, do they have to get permission? A good portion of the discussion has usually centered on the use of films that are in the public domain and no longer protected by copyright. (As always, this article is not meant to constitute legal advice; it contains my general, personal observations based on my experience and research.)

The basic answer to their question is, if the older film is protected by copyright, then use of a clip from that film in another film would require permission and, possibly, payment. There is, however, a provision in the copyright law that might have bearing on the situation, depending primarily on the type of film the new film it is and how much of the first film is used.

The law allows for "fair use" of copyrighted material without permission or fee under certain circumstances. The copyright act doesn't define fair use but provides four factors that a court can consider if infringement is alleged: the purpose and character of the use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion taken; and the potential effect on the market for the copyrighted work. If the use is intended for news reporting or educational purposes and the amount taken is small, then the potential user is at least half way toward fair use. If, however, the use is for commercial purposes, such as a movie people will pay to see or that the filmmaker has been paid to make, then the road toward fair use is much, much harder.

Another possibility for filmmakers is to use films that are no longer protected by copyright, that have fallen into what is called the public domain. There are some very good films that have that status. Public domain material can be used without permission or payment. Films (as well as any copyrighted materials) fall into the public domain when their age passes the number of years that copyright protection lasts or they violate the requirements of copyright law. Under the Copyright Act of 1908, which governed works made until the new law 64 years later, copyright protection required registration and was provided for 28 years and could be extended for another 28 years if the copyright owner filed a renewal. The Copyright Act of 1976 eliminated registration and renewal and established that copyright begins when the work is fixed in a tangible medium and ends 50 years after the death of the author or 75 years after publication for work of corporate authorship. The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998 extended the term of copyright to end 75 years after the death of an author and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shorter. Protection for works published before January 1, 1998 was extended by 20 years to a total of 95 years from the first publication date. The 1998 law was largely seen as the result of lobbying from such companies as Disney and the estate of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, whose works were set to enter the public domain.

The result of all of this is a rule of thumb that works published before before 1923 most likely fell into the public domain before the 1998 Act. Thanks to the 1998 extension act, no new works will fall into the public domain until 2019 when works published in 1923 will do so. Those published in 1924 will lose their copyright in 2020 and so on.

Films made before 1923 are almost all silent, sound not being commercially introduced until 1926. There are also later silent films that are in the public domain because the copyright was not renewed as required by the 1908 law, including such classics as Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925) and Buster Keaton's The General.(1926.) (Both of these, however, were issued in later versions with sound, so only the original prints are in the public domain.) These silent films would seem to be a good properties for filmmakers to use without permission or payment. Filmmakers can add music to these silent films, cut them, or add to them as long as they credit the original work. But, if the filmmaker just wants to use a clip from a silent film, can't afford to add music, and wants to use an existing VHS or DVD of a silent film, he or she needs to know that the music that has been added is likely protected by copyright. If the old print has been restored, the restoration may be protected by copyright.

There are also more recent films that have fallen into the public domain because the copyright wasn't renewed or the film didn't carry the requisite copyright notice as also required by the 1908 act. These include a number of well-known films, including William Wellman's A Star Is Born (1937), starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, whose copyright wasn't renewed; Richard Brooks' The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) starring Van Johnson and Elizabeth Taylor and based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, which had an incorrect copyright date that caused the owners not to file timely renewal; Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors (1960) starring Jack Nicholson, which was never copyrighted; Stanley Donen's Charade (1963) starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which lacked the proper copyright notice; McLintock (1963) starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, whose copyright was never renewed; and George A. Romero's seminal zombie film The Night of the Living Dead (1968), which lacked the proper copyright notice. There are many others, which can be found through Internet searches

These films may appear attractive to filmmakers. The Night of the Living Dead is often seen playing on television sets in low-budget films. But they should be approached with caution and only after consultation with an intellectual property attorney. For one thing, while the films may be in the public domain, there may be other worrisome aspect of law such as an actor's right of publicity under some states' law that could raise legal concern. For another, in the case of McLintock and Charade, while the films themselves are in the public domain, the copyright of the music was filed separately and renewed. Therefore, any clip that includes music might raise issues of infringement. For still another thing, some films like His Girl Friday (1940) are in the public domain, but they were based on plays or novels that are still protected by copyright and whose protection covers derivative works like films. Finally, there is once again the question of prints. Because these films are in the public domain, versions that are available have often been made copies from copies from copies and are of poor quality. This may discourage filmmakers from using them. Or the filmmakers may locate restored copies that have been available for sale, and, once again those restorations may have copyright protection. Both problems could be largely avoided by locating an original print--if that is possible.

Public domain films are attractive avenues for filmmakers to consider using. But their status has to be firmly determined, as does which clips can safely be used.

And, starting in 2019, new works will once again be entering the public domain.

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Forget the Hype: Maybe We're Not One Big Happy TV Family

by John Aquino on 02/28/18

We live in a world of hype. But there is some hype that really gets my goat, and my ox, and my puppy.

The hype in question is that the broadcasters on news shows are one, big, happy family. And we, by watching them, become part of their family. This is why they tell us stories about their children and spouses and show us baby pictures. They play trivia games with each others on air. On Halloween, broadcasters at local stations do the news in costumes. And when the Today show broadcasters returned this Monday from two weeks covering the Olympics in Korea, they showed 10 minutes of footage of Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie, and Al Roker separately being greeted by their children and spouses at the airport.

And this is all fine--although it makes you think sometimes they might spend more time providing news and doing interviews with important people--except for the fact that it doesn't appear to be totally true. On NBC's Today show, after Matt Lauer--who was the head of the Today show family, the head guy--was fired last November for inappropriate sexual behavior, his co-hosts Savannah and Al both said they had no idea Matt was like that! They were shocked, shocked that improper behavior was going on behind the door that Lauer could lock by a button in his desk. And over at CBS' This Morning, after Charlie Rose was fired the next week for inappropriate sexual behavior, his co-hosts Gayle King and Nora O'Donnell also had no idea Charlie was like that. You have to ask, just how close are these people, really?

To give another example about another morning show, although not a news show, on Live with Regis and Kelly, which ran from 2001 to 2011, Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa seemed happy and close. They even did commercials for TD Bank in which Regis would take Kelly to TD Bank to show her how it was open when other banks were closed and he would even call her at 2 a.m. to ask her questions about TD Bank. Ripa said in a recent interview that she didn't talk to Philbin off camera. She said she would try, but that Philbin would stop her because he wanted everything to be spontaneous on the air. She said that even if she just asked, How was your weekend?, he would say, Don't talk to me! I'll tell you about my weekend and then you'll ask me about my weekend on air and I'll tell you again and it will be stale. If you want to ask me about my weekend, ask me on air so that it will be spontaneous. Therefore, it would appear they were not as close as it was made to seem.

They all may not be one big happy family, so it's mostly if not all, hype, a charade. And this would mean that we're not part of the family either. Now, you may say nobody really believes they are that close, but then why do the networks keep pushing this image even after Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose? At least it's something to think about.

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