Thursday, March 21, 2013
IMDb Lawsuit: Actress Suing IMDb Plans to Have Nine Other Actors Testify at Trial
www.hollywoodreporter.com: According to her pretrial statement, she won't be alone in attempting to hold the Amazon.com affiliate liable for costing her jobs in Hollywood. Hoang's lawyers want to potentially bring nine other actors and actresses onto the witness stand to testify about their own efforts to get IMDb to remove birth dates.
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6 comments:
Wow, what a mess. Unfortunately, I can see both sides of this argument. It makes perfect sense that IMDb would want to have as much information as possible on their site, and that the information is accurate and easily reachable. There are surely other places to find an actress's age; IMDb just makes it much more easily accessible (and maybe much more legal). But the actress has a point as well; it doesn't, or at least shouldn't, matter how old she is - if she looks the part and can act the part, she should get the job, no matter how many years she can or cannot claim to have occupied space on this earth. If the ability is there, it doesn't seem like age should matter and IMDb is definitely making it much easier to make that a factor.
What a load of crap. To me, this says that she was lying about her age to her employers, and that that is why she lost her job. Maybe her employers didn't want someone as old as her (which isn't a ridiculous request), or maybe if they found out she was lying, they fired her for that! I'm sure her job applications ask for her age. On top of that, if she didn't want her age available on the internet, I'm sure she needs to look much farther than IMDb, and suing is not the right answer. Proof for that: she's suing for anxiety and sleep loss. To me, that means that she really has nothing to sue for.
Well. I think it's safe to say that the measures this actress is going to are a little unnecessary. Yes, if there is a privacy agreement in the contract, then IMDb should follow that agreement. But if she signed no such agreement, then she needs to get over the fact that her age is shown. Perhaps she should have read more carefully before signing. I understand that age weighs in to an actor's career, but I don't think she is justified in prolonging the trial by adding so many cases and witnesses. If they had a real problem with it, they would have gone to trial themselves beforehand.
Actors are cast based on their talent, yes, but also based on their looks, style, and yes, age. Because film is a visual media, and because people like watching movies with attractive people in them, actors generally have to be attractive to get a part. And well, part of how you look is your age. No actor would sue a director for not casting them based on looks; film is the only industry where everyone finds profiling acceptable. Now if Hoang is fine being cast based on her looks, she should also accept the fact that she is going to be cast based on her age. That's it.
Now, while I do not believe that the actors filing this lawsuit should not get any kind of monetary retribution, I think that making IMDb take down the ages of actors who wish them to do so would be acceptable. I don't like that option and I still think actors should just accept the fact that film casting is partially based on superficial factors, but I do understand that a compromise should be reached.
I can understand how stressful this is for her... Getting older and older every day that's so stressful. Thankfully she isn't the only one I know who has that. This is a completely ridiculous lawsuit. If an actor wants there age down then they should comply with that request. I think it is unfair to directors if an actor is untruthful with their age because if it is an action movie that requires a lot of activity and they are older than they say that is going to become evident. I think the actors are hurting themselves anyways. Also this is public information if they don't find it there they can find it elsewhere.
Like Emma says I think both sides are relatively valid in their claims. The fact that the actress was hired to be in a show and then turned down once her employer found out her age is ridiculous. They obviously found her right for the part before they knew her age so to take back their offer seems unfair. However it does seem like the actress is taking this a bit to far with the week long trial and huge amounts of people to testify.
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