A Novel Approach?

T

he makers of the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love have been
served with a lawsuit by mystery writer Faye Kellerman, who
charges that the film's story vas derived from her 1989 novel, The
uality ofMercy.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court five
days before Sundays Academy Awards ceremo-
ny, accuses .Miramax. Films and the movie's co-
writers, Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, of
copyright infringement.
Kellerman and her mystery=writer husband,
Jonathan, are both Orthodox Jews and com-
mitted Zionists.
Peter Decker and Rena Lazarus, the protago-
nists in many of Faye Kellerman's novels, such as
The Ritual Bath and Day efAronernent, are an
Orthodox couple, and much of her books' action
is set in the Los Angeles Orthodox community.
In the action against Shakespeare in Love, the
suit claims that Kellerman's novel and the
Miramax film have similar characters and plots.
In The Quality of Mercy, "William
Faye .Kellerman: Suing.
Shakespeare, a young, struggling playwright,
falls in love with a young, well-born but unti-
tled woman forbidden to him and betrothed to another man, and conducts
a love affair with that woman," the suit alleges.
"The young woman departs to another continent. -Shakespeare writes a
play based upon events that occur during their love affair."
Additionally, in both instances the young woman "disguises.. herself as a
man and the action is set in the year 1593.
But there also are differences, particularly in the heroine's background.
The film's Viola de Lesseps is a stage-struck young woman from an -
.
upper-class and, presumably, gentile family.
[he novel's heroine is Rebecca Lopez, a converse whose family converted
to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition but secretly practices Judaism.
Her father has risen to become physician to Queen Elizabeth.
After Rebecca meets Shakespeare, the budding playwright helps her
hijack a boat to save a friend from the Inquisition, and does part-time duty
as an amateur detective to track down the killer of his mentor.
After the two go their separate ways, Shakespeare embarks on a new play,
which he calls The Merchant of Venice.
Miramax labeled the suit a likely publicity stunt that has no merit,
adding in a written statement: "The two stories are so different that the idea
_,
that one was copied from the other is absurd." F7
— Torn Thgend
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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• Honey Sesame Chicken

the graphic World War II saga Saving

Private Ryan.

The film is really an extension of
my earlier Schindler's List," Spielberg
said in recent JTA interview "It honors
the men whose bravery ended the war
in 1945, rather than in 1947, when no
Jew would have been left alive in
Europe." He dedicated the Oscar to
his father, a World War II veteran,
whom Spielberg hugged before going
up on stage to accept the award.
Also winning an Academy Award
— although he didn't make it to the
ceremony — was Stephen Schwartz,
whose "When You Believe" from The
Prince of Egypt, sung by divas Whitney

Houston and Mariah Carey, garnered
the composer an Oscar for Best
Original Song. In the movie, it was
sung by the Israelites as they departed
Egypt for the Promised Land.
The biggest non-Jewish winner at
Sunday's ceremony was the Bard of
Avon. Shakespeare in Love won Best
Picture and picked up six other Oscars.
Saving Private Ryan, with five awards,
and Life Is Beautiful, which scored in
three categories, were not far behind.
The Last Days, which presents the
testimony of five Hungarian-Jewish
Holocaust survivors, took honors as
the Best Documentary Feature.
The film was produced by

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3/26
1999

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