cover image Fatal Subtraction

Fatal Subtraction

Pierce O'Donnell, McDougal. Doubleday Books, $25 (576pp) ISBN 978-0-385-41686-3

Hailed as a landmark victory for writers, Art Buchwald's 1988 lawsuit against Paramount Pictures is the subject of this lengthy, compulsively readable brief written by O'Donnell, the Los Angeles lawyer who represented Buchwald, and Los Angeles Times reporter McDougal. Buchwald and his partner, producer Alan Bernheim, claimed that Paramount had failed to give them credit for the original story of Eddie Murphy's 1988 hit movie Coming to America . Though O'Donnell and McDougal focus on procedural aspects and the courtroom drama, they blow the lid off the major Hollywood studios's sleazy accounting practices, which have enabled them to deprive creative talent of millions of dollars in royalties by claiming that top-grossing films earned zero net profits. Murphy, given credit for the story line in the film, is portrayed here as ``a talented human being . . . reduced to a commodity.'' The authors also unreel withering profiles of director John Landis, Paramount executive Martin Davis, Arsenio Hall and others. Photos. (Aug.)