The use of real life characters in fantasy dramas or bios

I just realised that this sounds really dodgy out of context...

Thanks for the feedback - I wonder how spoof shows like The Windsors get away with it or Bo Selecta when they used to do Michael Jackson.

Yes the once your dead it's fair game generally applies. Tony Kushner puts a disclaimer in about Roy Cohn- afraid he'd be litigious even in death no doubt, but also to point out it is a fictionalised one.


Also depends if you're using something they made themselves in the case of artists etc, and what the copywright is on that. But if it's just their life story, usually it's a case of anything goes.

This reminded me of the legal and moral discussions that came up around the Audrey Hepburn Galaxy adverts. I found this article, it's quite old now, but still an interesting read. Circumstances not quite the same as this is literally the person's image, rather than an actor portraying their story. I guess another recent example would be the Fast and Furious films, or whichever one of the new Star Wars used similar tec to use an actor that had died. Arguably more controversial to use a person's actual face which might be why in these cases the family/estate has been involved.

That stupid Galaxy advert made me cringe. The most annoying thing was that they were obviously so pleased that they worked out specifically how to make her blink, they had her doing it every other second. On top of that, I argued with a few people who insisted it was a lookalike or actual film footage, despite my pointing out that she was blinking like a Disney cartoon. And was obviously a cartoon. It's funny how people see things differently, e.g. I thought the Cartoon Cushing in the recent Star Wars film looked rubbish, but know people who thought it looked brilliant.

I like it when real people are incorporated into fiction, at least when it's done well. There's a novel called Flicker which involves various plots related to the film industry, in which Orson Welles is a character, similarly (a very angry) Sid James in Jonathan Coe's excellent What A Carve Up. But in terms of plays, I've suddenly gone blank on ones that do this, as distinct from plays that are depictions of historical events.