Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ A film created with help from Artimus Pyle, a former Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer, violates a “blood oath” surviving band members made not to exploit the band’s name and history, a judge concluded as he blocked the film’s distribution, siding with a surviving member of the 1970s pioneering Southern-rock group and the widow of its lead singer.
U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet said the film, Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash, relied, in part, on the memories of Pyle, who was the group’s drummer from 1975 to 1991. The film focuses on Pyle, his relationship with other band members, particularly lead singer and songwriter Ronnie Van Zant, and events during and immediately after the plane crash. Van Zant died in the October 1977 crash in Mississippi. The same year, the band released its final album: Street Survivor. Pyle was critically injured but survived the crash, as did founding band member Gary Rossington. Sweet said Rossington, fellow founding band member Allen Collins, and Van Zant’s widow, now Judy Van Zant Jenness, entered a “blood oath” after the crash, agreeing no one would ever perform as Lynyrd Skynyrd again. A decade after the crash, surviving band members did a tribute tour and later signed an agreement defining when the parties could use the band’s name, its history or the name and likeness of Van Zant. Pyle signed the agreement, writing “Under Protest” adjacent to his signature. In 2016, Pyle signed a deal with Cleopatra Films that would pay him 5 percent of the film’s profits and give him a coproducer credit for working with the screenwriter, the court ruling said. Evan Mandel, a lawyer for Cleopatra Records Inc. and Cleopatra Films, said he would seek “immediate relief” from an appeals court to distribute the film, which cost $1.2 million to produce and was finished earlier this year.
■ The Terminator is back to give financial advice. Arnold Schwarzenegger is helping Britain’s financial regulator urge consumers to file claims if they were improperly sold payment protection insurance on loans and credit cards. Schwarzenegger appears in a Financial Conduct Authority ad publicizing an Aug. 29, 2019, deadline for British consumers to make the claims. An animatronic model of The Terminator’s head rolls around a grocery store on tank tracks warning customers to “Make a decision! Do it now.” Authorities estimate 64 million payment protection policies were sold along with credit cards, store cards and mortgages between the 1990s and 2010. The contracts were supposed to cover payments for people who couldn’t make them, but the Financial Conduct Authority says they were often sold improperly. Some $35 billion has already been repaid.