Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Don Henley sues for return of handwritten ‘Hotel California’ lyrics
NEW YORK | Eagles singer Don Henley filed a lawsuit in New York on Friday seeking the return of his handwritten notes and song lyrics from the band’s hit “Hotel California” album.
The civil complaint filed in Manhattan federal court comes after prosecutors in March abruptly dropped criminal charges midway through a trial against three collectibles experts accused of scheming to sell the documents.
The Eagles co-founder has maintained the pages were stolen and had vowed to pursue a lawsuit when the criminal case was dropped against rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski.
“Hotel California,” released by the Eagles in 1977, is the third-biggest selling album of all time in the U.S.
“These 100 pages of personal lyric sheets belong to Mr. Henley and his family, and he has never authorized defendants or anyone else to peddle them for profit,” Daniel Petrocelli, Henley’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement Friday.
According to the lawsuit, the handwritten pages remain in the custody of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which declined to comment Friday on the litigation.
Lawyers for Kosinski and Inciardi dismissed the legal action as baseless, noting the criminal case was dropped after it was determined that Henley misled prosecutors by withholding critical information.
“Don Henley is desperate to rewrite history,” Shawn Crowley, Kosinski’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to litigating this case and bringing a lawsuit against Henley to hold him accountable for his repeated lies and misuse of the justice system.”
Inciardi’s lawyer, Stacey Richman, said in a separate statement that the lawsuit attempts to “bully” and “perpetuate a false narrative.”
A lawyer for Horowitz, who isn’t named as a defendant as he doesn’t claim ownership of the materials, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
During the trial, the men’s lawyers argued that Henley gave the lyrics pages decades ago to a writer who worked on a never-published Eagles biography and later sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who started putting some of the pages up for auction in 2012.
The criminal case was abruptly dropped after prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates.
Prosecutors and the defense said they received the material only after Henley and his lawyers made a last-minute decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.
Judge Curtis Farber, who presided over the nonjury trial that opened in late February, said witnesses and their lawyers used attorney-client privilege “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging” and that prosecutors “were apparently manipulated.”
A Czech film fest opens with an honor for Viggo Mortensen
PRAGUE | An international film festival in the western Czech resort city of Karlovy Vary is kicking off with an honor for U.S. actor and director Viggo Mortensen.
Mortensen, a three-time nominee for the Academy Award for best actor, is slated to receive the Festival President’s Award at Friday’s opening ceremony and present the second movie he directed, “The Dead Don’t Hurt.”
A special guest of the fest, Oscar-winning director and producer Steve Soderbergh, will present two movies, “Kafka” and “Mr Kneff,” in a retrospective called “The Wish to Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema.”
The retrospective will feature movie adaptations of books by Franz Kafka to mark the 100th anniversary since the author’s death.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival runs through July 6. The grand jury, which includes Australian Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush, will consider 12 movies for the top prize, the Crystal Globe.
Alec Baldwin’s case on track for trial in July as judge denies request to dismiss
SANTA FE, N.M. | A court ruling on Friday put an involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin on track for trial in early July as a judge denied a request to dismiss the case on complaints that key evidence was damaged by the FBI during forensic testing.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sided with prosecutors in rejecting a motion to dismiss the case.
Defense attorneys had argued that the gun in the fatal shooting was heavily damaged during FBI forensic testing before it could be examined for possible modifications or problems that might exonerate the actor-producer.
The ruling removes one of the last hurdles before prosecutors can bring the case to trial with jury selection scheduled for July 9 in Santa Fe.
At trial, attorneys plan to call on witnesses from a court-approved list of more than 60 people. They include film director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting as well as assistant director Dave Halls, who earlier pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon, and an array of first responders, investigators, firearms experts and close-range witnesses to the shooting.
Baldwin isn’t listed but has the right to testify at his own trial.
During a rehearsal on the set of the Western film “Rust” in 2021, Baldwin pointed a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing her and injuring director Souza as the bullet became lodged in his shoulder. Baldwin has maintained that he pulled back the gun’s hammer but not the trigger and has pleaded not guilty.
The FBI conducted an accidental discharge test on the gun by striking it from several angles with a rawhide mallet, eventually breaking the gun. Prosecutors plan to present evidence at trial that they say shows the firearm “could not have fired absent a pull of the trigger” and was working properly before the shooting.
Baldwin has twice been charged in Hutchins’ death. Prosecutors dismissed an earlier charge, then refiled it after receiving a new analysis of the revolver that Baldwin pointed at Hutchins.
“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is serving an 18 month sentence on a conviction for involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting, as she appeals the jury verdict. It’s likely the prosecutors will call her to testify at Baldwin’s trial, despite her refusal to answer questions at a pretrial interview and instead invoke her constitutional rights against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. A judge refused a request to compel her testimony by providing immunity.
Marlowe Sommer said that destruction of internal components of the firearm “is not highly prejudicial” to a fair trial and that Baldwin’s legal team failed to demonstrate bad faith by investigators.
While Baldwin “contends that an unaltered firearm is critical to his case, other evidence concerning the functionality of the firearm on Oct. 21, 2021, weighs against the defendant’s assertions,” the judge wrote.
Sheriff’s investigators initially sent the revolver to the FBI for routine testing, but when an FBI analyst heard Baldwin say in an ABC TV interview that he never pulled the trigger, the agency told local authorities they could conduct an accidental discharge test, though it might damage the gun.
The FBI was told by a team of investigators to go ahead, and tested the revolver by striking it from several angles with a rawhide mallet. One of those strikes fractured the gun’s firing and safety mechanisms.
Defense attorneys say that the “outrageous” decision to move forward with testing may have destroyed exculpatory evidence.
Prosecutors said it was “unfortunate” the gun broke, but it wasn’t destroyed and the parts are still available. They say Baldwin’s attorneys still have the ability to defend their client and question the evidence against him.
In Friday’s ruling, the judge said prosecutors will have to fully disclose at trial the destructive nature of the FBI forensic testing on the gun, including what was lost in the process and its relevance in reaching a verdict.
Several hours of testimony about the gun and forensic testing during online hearings in recent days provided a dress rehearsal for the possible trial against Baldwin. Attorneys for Baldwin gave long and probing cross-examinations of the lead detective, an FBI forensic firearm investigator and the prosecution’s independent gun expert, Lucien Haag.
Prosecutors plan to present evidence that they say shows the firearm “could not have fired absent a pull of the trigger” and was working properly before the shooting.
Since the 2021 shooting, the filming of “Rust” resumed but moved to Montana under an agreement with Hutchins’ husband, Matthew Hutchins, which made him an executive producer. The completed movie has not yet been released for public viewing.
Martin Mull, hip comic and actor from ‘Fernwood Tonight’ and ‘Roseanne,’ dies at 80
LOS ANGELES | Martin Mull, whose droll, esoteric comedy and acting made him a hip sensation in the 1970s and later a beloved guest star on sitcoms including “Roseanne” and “Arrested Development,” has died, his daughter said Friday. He was 80.
Mull’s daughter, TV writer and comic artist Maggie Mull, said her father died at home on Thursday after “a valiant fight against a long illness.”
Mull, who was also a guitarist and painter, came to national fame with a recurring role on the Norman Lear-created satirical soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and the starring role in its spinoff, “Fernwood Tonight.”
“He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials,” Maggie Mull said in an Instagram post. “He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the sign of a truly exceptional person—by many, many dogs.”
Known for his blonde hair and well-trimmed mustache, Mull was born in Chicago, raised in Ohio and Connecticut and studied art in Rhode Island and Rome.
His first foray into show business was as a songwriter, penning the 1970 semi-hit “A Girl Named Johnny Cash” for singer Jane Morgan.
He would combine music and comedy in an act that he brought to hip Hollywood clubs in the 1970s.
“In 1976 I was a guitar player and sit-down comic appearing at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip when Norman Lear walked in and heard me,” Mull told The Associated Press in 1980. “He cast me as the wife beater on ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.’ Four months later I was spun off on my own show.”
His time on the Strip was memorialized in the 1973 country rock classic “Lonesome L.A. Cowboy” where the Riders of the Purple Sage give him a shoutout along with music luminaries Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.
“I know Kris and Rita and Marty Mull are hangin’ at the Troubadour,” the song says.
On “Fernwood Tonight” (sometimes styled as “Fernwood 2 Night”), he played Barth Gimble, the host of a local talk show in a midwestern town and twin to his “Mary Hartman” character. Fred Willard, a frequent collaborator with very similar comic sensibilities, played his sidekick. It was later revamped as “America 2 Night” and set in Southern California.
He would get to be a real talk show host as a substitute for Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.”
Mull often played slightly sleazy, somewhat slimy and often smarmy characters as he did as Teri Garr’s boss and Michael Keaton’s foe in 1983’s “Mr. Mom.” He played Colonel Mustard in the 1985 movie adaptation of the board game “Clue,” which, like many things Mull appeared in, has become a cult classic.
The 1980s also brought what many thought was his best work, “A History of White People in America,” a mockumentary that first aired on Cinemax. Mull co-created the show and starred as a “60 Minutes” style investigative reporter investigating all things milquetoast and mundane. Willard was again a co-star.
He wrote and starred in 1988’s “Rented Lips” alongside Robert Downey Jr., whose father, Robert Sr., directed.
His co-star Jennifer Tilly said in an X post Friday that Mull was “such a witty charismatic and kind person.”
In the 1990s he was best known for his recurring role on several seasons on “Roseanne,” in which he played a warmer, less sleazy boss to the title character, an openly gay man whose partner was played by Willard, who died in 2020.
Mull would later play private eye Gene Parmesan on “Arrested Development,” a cult-classic character on a cult-classic show, and would be nominated for an Emmy, his first, in 2016 for a guest run on “Veep.”
“What I did on ‘Veep’ I’m very proud of, but I’d like to think it’s probably more collective, at my age it’s more collective,” Mull told the AP after his nomination. “It might go all the way back to ‘Fernwood.’”
Other comedians and actors were often his biggest fans.
“Martin was the greatest,” “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig said on X. “So funny, so talented, such a nice guy. Was lucky enough to act with him on The Jackie Thomas Show and treasured every moment being with a legend. Fernwood Tonight was so influential in my life.”
Mull is survived by his daughter and musician Wendy Haas, his wife since 1982.
—From AP reports
