Berkley is Saved by the...Teen Self-Help Book?

When I first heard the below deal news from Associated Press yesterday, I thought there must be some mistake:

NEW YORK – Elizabeth Berkley is ready to take your question.

The actress will be writing "Ask Elizabeth," a "a self-esteem handbook for teen girls" based on questions she has been asked over the years.

G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers announced Tuesday that it expects to release the book next spring. It's an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group.

The 37-year-old Berkley is best known for the sitcom "Saved by the Bell" and for playing an exotic dancer in the movie "Showgirls." She also appeared in the films "The First Wives Club" and "Any Given Sunday."

See the article on Yahoo! HERE

My initial reaction to the news was "she's not exactly the ideal role model" or as "The Doctor," a Yahoo commentor put it a little more vividly, "Her writing a self-help book is like Linsdey Lohan filming a commercial for Partnership for a Drug Free America!!"

But what do we know? All we do is associate her with her raunchy character in Showgirls and her bit part as a call girl in Any Given Sunday. I'll admit that. We all do it all the time. Actors in particular are often associated with their roles, whether it's a fair assessment or not. No one considers Berkley for her theatre accomplishments, which are many I was suprised to find out, or for her vast involvement in the fight for animal rights. (In '97 she was part of a the "Lettuce Be Lean" PETA campaign, right; she was more recently nominated for "Sexiest Vegetarian of the Year" in 2008 and 2009.)

Little did I know, she also volunteers regularly at working with teen girls in junior high and high schools all over the globe. She helps with outreach programs including dance classes for young teens, and volunteers with the elderly, as well as for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Look at her go!

But what about the allegations that surfaced in Dustin "Screech" Diamond's memoir, Behind the Bell, not too long ago? The ones that talk about her--and the other cast members'--less than angelic behavior on and off the set of "Saved By the Bell"? Diamond's claims of drugs, sex, and even rape on the set are scandalous to say the least, but who knows if they are founded in truth or just the bitter rantings of a sad man who thinks he's, pardon my language, "the shit."

As far as I can tell, Diamond hasn't been hit with any libel lawsuits from his SBtB castmates. They have openly denounced him though, leaving him out of a reunion photo shoot for People.com last year in addition to speaking out:

Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zack Morris on the original series, openly slammed his on-screen bestie in an interview [in a past] issue of Newsweek.

“What is he going to say?” Gosselaar asked sarcastically. “We were (bleeping) groupies at 14? I can’t wait to read his book, because I don’t have a memory of a lot of the shows. Maybe it was because I was doing lines off of the audience members’ a—-. I’m sure he’s going to write something crazy like that. So he’s writing a book, I’m not really afraid of what he has to say. There are not too many skeletons in my closet.”

Read the full article HERE

All this hearsey (or not) just makes me beg the question: Is Berkely someone who should be writing a self-help book for teens? Maybe we'll never know. But I'm curious to see what reviewers think when Ask Elizabeth hits the shelves.

UPDATE: Smith v. Stweart--No Wonder She Was Su(Su)ed

So, it seems I was missing some crucial information in my December 20th post about the Haywood Smith libel lawsuit: Haywood Smith was asking for it.

An anonymous source informed me that Smith is a frequent public speaker at writers conferences and chapter meetings and on more than one occassion she openly admitted that The Red Hat Club was semi-autobiographical and that her characters--the adulterous husband and the heroine's friends in particular--were based on real people. Despite warnings that such an admission in a public forum could lead to a lawsuit, Smith didn't keep mum on the subject. Instead, she even began joking about it, "saying her ex would have to admit to some very unflattering facts if he ever sued her -- like how he cashed out their savings and retirement so he could pursue a 20-something stripper who left him once the money ran out." One of Smith's admissions was even recorded on tape.

Now I understand Stewart's anger--I would have sued Smith too! According to The Legal Satyricon:

Stewart filed her own motion for partial summary judgment and showed that Smith knew about the key events in Stewart’s life, told Stewart that her life story was interesting, and that she had used information about Stewart’s life to create the SuSu character. Smith admitted that she used details of Stewart’s life for the character, but that she fabricated other events and details, and based some other parts of SuSu on other people.

Read the rest of the article HERE

Law.com and The Georgia Court of Appeals lists a series of similarities between SuSu and Stweart including:

...their propensity for being chronically late, their hair color (red/auburn), their chain-smoking and smoker’s cough, and the descriptions of their parents’ occupations and their childhood homes, as well as other facts about Stewart that were not matters of public knowledge until the publication of the book. In fact, the court trial found at least twenty-six specific examples of similarities between the two. As noted above, these similarities led many readers to immediately conclude that SuSu was based on Stewart.

Not to mention the even more obvious resemblences:

...both graduated from the same high school, and they both lost their first husbands to car accidents and they both had a hard time collecting the insurance settlements due to the interference of a subsequent lover. Both became flight attendants later in life and SuSu’s friends in the book call her the “world’s oldest stewardess.” (The Legal Satyricon)

It's interesting to me that much of this new information wasn't included in the articles I read summing up the case. These gems are kind of significant. My entire view of the case has shifted. Smith took recognizable pieces of an actual person's life and personality and weaved them into a a cheating, alcoholic atheist in so blatant a way that a friend commented on the record that "one friend said that SuSu was 'Vickie to a T' and 'couldn't have been anybody else'" (Law.com).

While I know that all fiction is based in part on real life, Smith took it too far, and flaunting her awareness of her actions was either extremely careless or very naive. It's hard to know which.

Only one thing is for sure: this case is going to make authors--and publishers--much more cautious. But it's nearly impossible for publishers to do legal reads for this kind of information on every single title they print. There are too many variables and too many possibilities. So, really, it's all in the hands of the authors themselves.

And quite frankly, as my source put it so perfectly, "it's a disservice to authors everywhere, but Haywood set herself up for that lawsuit. She placed herself on a platter with an apple in her mouth. What lawyer is going to walk away from that?"

Libel Case Questions Where Fiction Ends and Reality Begins

This past Thursday, a Gainesville, FL court found author Haywood Smith--of the popular Red Hat Club, which inspired the real-life organization The Red Hat Society--guilty of libel against a childhood friend, according to the Associated Press:

The jury found on Thursday that Haywood Smith's novel "The Red Hat Club" damaged Vicki Stewart because it contained a character that closely resembled Stewart and portrayed her as a sexually promiscuous alcoholic. The jury rejected a claim of invasion of privacy.

The jury of eight men and four women awarded Stewart $100,000 in damages and denied her request for attorney fees.

"SuSu," a character in Smith’s novel about Buckhead socialites, shared many similarities with Stewart, including where she grew up, her jobs and the circumstances of her first husband's death.

Click HERE to read more

After the verdict, Stewart told the Gainesville Times, "All I wanted is for this not to happen to anyone else. I am so appreciative of this jury, that took it upon itself to do something that will make our country a little better, and hopefully make our publishing laws better. This should not have happened."

I was shocked to hear about this case at work last week; I hadn't even heard about it being in progress. But while I can understand some people's desire to create such a kerfuffle--ego can be an oppressive thing--I can't understand why a jury would agree with such a claim.

Novelists are constantly pulling from their lives, their experiences and their encounters with strangers, friends, and family. As Romantic Times blogger Nicole points out, "Basing characters on people in real life is nothing new. Characters as diverse as Lady Macbeth, Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Dirty Harry are all based on true life counterparts."

So, what's the big deal? It's how fiction works.

Besides, no, say, Californian reading a novel will recognize the author's neighbor's Vermont son. It's ludicrous to think that readers as a whole will recognize a character as a real person and think it's an entirely true portrayal and suddenly that real person is defamed. Of course, the line blurs in instances of a roman à clef, where a novel fictionalizes real-life political, pop culture, and historical (etc. etc.) figures, often in such a way that it's clear who the character is intended to represent. But it seems that the people in those roman à clef's, don't care as much. They are already in the public eye, and it's almost expected. There is the occasional lawsuit--for example, in 2008 Nicolas Cage sued actress Kathleen Turner for her portrayal of him in her book, Send Yourself Roses—but with everyday people, this kind of thing seems excessive.

Yet, despite its fairness, the implications of this case leave the field wide open for anyone to sue any author for defamation of character. Now that Stewart has won, it’s obvious to me that many similar cases will start coming out of the woodwork. And even people holding grudges could easily claim a character was based off of them and try to get an author found guilty or even just badly publicized.

I understand that people might get upset if a character portrayed in a negative light resembles themselves, but let me tell those people a little secret: no one knows...or cares.