Amistad wasn't the only film facing an injunction last week. Though it's been around since Oct. 17, earning $57.3 million, a devil of a lawsuit has suddenly arisen around Warner Bros.' The Devil's Advocate, too. Here's how the fight shakes out.
-- WHO Sculptor Frederick Hart and the Washington National Cathedral filed suit Dec. 4 against Warner over the Al Pacino-Keanu Reeves thriller.
-- WHY Hart says a bas-relief in the film bears a striking resemblance to his 1982 work Ex Nihilo, a part of the cathedral. In the film, the figures in the artwork come to life and engage in sexual acts. It's a ''grotesque distortion...of a...religious sculpture,'' says the suit.
-- HOW HE FOUND OUT More than a month after Advocate's release, a friend asked Hart how a likeness of his work ended up in the film.
-- WHAT HE SAYS ''I was truly shocked and outraged,'' declares the artist. ''The piece took five years of my life to create [and]was designed as a message of hope, redemption, and the great beauty and mystery of God's creation.''
-- WHAT THEY SAY Warner declines comment, but Advocate's production designer, Bruno Rubeo, insists his work was inspired by European classics. Hart ''didn't invent bas-relief,'' he says. ''The Egyptians were doing it 3,000 years ago.''
-- THE LAST WORD ''Put them side by side,'' says Hart. ''I rest my case.''
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