Who's Afraid Of Marty Singer?
Why do people take Marty Singer seriously? The cage-rattling, form-letter-rewriting Hollywood lawyer spews lawsuits like anxious starlets spew breakfast. Now, in his latest complaint, against Gawker, the New York Times refers to him as "the legendarily pugnacious Mr. Singer." The suit, according to Gawker (we have not read it, and as near as we can tell it has not been published online), asks for damages of $1 million—I know, seriously, what? A whole million dollars? You mean maybe six weeks of Gawker ad income? What a pitiful request!—for their publication of a video which depicted TV actors hanging out in states of undress. I have read and received letters from Marty Singer's office. You probably have too! They are often factually incorrect, distorting to actual events, and they create such a tenuous legal bubble of reasoning that one can barely take them seriously. They are particularly prone to insane misreadings of the texts that they complain about. Less experienced publishers find them frightening, mostly because they are 1. very long and 2. very irritating and 3. because Marty Singer (along with Lynda Goldman, and the rest of his crew) has worked very hard to establish his reputation as a bulldog or a terrier or whatever sort of dog is a tenacious ankle-biter. But the real sign you're in legal trouble with a celebrity is if they hire a lawyer who is not Marty Singer, and Gawker honcho Nick Denton is totally right to mock it on his Twitter.
Singer is a publicist who happens to be a lawyer. Think about it that way and everything he does makes sense.
True! Just when I had forgotten that Gawker did a video that I never watched starring people of whom I'd never heard* the story resurfaces!
*-LIE! I have heard of Rebecca Gayheart, but I've always confused her with Denise Richardson and am not convinced they are really two people.
OMG, don't say that about Denise!!!!
The real question is since this was at one time bagged in police custody as evidence, how did it make its way back out? THAT is a crime. There may be something there wit regard to knowingly receiving stolen property etc.
Is there a consensus as to the best celeb "romps" out there? This one was so boring. But Paris Hilton was great. Who else really gave it their best efforts? I feel like I saw a Pam Anderson naked on a boat once, but that might have been from that time I tried those hallucinatory cherries in Portugal.
I give Colin Farrell an A+, just for the script.
Severina Vuckovic. Nobody else even close.
Having practiced in LA, I found Lavely & Singer to be a bunch of dolts, top to bottom, but in their defense they do represent "talent," which is absolutely the most horrible thing any lawyer should ever have to do. Basically some overpampered actor is whining about press, so L&S charges them some ungodly sum to pump a form letter to any media outlet they can find. It does absolutely no good, but the talent is happy for a few hours, until they find something new to whine about. Bottom line, it pays well, but it doesn't do much to earn you any respect.
He's no Bert Fields.