sosgemini said:

What about Berry Gordy not letting the RIAA audit his sales records so his artists could receive gold and platimum certification for their work? What about squeezing acts by paying them a royalty rate of 2.8 percent, when it was common for acts to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent?
[Edited 1/27/07 15:25pm]

silverchild said:

Ummmm Hmmm guess willl have to wait in see, but there's more to come so many stories from Motown how could they not.

Najee said:

whats worse then a bastard?

sosgemini said:

.....and divided and conquer, holding people back from their true destiny to be self-contained producers/composers, not paying songwriters on time, etc.

Hey, wait a second! Berry Gordy set the standards in which ALL label CEOs would be measure (Clive Davis, Tommy Mottola, Sean Combs, Suge Knight, etc.)!

The part of the'Dreamgirls' film that bugged me the most were the unnecessary ties to Motown that weren't in the play--like that Jackson 5 wannabe group. What was the point of that? If you're going to try and tell the Motown story, get the rights to do it, and then tell it right. Otherwise, don't bother. Just stick to the original script.

Don't rip off the people that built Motown by doing their story halfway. The original play wasn't nearly so obvious.

sosgemini said:

So taking 97.2 percent of what a recording artist made in royalties, taking practically all rights to their songs and then creating an environment where they can't have any creative control of their own livlihood -- while wrapping it up in some quasi-racial solidarity crap of how black recording artists can appeal to white America -- isn't being a bastard?
[Edited 1/27/07 17:14pm]

lameless said:

I'll partially agree with you on that! I was shocked when I saw that scene too because it seemed kind of like a generic, wannabe Jackson 5 group and the beginning of act II of the film when Deena was watching that retrospective of her career, I almost laughed at some of the names of the groups that the director came up with! But overall, I thought it was a great film that was worth the wait...

lameless said:

the original script i believe was loosely based on the Supremes who were a group on Motown records i believe. Im not getting it the play is not a rip-off but the movie is a rip-off because of sum Jackson 5 wanabees were in the movie???

silverchild said:

You should have laughed because it was funny, it was meant to be funny. I like the part when "lil MJ" was waiting on the otherside of the door for "Deana" he sure did love him sum Diana, I mean Deana

Duggs said:

The play AT BEST was VERY loosely based on the Supremes. Really, the only similarity is that a girl group becomes really famous after a record producer changes their image to one most of America would more easily accept. Almost everything else is fiction! It's a fictional story! It's not biographical, however...













...the film makes DIRECT references to Motown where the play did not. That's why I said the film is more of a rip-off than the play.

Edited to answer your question:



Yes.
[Edited 1/27/07 19:42pm]

lameless said:[quote]

Duggs said:

I was waiting for someone to make this clear for everyone once and for all! Smokey should look up the words "biographical" and "fiction" in the dictionary...

silverchild said:

I get your point. Me being from Michigan and knowing since high shcool that Dreamgirls was "loosely based" on the supremes. My High School even performed DreamGirls when i was in school.

I really expected all the motown references thats about the only way to make Dreamgirls a good movie.

sosgemini said:

A greedy bastard!

You got The Holland brothers, Lamont Dozier(sp?), Norman Whitefield, Smokey Robinson, Paul Riser and Clarence Paul.

Those are the people who shaped and formed Motown history and they have talked about being ripped off(Of course, minus Berry's sidekick Mr.Robinson) during daylight out of their royalties, over and over again. Its not a secret anymore.

Of course, Ashford and Simpson were smart enough to break away from the Motown curse and reinvented their craft after that.

I didn't even mentioned the artists(major and obscure who got fucked to shreds by him) I mentioed the writers, producers and arrangers becoz they seem to get the bigger piece of the pie when it comes to royalties,,,,,not in Motown they don't.

Pick up Marvin Gay's Divided Souls, this is the 1st book that really exposed them as far as bio-books concern IMO.

lameless said:[quote]

Duggs said:

Damn, now see I don't like that. The playwrights just wanted to tell a general story. They weren't trying to out ppl. But of course Hollywood had to push it and make all those references. I especially didn't like how they had the youngest "Campbell" boy waiting outside the room for "Deena"

Harlepolis said:

tanks!!!