David Thomas and Laurel Legler’s film, MC5: A True Testimonial, is rich in provocative images. The 2002 documentary explores a brilliant Detroit band that came close to making it big but never did.
The film includes surveillance footage of the band’s afro-sporting, leather-clad lead singer and his band mates gyrating beneath the bellies of Army helicopters at the 1968 Democratic Convention. In another scene, the manic heat of Detroit’s 1967 riots smolders as the camera pans to a giant banner hung from the band’s building. The words, “Burn, baby, burn,” are draped into the flames. These sensational images are braided together with those of the once victorious and now decrepit Grande Ballroom where the band used to play to packed houses. Decade old interviews revive deceased band members while current inquiries sift through the anecdotes of their surviving families.  The viewer is guided throughout the film by the remaining band members, most notably the incredible guitarist, Wayne Kramer.
Thomas and Legler’s movie does more than summon Kramer in his heyday. The film renews him, in some ways making him a brighter star than ever before. He’s so charismatic; it’s hard to believe he has a criminal past.
The movie was a nine-year labor of love from start to finish, and of all the glitches anticipated, former Columbia College student Thomas and his partner, Legler, could never have guessed that their film would be hijacked at the eleventh hour by one of its own subjects.

At the root of all of this is the concept that one person’s story might be another person’s pay day, that it is possible for a writer, musician, artist or filmmaker to capitalize off of someone’s personal history. This concept is increasingly relevant in the wake of high-grossing box office documentaries, reality television, and both written and visual art. If I tell your story, what compensation do you deserve?
“People have the right to protect, and potentially profit from the tangible manifestations of their ideas,” says lawyer Amy Cook, who specializes in intellectual property issues. “You don’t necessarily have to get someone’s permission to tell their story. Sometimes, it can be a detriment because the subject may try to exert too much control.”  This is the gist of intellectual property law.

From the beginning, Thomas and Legler knew they wanted to include their subjects in the project.  Everyone was thrilled that the MC5, robbed of the fame they had so deserved, was being resurrected. “Right from the start, everybody assured us that they were a hundred percent behind the project,” Thomas says.
With the help of several attorneys, Thomas and Legler set up their own company, Future/Now Films, a limited liability corporation that would act as an umbrella to protect its members and distribute any potential profits. Everyone involved in the film enthusiastically joined Future/Now Films. Everyone but Kramer, who was presented several times with the documents but delayed signing them, particularly after seeing the marketability of the finished product.
“He was heading us toward a stick up,” Thomas says.
“In my opinion, if a party won’t sign an agreement, you probably shouldn’t enter into a working relationship with that person. It will most likely lead to headaches down the road,” Cook says. “Sometimes people think ‘making’ someone sign an agreement means you don’t trust them. It’s just the opposite; it will preserve a good relationship.”
Despite their strained relationship with Kramer, Thomas and Legler promoted the film. They spent a year on the International Film Festival circuit. The film premiered with great success at 12 festivals, including Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, and Tribeca.  The cast was elated, but Kramer continued to demand control of various aspects of the project that Thomas and Legler had no way of granting.  Sometimes he would take his complaints to the press. “I have been telling the story of the MC5 all my life. It belongs to me and my partners in the band, not Future/Now Films,” Kramer wrote in an open letter on April 1, 2004.

“He had confused the fact that his image was up on the screen with the idea that the film somehow belonged to him. It was his to make money from. It was his to take and do what he wanted. And being a participant was not good enough for him,” Legler says.  “He fell back on old gangster behavior.”
After one grueling year on the International Film Festival circuit, the film was picked up by Sony BMG, the second largest distributor in the country. Nine years of meticulous work finally was coming to fruition. There was just one little glitch. Warner Chapel, the company that owned the rights to the music, suddenly refused to give Thomas and Legler the licensing deal they had been promised. Intimidated by such a large corporation, Thomas and Legler hadn’t been able to get the agreement in writing. Without the music, a documentary about a rock band had no chance of making it.
“It’s like helping a little old lady across the street and you feel great about it and you turn around and realize she stole your f***in’ wallet,” says Thomas of the double cross.  “We immortalized his story for him and he spit on it.”
Kramer went on to make his own movie about the MC5, Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5.  When the movie did not meet Kramer’s expectations, he sued Thomas and Legler for more than $50 million for losses incurred from halting distribution of their movie, the very halting he had legally insisted on.

He remains unapologetic.  “I’m no saint,” he wrote in the aforementioned open letter. “I’ve been to prison, I’ve been to skid row, I’ve been homeless and in rehab and have known some shady characters in my day, but rarely have I come across people whose actions have been as cowardly, unprincipled, duplicitous and fundamentally dishonest as Dave Thomas, Laurel Legler, and their attorneys.”
In federal court, Thomas and Legler were vindicated. “We didn’t screw anybody.  That was just a story he made up,” Legler says. “Winning the lawsuit was all that we needed to put that all safely behind us.” But it will be difficult for the filmmakers to start any new ventures.

“Our investors never saw their money back,” Thomas says. “They’re still entirely supportive of us and great friends but we can’t go back and ask ‘em for money for another movie at this point.”
So how could such bad things happen to such good artists? Cook, who is on the board of Lawyers for the Creative Arts, an organization that provides free or low cost legal aid for artists, recommends that artists begin by knowing the legal aspects of their projects. (Visit www.law-arts.org for more information.) She emphasizes that intellectual property has value and is not free for the taking.

Though they know they’ve made a fantastic film, Thomas and Legler have, for the moment, parted with their dreams of mainstream distribution. The faces they’ve filmed so closely, so passionately, haunt them now.
“We breathed life back into the serpent,” Thomas says of Kramer.  “We re-animated the corpse. But the head and the heart, they were gone.”