hairstylist, and "best boy" gets listed in the movie credits because all of their creative contributions really do matter.
Id.
Garcia's theory of copyright law would result in the legal morass we warned against in Aalmuhammed—splintering a movie into many different "works," even in the absence of an independent fixation. Simply put, as Google claimed, it "make[s] Swiss cheese of copyrights."
Take, for example, films with a large cast—the proverbial "cast of thousands"[1]—such as Ben-Hur or Lord of the Rings.[2] The silent epic Ben-Hur advertised a cast of 125,000 people. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, 20,000 extras tramped around Middle-Earth alongside Frodo Baggins (played by Elijah Wood). Treating every acting performance as an independent work would not only be a logistical and financial nightmare, it would turn cast of thousands into a new mantra: copyright of thousands.
- ↑ The term "cast of thousands" originated as a Hollywood "[a]dvertising come-on referring to the crowds of background players in a spectacular epic film." Blumenfeld's Dictionary of Acting and Show Business 48 (Hal Leonard Corp. 2009).
- ↑ For information on Ben-Hur, see Ben-Hur, IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052618/ (last visited Jan. 21, 2015), and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Trivia, IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016641/trivia (last visited Jan. 30, 2015). For information on Lord of the Rings, see Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/ (last visited Jan. 21, 2015), and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Trivia, IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/trivia (last visited Jan. 30, 2015).
