The case of a woman who claims she is the real-life model for the character of a prostitute in a movie is one of three lawsuits filed last month which would punish writers for making creative use of their experiences.

The film “Finding Amanda” stars Matthew Broderick as a screenwriter with a gambling problem who tries to redeem himself by rescuing his young niece, the “Amanda” of the title, from a life of prostitution and drug use in Las Vegas. Writer-director Peter Tolan has said the film is loosely based on a trip to Vegas to help his own niece.

“This is painfully about me … The inspiration for it actually happened in real life,” he told an interviewer.

But now Tolan's real-life niece, Alix Daily, is alleging he caused her emotional distress and invaded her privacy by basing the character of Amanda on her without her permission, using “confidential and private information” he and his wife had obtained when they helped “deal[ ] with a family crisis concerning [her].”

“Peter Tolan used this platform to advance his career by making a directorial debut in film at the expense of exploitation of his niece,” Daily says in a complaint filed May 27. The DVD release of “Finding Amanda” carried the tagline, “No Really, She's His Niece.”

Two other plaintiffs allege they are victims of similar exploitation. In a lawsuit filed May 3, a California man says writer Alexandra Sokoloff publicly disclosed private facts about him in her novel “The Unseen” which she had learned during their “personal and professional friendship.”

“Plaintiff has made concerted efforts throughout his life to keep private the facts that he has struggled with alcohol and comes from a troubled family,” Brendan Cody alleges in his complaint. “The Unseen” features a character with the same name.

Retired journalist Carl Senna, meanwhile, has sued his daughter, Danzy Senna, for disclosing in her memoir “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?“ that, among other things, he “admitted to [her] that he was an alcoholic, which he admitted to her on the condition that she maintain that confidence.”

Libel-in-fiction cases have recently gained some traction in the courts — a Georgia jury last year awarded $100,000 to a woman who claimed she was falsely portrayed as an “alcoholic slut” in the novel “The Red Hat Club.” And writer Augusten Burroughs settled with a family who sued him in 2005 for misrepresenting them in his memoir “Running With Scissors.”

The latest crop of cases represent a continuation of a trend that could have a chilling effect on creative expression.

Daily's case is particularly troubling since “Finding Amanda” so clearly draws on Tolan's own experiences. “My wife and I, one summer, years ago, got a call from a family friend who said they had a child who was in trouble in Las Vegas, and in trouble very similar to this,” he told ACED Magazine.com.

“There was some question of hooking and drug-taking,” he continued, “and because I had gambled quite a bit, and had spent quite a bit of time in Vegas, the person who was calling said, 'Maybe Peter can go and find this person and bring this person to rehab.' So all that stuff happened in real life.”

According to Daily, Tolan and his wife were actually approached by her mother for help in finding a resolution to her confidential “issues and problems.” Although, she says, “an attempt was made to fictionalize some of the content,” Tolan and his collaborators actually “did very little to disguise the fact that a real life story was being told about Plaintiff in the movie, 'Finding Amanda.'”

But Tolan, like any writer of fiction inspired by personal experiences, can hardly be expected to obtain a release from every individual who was involved in those experiences. Whose life, after all, is it anyway?

By Matthew Heller
6/19/10