Motown founder Berry Gordy has filed a massive $10 million defamation lawsuit against a filmmaker for falsely depicting him in a new movie. In court documents obtained by RadarOnline, Gordy accused director Timothy Bogart of portraying him as a thug in his 2023 film Spinning Gold.
The movie, which made its debut in the Spring, details the life of Bogart’s father, Neil Bogart and his legendary record label, Casablanca Records. While marketing the movie, the director claimed that the film was a “true” portrayal of his father’s life in the music industry, “even the parts that aren’t.”
But Gordy wasn’t rocking with that statement.
In the suit, the iconic music exec claimed that some of the narratives presented about him in the film were absolutely false and fictitious. Lawyers for the 93-year-old wrote that the “made-up storyline in which Gordy is wrongfully and dishonestly portrayed as a thug and a mobster who goes so far as to order a murder for hire. The Picture is unlikely to be a commercial or artistic success. However, the picture does succeed in defaming and otherwise causing great damage to Gordy.”
Additionally, Gordy also slammed Bogart for creating “a false subplot” that portrayed him as a hitman. According to the music guru, one scene showed him “putting a hit out” on Neil Bogart “purportedly because Casablanca Records lured the Isley Brothers and Gladys Knight away from Motown to join the anemic roster of artists at Casablanca.”
Gordy maintained that “none” of the stories depicted in Spinning Gold were true and that he was never “associated with criminals or criminal behavior” during his time in the industry.
“The negative portrayals of [Gordy] and the insertion of the scene concerning Plaintiff “putting out a hit” is a vile, reckless and baseless character assassination in the desperate attempt to create drama where non exists in a lackluster Picture. This wrongful and illegal content in the Picture has caused severe damage to [Gordy] and to [Gordy’s reputation,” the suit added.
In the whopping $10 million lawsuit, the retired songwriter and producer is suing Bogart and the film’s distributors, Hero Entertainment and Universal City Entertainment Group, for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
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