TenThousandMotels
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Hell’s Angels Founder Gives HBO The Legal Finger April 22nd, 2008 at 15:00 by Shawn Lindseth hecklerspray.com
Sonny Barger is a completely literate man. In the past he’s used his incredible ability to read to pen four books, maybe design motorcycle gang sleeve patches, and practice his cursive until it was pretty enough to win fourth at a state-wide cursive derby.
Also he used it to found the Hell’s Angels.
Yet even with such an impressive, well written, grammatically correct resume, HBO doesn’t seem to care. They think he’s a bandana-wearing douche that smells of rusty switchblades. They probably think that. We assume that is what they probably think.
And now the opinion that the mega channel may or may not have is getting them drawn into court. Because Sonny Barger reads well enough to know he’s been cut out of a pretty big development deal in a biker series he helped pitch to them.
Allegedly allegedly allegedly.
Perhaps it is because the guys at HBO didn’t want their dead skulls and the skulls of their immediate family for three generations in either direction to adorn Sonny Barger’s keychain. Or perhaps it’s because the guys at HBO were just uncomfortable watching all those bugs jump out of his beard every time he’d sneeze. Whatever the reason, HBO has decided to cut all ties with Barger and and run with the show he gave him. Allegedly again.
You see, Barger is a biker – and not just any biker – he founded the Hell’s Angels, and came up with the idea that they should sell grasshopper cookies as a fund raiser instead of robbing immigrants, bar-keeps and one-legged strippers. Well we’re not actually sure about that last bit actually, but he did found the Hell’s Angels.
And he claims to have used his gang-forming ability to craft a show concept so good it had HBO drooling in their would-be used leather motorcycle chaps. But then something so horrible happened only the Hollywood Reporter can find the proper words for it:
“Hells Angels founder Sonny Barger filed a lawsuit last week against the pay cable network, the production company behind the project and its writer/executive producer Michael Tolkin claiming that the concept and the script for the show were developed with his collaboration. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles federal court, contends that HBO, the White Mountain Co. and Tolkin cut him out of the project and violated many of his publicity rights when he demanded changes to protect his own brand.”
His own brand, we assume, being stinky and accidentally dreadlocked. But seriously – HBO better be careful - Barger’s biker boys would probably still do anything for him. After all – it was them who were trying to murder Mick Jagger’s face off, and it was them who unleashed such a horrid legal torrent against the Disney movie Wild Hogs. Remember that?
HBO – you don’t need him. What you do need is a fantastic pilot about the goings on in the office of the 45th most powerful blog in the world. We have all kinds of drama. For instance Stu hoardes staplers, and Laidlow keeps what we all think is Bill Bixby’s remains in an extremely tattered refrigerator box under a cafeteria table.
Come to think of it, you could even put Bixby in the credits. If that’s not an audience draw ain’t nothing an audience draw.
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