Fire the Messenger

Yes, this is the industry we should trust with unsupervised subpoena power. The story below is about the film side, but the music people have their own problems with accounting. What do we do with entertainment industry whistle blowers? Fire them, of course:

A former Warner Bros. employee has sued the film studio claiming he was wrongly fired from his job overseeing certain accounting functions because he uncovered problems with profit participation in “The Exorcist” and 140 other movies.

Major films like the hit 1973 horror movie about a girl possessed by the devil often have several people who either co-own the film or by virtue of their contract, participate in the ticket sales or profits.

In July this year, Warner Bros. settled a lawsuit with “Exorcist” director William Friedkin and producer William Peter Blatty, who claimed the studio had deprived them of their fair share of the profits by understating the film’s revenue.

….Mellado joined Warner Bros. in February 2002 as a system delivery lead for the financial contract systems group. His job was to supervise the employees that looked after profit participations and film residuals. He has a long background in financial systems, the lawsuit said.

….A Los Angeles attorney for Mellado, Clifford Pearson of Wasserman Comden Casselman and Pearson, said he did not want to identify the other 140 films until the case moved through its discovery phase. [Reuters]

You bet he’s hanging on to that info for dear life – that’s his prime negotiating tool for a settlement.