Speaking and Communicating Podcast

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a few years away from holographs being a reality. A holograph could be generated by a computer and an AI and it looks just like me standing on stage talking with the person next to me and I say some horrible things. Well, that can reflect badly on my reputation, right? Even though wasn't me. The very first celebrity who was holographically recreated was Tupac Shakur.

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And there was a concert tour where he appeared on stage with the other performers, even though he had been dead for a few years. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. By the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify.

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of us are reading in a review. Now let's get communicating with our guest today, joining us from the hub of entertainment in Los Angeles. Gordon Firemark is a podcast lawyer, a media entertainment and legal professional who will help us with things such as copyright, trademark, and how any creative can see and learn the business side of their creative ideas.

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And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show, Hal Gordon. Hi, Roberta. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm looking forward to our talk. I'm looking forward to it as well. Welcome. Of all the things you could have chosen to be a legal expert on, why media and entertainment? Well, for me, it was entertainment first, law second. I was a theater kid when I was growing up. I loved to work behind the scenes, sound and lights and technology and building sets and...

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all those kinds of things around the theater projects. Also, you know, got interested in film and television and those kinds of things. And when I went away to school, to college, I studied theater briefly, but I was not a performer. And the school I went to, it was a performance kind of a program. So I shifted things around and I studied photography for a while, fine art photography and journalism. And then I found radio, television and film as a major. And that's what I finished my college work doing. And in the course of my last year of school, I took a

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a high level class, a graduate program class in government regulation of the media and discovered I have an aptitude for it. And the professor pulled me aside one day toward the end of the semester and said, have you thought about going to law school? And I honestly hadn't. So she gave me the idea and I took a year off, but then I did decide when the Writers Guild in Hollywood went on strike that following summer. I thought, okay, this is a good time to continue my education and maybe improve my prospects for

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these kinds of situations. So I went to law school and it was always going to be something to do with entertainment and media law. First of all, I love teachers and professors who see something in you and are the ones who plant that seed. It's always life changing. Yes. And then speaking of theater. So when you went to a theater school, but you were not big on being in the front, you were more the what we call the background part of the crew.

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What is it that you needed to be good at or focused on to make sure that the people in the front do what they're supposed to? Because you know how they always say, you know, the ones in the background are actually doing the harder work or the more important work. We just follow the instructions. It's different work. know, the people on stage have to hit their marks and say their lines and do their cues and show up when they're supposed to show up and things like that. And honestly, the behind the scenes folks, it's very similar.

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except that we don't say our lines or sing the songs and dance. We are still executing our cues in the right sequence at the right moment. We have to concentrate really deeply on what's going on on stage and around us and also watch out for safety and things like that. It is definitely a collaborative field. So I always felt very much a part of the project, even if I wasn't the one on stage receiving the applause at the end of the show. I always took it as that some of that applause was for me because I helped make it possible and

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If I messed up, I really took it hard and beat myself up pretty good about it. And when I had a good night, I was happy to be self-congratulatory. I didn't need that applause. Nowadays, maybe that's a little different. think I like the limelight. Absolutely. So now let's come to the legal aspect.

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When you have a client and they come to you and they say Gordon, I'm a podcast host or I do this, I'm an actor, I'm this and that. How do I structure this as a business? Especially, you know, how we always hear stories of either entertainers or sports people who one minute they have $150 million deal for five years and then the next day broke. Yeah. Well, first off, the question is rarely, how do I structure this as a business? More often,

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they come in knowing because somebody told them they're going to need a lawyer for this and they don't even really know why. And so if they're thinking about it as a business already, they are 10 steps ahead of the game. And that's really the one of the early things that I try to impress upon my clients is that yes, this is about your talent and yes, it's about fun or getting your voice and speaking your message and being heard and all that. But underlying all that, this is in fact a business and we need to

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approach it the way that business people do. And that's about things like a structure, forming a company, a corporation or limited liability company or whatever, or documenting the nature of our relationships. And I know this is a communication soft skills kind of a show. And I would say that what we do in the legal side of it is very much communications. It's oftentimes maybe the less interesting conversations and communications messages to be had, but they're very important. It's very important that we work out.

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a clear understanding from everybody involved, what's expected of them, what they can expect in return and the consequences of things. If things don't work out, how's that going to be handled? Isn't it funny how the unsexy parts are the ones that are the most important? Yes. Because as you said, that's not the lam light. That is not the, it's not a fun conversation.

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Because when you're acting or you're singing or you're playing your sports, you you're at your best, you're on stage, you feel that adrenaline, but now you have to sit in front of Gordon and he has to make you sign documents and explain to you how much the IRS is going to charge. It's not a fun conversation at all. It's not fun for me either, you know, that kind of conversation. But it's necessary. And I really view my work as important for the structure.

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What I'm doing is building the foundation on which the creative work or the artistic work can be built. And if you think about it, you know, the person who dug the basement of that tall skyscraper building in the downtown area probably doesn't get a lot of credit for the digging and the pouring of cement and things like that. But without them, that building may go up, but it's coming right back down. And so I think of myself sort of in that way of making sure that I'm building something, I'm laying a foundation on which great things can be built. And...

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protecting my clients along the way to make sure that they aren't taken advantage of, that they aren't finding themselves in one or another kind of hot water. If they do, then, you know, sort of defending them. think of myself, it's a little bit of a fatherly feeling, I guess you could say. You know, I'm taking care of them in their way. Oftentimes because the creative people don't have the mind for the business themselves and may not think to ask the questions. So I'm injecting myself into things in a way that I get to ask the questions on their behalf.

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So those we hear, and a lot of them are famous people, we hear about them a lot. They hadn't thought about getting a lawyer, nobody had ever said to them, you need to get a lawyer, or they just thought, I've got this. Let's give an example, Toni Braxton, and she had a very open discussion with Oprah back in the day about that, because she has, I think she has filed for bankruptcy twice. And one of the things she said she did, which I found strange, and I thought, oh, you know what?

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I'm not in that text bracket. So I don't understand where she said other people sign her checks. Is that something I need Gordon to tell me? Is that common sense or it's just in the entertainment industry when you are that famous, you are so busy, you don't even sign your own checks. Well, I think it's, it's more of the latter. Actually you, you get to a point where you're busy enough and you, part of it is the busyness and part of it is also

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creative people in particular, but everybody really has their sort of zone of genius, the thing that they are so brilliant at that that's all they should be doing with their time. Most of us can't afford the luxury of having other people do all the other stuff for us. And the wealthy, the affluent, the high-level business leaders and celebrities like Ms. Bracton, they can afford to hire someone to be their business manager, to review the bills and make sure that their things are getting paid and the checks are getting written and also that the checks are being received and cashed and deposited.

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So that's another part of the team. as the lawyer, really my role as, as I said, laying foundation and protecting them, setting up the shields and making sure the contracts provide for that revenue to come in with as little expense going out as possible. But there should also be someone whose whole job is the numbers to look at the financials. If you think about an artist as a business, in any other business, you would have a legal department, you have a financial department, accountants and...

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bookkeepers and the controller and things like that. And you have the marketing department. Well, in our industry, that's the agent and the manager. And then the artists can focus on the research and the development and the essentially delivering on the goods that they're supposed to do. And if they are being distracted by all these other facets of things, they may feel like they aren't as good at delivering on what they're supposed to do. So that's why you see them hiring so many people. That's part of it. Also the sales part and...

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You know, I'm thinking of some of my clients that are performers. When they're negotiating a deal, when we're negotiating a deal for them to appear in a movie or to host a podcast or something like that, oftentimes on the other side of the deal, I have to sort of be a jerk, be kind of hardball on things. I view that as part of my job as well. When the artist shows up for work on Monday, they don't want to have that weird chemistry of, they were a jerk on Friday, now Monday here we're supposed to do something fun and creative.

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So it's also a little bit about, I get to be the bad cop so they can be good when it's time to have fun and do the good stuff. Yeah. But isn't what that's what dads are. Sometimes they have to be the bad cop to protect us. That's right. Now let's talk about podcasting and the fact that sometimes they are title repeats. Like my show, the word communication, I don't know, there's millions podcasts with the word communication in them. And sometimes you do find a podcast, two that are literally the exact same title.

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Is there conflict in that? Are there legal issues pertaining to that? Absolutely. That's one of the most common legal issues that I help my clients in the podcasting arena deal with. Again, I try to help them get there before that becomes a problem by building the protections in place to the trademark protection really in place to say that, nobody else is allowed to use that name that is so similar or identical to this that it will cause confusion in the public.

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Here's the scenario, if you have a fantastic podcast by whatever title and yours is wonderful and you have the best guests and you can share the best information and the audience loves you and so on and somebody else comes along and names their show the same but they phone it in and deliver kind of a crummy quality product. Eventually, either they're riding on your coattails and benefiting from all the hard work you've done to make your great show or your show is going to suffer when people hear about this wonderful show and they accidentally listen to the wrong one.

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And they think, oh, that's not so good. Why would anybody think that's wonderful? And so that's the reason we have trademark law. Same thing if you buy a bottle of soda that says Coca-Cola on it and it tastes like turpentine, you're probably not buying Coca-Cola anymore. Never, ever. I would hope not. Yes, because I think that a lot of the time, especially if I've had a guest, and just like you, and we're going to talk about your show, who's also a podcast host.

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After episode, go to Google, I'm looking up the show and like, oh, there's two of them. But fortunately for me, cause I know it's Gordon Firemark's show. I know to click the right one. But like I said, a lot of people don't know the difference. If they have two shows that I titled the exact same way. Another interesting legal issue that we're wrestling with right now is, what if not only do they choose the same name, but they also decided to use an AI generated version that looks a lot like me.

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Yeah, it's happening. Yes. And in fact, with Hollywood contracts now, we are having to be very, careful about whether or not we're allowing the filmmakers, the producers to create synthetic versions of our client, the actor, even if it's just to finish making the film, if something bad happens and they're no longer available. And remember, Heath Ledger died during the middle of filming a Batman movie and they had to recreate some things. It was a lot harder then than it is now. So.

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producers have an interest in having the right to do those things. But then we have to build the guardrails to make sure that they only have a right so far. And then when they're done, they have to destroy that thing. Yeah, so there are folks out there that are cloning people and creating artificial versions, which is why we see folks like Taylor Swift and Matthew McConaughey and other big name celebrities trademarking the sound of their voice and the way they say a phrase and those kinds of things, just to help shield themselves against those kinds of issues.

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So AI has literally brought us to that position. It looks like you your work cut out for you, Gordon. Oh my goodness. It's funny. I was talking to a friend over the week. I was at a conference and I was talking to a friend and we were hypothesizing that we're a few years away from holographs being a reality. And then it's really a problem. the, if a holograph could be generated by a computer and AI, and it looks just like me standing on stage talking with the person next to me and I say some horrible things. Well, that can reflect badly on my reputation, right?

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even though it me. But it looks exactly like you. It moves like a human. And I would sit, watch and truly believe that it's Gordon. Yeah. There was a, this is a few years ago now and the technology has gotten so much better that it, I'm sure it would be much more troubling. But the very first celebrity who was holographically recreated was Tupac Shakur.

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And there was a concert tour where he appeared on stage with the other performers, even though he had been dead for a few years. Yeah, it's wild. So it's why it's fun what I do, because we get to think about all these fun, weird, strange iterations of things. Very wild, but also maybe a bit comforting that we have experts like you who would protect us from those kinds of things. Hope so. Yeah. When we are being copy and pasted. Yes. Very, very shocking.

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when it comes to the creative space as well, know, a lot of parents usually say, like I said, it's not going to pay bills. It's not stable. If you think about your entertainment clients, you don't always get a movie every six months. So there will be times when there's a drought and you don't have any role for like two years. How do you structure your, like I said, your business such that

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you are taken care of no matter how long it takes for Steven Spielberg to call you and say, I think I've got something for you. You know, there's really not much that a lawyer can do to help make the remake that happen other than to remind you, Hey, maybe it's time to get a business manager. You're making a million dollars this year because of the movie that you're in next year could be very lean. So don't spend it all now. Let's get someone to advise you on how to invest this money and how not to overspend.

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So the business manager, when Tony Braxton says she has someone else who signs all her checks, and I don't know why the bankruptcy happened, I think he kind of took advantage of her, frankly. But the fact of it is, someone probably needed to kind of give her an allowance and say, here's what you can afford to spend so you have some leftover later to cover the lean times, to cover those years when nothing's happening or when you're ready to retire. Because in this industry, they're, you know.

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They're not putting into social security or other pension programs and things. You're on your own. You've got to set up your own pension. It's not like working for a company for 30 years and then they continue sending you a check every week. When you're done, you're done. So you better have a backup plan. What else do lawyers do though? We help set up things like corporations or limited liability companies that are essentially, I sort of think of them as the moat around the castle. We keep the good stuff in and the bad stuff out as much as possible. The business can...

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carry things over from year to year that an individual cannot. Business can pay for things and deduct them on their taxes that individuals may not be able to. And of course, all of these things are different from country to country and even here in the States from state to state. it's a matter of paying attention and knowing what's what. Right. I think one of the things, you know, we talk about branding and how you communicate your image to the public, especially when you're famous. Usually if you're in entertainment,

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part of your brand is to create this I'm rich looking type of brand. I drive a nice car, I live in a, but as we say, we know that you're not gonna always get roles or sometimes your next album might flop. So do they feel that pressure to live up to that so that they present this image of success? I think that's one of the reasons that many stars do overspend.

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or find themselves financially in trouble years after their big successes because the subsequent successes didn't come along and they felt the need to project that image to wear the flashy jewelry and watches and the nice suits and drive the really expensive cars and show up at all the parties and the experience and be all part of all the glamour when maybe they should have toned it down a little bit and taken better care of their future. on the other hand,

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It's always the hope that, well, if I'm out there, seen, I'm going to get the next job. Or if someone's going to remember that I could do this kind of a job and those kinds of things. it's a little bit of a catch-22. And I think sometimes you have to sort of say, I'm going to invest some of my resources in this image. It's marketing, essentially, for the person or for the artist. Because unfortunately, so many folks in the creative fields are, we talk about left brain and right brain, and they're right brain people. And they're

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their minds are just all about the excitement and the energy and the creativity and they may not be thinking very in an organized structural way about protecting themselves. So again, that's why I hope they call someone like me or find an accountant and a business manager and those kinds of folks to help out. Yeah. Someone in the background to help them be more structured and run it like a business. mentioned something very important earlier talking about if you're an entertainer, you don't contribute to social security.

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other examples of very famous celebrities like Gladys Knight and much, much older musicians, we still see them on stage and they're not doing well physically, health-wise. And people are saying, why does she still feel the pressure to perform? She's not okay. She can't stand there for an hour singing. But is that part of the reason? Because they, you know,

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did not put anything away because if you work a job, 60, 65, you retire, it's going to take care of you for the rest of your life. But does that mean that sometimes entertainers don't have somebody to say to them, put that away for in your eighties, you don't want to be on stage and going on tour. I think there are three or four different angles to come at this from. One is

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that yes, they've maybe mismanaged things or someone has mismanaged or it's very common actually that people they trust sort of get in there and embezzle from them, take things that they shouldn't take or pay themselves big salaries when they shouldn't receive them, things like that. And we know that lots of celebrities want to have an entourage because they just need to have the people who care for them and tell them they're wonderful all the time around them and all those people are on the payroll, right? So that's part of it. Another part of it though, the reason that a lot of these folks continue to

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perform even into their 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever, is that they can't not perform. It's part of who they are. It's how their identity is as a performer. And they need, they feed off of that applause and adulation from the audience. And so even if they had all the money they could ever need, they still want to be out in front because it's what makes them feel like themselves. And then there's the combination of the ones who have to work because they still need the money.

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or because they're trying to set something up and make an impression on the world. know, the people have a lot of reasons for doing what they do. But yes, unfortunately, I've been in a few situations where the artist who had a big success gets taken advantage of and never really bounces back and digs themselves out of the hole they found themselves in. And there are countless examples of this, so I'm not going to name names. But unfortunately, this is a very hungry business, hungry for new talent. We're always looking for the new one.

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And as people age out of things, they don't have a safety net. Now, not everybody, I mean, lot of us are self-employed and we have the same issue. not an entertainer, but if I'm not putting money away for my future, I'm going to find myself in that same situation. I often joke, I have three young children, one's in college now and I have two teenagers. I've got a long road ahead of me to get them through college before I can even think about retiring. So I often joke, I'll be 140 by the time I could retire, know, that kind of thing.

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Right. Because here's the thing, and we're not going to name names that don't want to get into little trouble. You know, some of the very famous big name music companies that we know have screwed some musicians over with their royalties and those kind of things. Do you get involved with those kinds of cases or is it a little too risky for you to face up to a big CEO who shall remain nameless?

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that Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey have had to deal with and they were screwed over. Do you get involved in those or you don't want that? Right, yeah. I'm not a litigation attorney. I don't take people to court. I work on the front end of things mostly, but I do frequently see something happen that I then recognize, okay, you're either getting screwed or you're about to get screwed or if you're not careful, someone's gonna try, know, those kinds of things.

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That's the point when I try to bring in those trial lawyers who really, you know, fight those battles. If I'm doing my work correctly at the front end of the deal, I'm the one fighting the battle in the contract before it's ever an opportunity for them to be taken advantage of. But sometimes it happens. People don't always follow my advice and they sometimes hear my advice and say, but I'm going to, have to do this for whatever reason. And they go into the situation and then sure enough, the company they're working with is disreputable or

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you know, doesn't do things the morally right way. And you mentioned the music industry specifically, and it is sort of notorious for that scenario of really taking advantage of young artists or artists that are in a desperate situation and kind of bringing every last drop of juice out of them. And it's unfortunate. It is sort of the way it's been for, you know, the better part of a century now.

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Prevention is certainly better than cure, especially in this industry. Cause you have to have your gut drills upfront before you start anything. Absolutely. Yes. Gordon now tell us about the entertainment law update podcast. Who do you have there? And when the listeners tune in, what can they expect? So entertainment law update podcast, when I started my practice 35 years ago,

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I marketed myself by writing a newsletter, educate people about the kinds of issues that I deal with and show that I know what I'm talking about and so on. That was back in the day when I had to put a postage stamp on each copy and it would send out by mail. And then I discovered email and this was, you know, maybe 25 years ago and that was fine. And then I discovered this medium called podcasting and I thought that was, that's kind of fun. I got invited to be a guest on some shows and pretty soon I decided I'd start my own show. So entertainment law update is my

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podcast newsletter kind of a thing, except we've kind of elevated it. It's no longer the kind of thing I would send to a prospective client who's not a lawyer. It's mostly other lawyers that the show is aimed at these days. So we are, it's myself and a cohost and we do once a month a, about an hour long roundup of legal case law and news stories and the controversies that are developing in our industries. And we talk about them, summarize them and explain them to our

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colleagues so that we're all up to date on what's going on. And I think it's made me a better lawyer because I'm paying close attention to the newest developments every month. And you know, I'm very fortunate that I get recognized by my voice. I'll walk into a place sometimes that, Hey, is that Gordon Firemark's voice? Even if they don't, they used to not know what I look like now where you do videos. So they do that's the entertainment law update podcast. And it's really aimed at other lawyers and law students and folks like that. But I do do another show called legit podcast pro.

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And that is a YouTube show that I do live every Thursday afternoon Pacific time where I share about 10 or 15 minutes worth of a tip or a strategy or addressing a particular concern or issue or kind of situation that creatives in the digital media, podcasting and YouTube can find themselves in and try to offer solutions and help them understand what it is they're getting into. And hopefully a few of them think highly enough of me to either do as I say or hire me to do it for them.

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and be the dad, especially looking out and protecting us. Thank you, Gordon, so much. Any last words of wisdom, anything I haven't asked you or hoping to share with our listeners today? Well, you know, I just want to say we've talked a lot about the sort of the scary stuff, the negative stuff that can happen. And part of my job as a lawyer is to watch out for that and protect people from that. But we're living in a very, very exciting, interesting time with all these new technologies and all these ways of reaching out with a message. I am very

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bullish on podcasting and video YouTube kinds of projects because it's a level playing field, more level than it's ever been. And we all have a chance to add for a relatively small investment of time and money, have a camera or a microphone and share what we have to share, whatever our ideas are, whatever our passions are and help people learn a little something along the way. And that's great. Everybody, anybody can do that. And many will find a way to make some money from it, make a living from it. If you'd

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play your cards right. So that's sort of my mission in life is to help people get their messages out safely in a way that allows them to have the kind of impact and influence and income that they deserve. Absolutely. Yes. And this is why we need you Gordon, because more and more people should take advantage of that. As you say, you know, just take a mic and we want to hear your message. We want to connect with people. I think most importantly, the thing about communication is that we get to connect, we get to relate with others.

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whether the experiences are the same or different. But it's also very encouraging to have legal experts like you who can protect us in case somebody copies our podcast name or copies whatever it is that we do. So we really appreciate the work that you do. Well, thank you. Yeah, don't be afraid of the scary, these things. Just be aware of them and meet them head on. Look them square in the eye and say, not this time, pal. Not this time.

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Thank you Gordon Firemark, the podcast lawyer, the media entertainment. pleasure. Media entertainment and law expert who's also a fellow podcast are hosting the entertainment law update and the YouTube one, which is please tell us again. Legit podcast pro. And I'm very fortunate. I have a name that's easy to remember. Firemark. So if you look for Gordon Firemark or just Firemark, you're going to find me. And you can tell by the radio voice that it's the real Gordon.

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Thank you so much. Don't forget to subscribe, liberating and a review on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.