A film production company has sued singer-actress Courtney Love and others for non-payment of work on Beat, an upcoming film about the strange life of late writer William S. Burroughs, according to ABConline.
Background Productions cites Love among the defendants in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday. The company is alleging breach of contract, fraud, defamation, and infliction of emotional distress.
One Beat production worker's claims that Love humiliated her in front of the entire film crew and banned her from the set.
The film company claims it originally entered into a July 1999 agreement to receive $840,000 to manage all aspects of customary production on Beat, which was largely filmed in Mexico. According to its complaint, Background was later told by producer Alain Silver that "the film had to be done for $740,000, 'not one dollar more, not one dollar less.'"
In the film, Love plays Burroughs' doomed second wife, Joan Vollmer, who was shot and killed by her husband during a drunken William Tell re-enactment in 1951. Kiefer Sutherland portrays the drug-addicted, influential author.
Love and fellow defendants Silver, Donald Zuckerman, and Andrew Pfeiffer could not be reached for comment.
Background Production Supervisor Alexandra Cardenas accuses Love and Silver of defamation on many occasions. Cardenas says Love accused her of "being a spoiled rich girl, of stealing money, of exploiting and treating her crew badly, of being a 'puta' — a whore" in front of Beat's entire cast and crew.
ABConline also reported that Cardenas claims that Love would not allow her on the set for the final three days of principal photography. She also states in the court documents that the stress caused her to suffer a hernia and chronic poor health since filming wrapped.
Background CEO Antonio Zavalas, another plaintiff, told a Spanish-language magazine that Love also called him and his co-workers "corrupt Mexicans, decadent and rich."
Love, who has long struggled to attain as much success in the acting world as she has in the music hemisphere (with her band, Hole), was reportedly let go from the cast of her newest project, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, due to an ankle injury—Albawaba.com.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
