Morgan Neville – the director of Pharrell Williams‘ Piece By Piece LEGO biopic – has revealed why the film does not feature ‘Blurred Lines’.
Neville, the animated comedy film sees Pharrell play himself in Lego form, alongside some of his best known collaborators like Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, and Busta Rhymes.
A synopsis reads: “Told through the lens of Lego animation, turn up the volume on your imagination and witness the evolution of one of music’s most innovative minds.”
Now, in an interview with BBC, Neville opened up on why William’s 2013 chart-topping Grammy-award-winning collaboration with Robin Thicke and T.I. didn’t make the cut in the film. He shared that he wanted to address the controversy with the track but the sequence had ultimately derailed the story he was trying to tell.
“I definitely thought about it. I even interviewed Robin Thicke,” he told the publication. “And as a documentary filmmaker, I’m obsessed with copyright law. But every time I looked at trying to work it in, a scene about copyright law, it felt like it belonged in a different movie.”
He continued: “My take on the Blurred Lines case is that it’s one of the worst judicial decisions about creativity in history. I think Pharrell was in the right on it, and I think most creatives agree with him.”
Ultimately, that was the reason for him omitting the song and its controversy and lawsuit battle from Piece By Piece.
“It’s not like Pharrell learned a big lesson from the case. I don’t know if it actually changed him in any way, which is what I’m looking for, when I’m looking at a story,” he told BBC.
In 2015, Williams and Thicke lost a lawsuit against the estate of Marvin Gaye in which Gaye’s family accused the two musicians alongside T.I. of ripping off Gaye’s 1977 hit ‘Got To Give It Up’.
The court found that Williams and Thicke were liable for copyright infringement, meaning they had to give Gaye’s family half of the song’s royalties, in addition to making a one-off payment of £4million ($5.3million) in damages. An appeal was later filed, but denied in 2018.
In December 2019, Gaye’s family opened the lawsuit back up and accused Williams of lying under oath during the trial citing the ‘Happy’ singer’s interview with Rick Rubin for GQ where he said he “reversed-engineered” ‘Got To Give It Up’. Gaye’s family used his quote as evidence in a subsequent court filing of Williams committing perjury in the earlier case.
However, in February 2021, US District Court Judge John Kronstadt found that Williams did not commit perjury.
‘Blurred Lines’ also faced a lot of controversy after the track and its accompanying music video were accused of trivializing sexual violence, objectifying women, and “reinforcing rape myths” (per The Independent).
Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke perform onstage during the 56th annual GRAMMY Awards Pre-GRAMMY Gala on January 25, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage)
Katie Russell, a spokeswoman for Rape Crisis, a charity that raises awareness and understanding of sexual violence, said: “The lyrics of ‘Blurred Lines’ seem to glamourise violence against women and to reinforce rape myths, which we strive to dispel.
“Both the lyrics and the video seem to objectify and degrade women, using misogynistic language and imagery that many people would find not only distasteful or offensive but also really quite old fashioned.”
She continued: “More disturbingly, certain lyrics are explicitly sexually violent and appear to reinforce victim-blaming rape myths, for example about women giving ‘mixed signals’ through their dress or behaviour, saying ‘no’ when they really mean ‘yes’ and so on.”
Over 20 universities in the UK banned the song from use at student events. The video – which showed models dancing with the three musicians only in their underpants – was banned from YouTube.
Model Emily Ratajkowski who was featured in the music video published an excerpt from her book ‘My Body’ in The Sunday Times back in 2021 and recounted how she was allegedly sexually harassed by Thicke during filming of the music video. Diane Martel – the director of the music video – supported Ratajkowski by revealing that she had yelled at the singer, asked for an explanation and immediately shut down the shoot.
In other news, Williams recently denied dissing Taylor Swift‘s Kamala Harris endorsement.
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