Why is "The Butler" called "Lee Daniels' The Butler"?

The weekend the number one movie in America was the verbosely titled "Lee Daniels' The Butler" aka that Oprah movie with Snape as Ronald Reagan. Of course the big question that everyone has been asking is WTF is up with that title.

Above the title naming is often used when a popular filmmaker is involved. With the exception of "For Colored Girls" all of Tyler Perry's projects as director have started with his name (i.e.Tyler Perry's Temptation: If You Cheat on your Husband You'll get AIDS). This way even people who may not know anything about the movie know that the popular Tyler Perry is involved. In the days of video stores, above the title naming also insured that your films would all be grouped together which increased sales.

But Lee Daniels doesn't have the box office drawing power of Tyler Perry. His only previous directing work of note was the acclaimed "Precious" and the roundly mocked "The Paperboy". So, what's with the naming?

The story you will find most places is a variation of this one from BET saying that Warner Brothers contested the use of the title "The Butler" because they own the copyright to a 1916 short film of the same title.

But to anyone with some film history, this excuse doesn't make any sense. There have been tons of movies with the same name. "Crash" could refer to the Oscar winning movie about racism in LA or the NC-17 James Spader film about people jerking off to car crashes. "Bad Boys" is the title of both a 1980s Sean Penn movie and a 1990s Will Smith flick. And don't forget the ultimate sadness experienced by anyone who turned on "The Avengers" only to find the craptacular remake of the TV series instead of the Joss Whedon Marvel movie mash-up.

The copyright excuse doesn't fly from a legal perspective either since, to quote the US Copyright Office, "copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases." Similarly titled films could run afoul of trademark law if the names could create consumer confusion, but that seems unlikely when one of the movies has Cyclops doing a Boston accent and the other is silent. 

Turns out that this is a contract law issue, not intellectual property. Filmmakers who want their work to be shown in theaters must have MPAA approval. These are the people who give out film ratings (a process detailed in the must see documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated"). They also run the Title Registration Bureau. Registering your film title with the bureau is voluntary but all of the major studios take part in it because they don't want to have to risk delaying a film over a last minute lawsuit from someone claiming that you are violating their trademark. By using the Bureau you agree that you will use the MPAA arbitration process in any title disputes. 

So, WB, who own the rights to the Uma Thurman "The Avengers" didn't challenge the Marvel movie title. The same thing with all those other examples of same name titles. If nobody complains then it is no issue. This time someone complained. 

According to this article from The Hollywood Reporter, the name issue only came up when the studio behind "Lee Daniel's The Butle"r and the studio that owns Silent Movie "The Butle"r were having issues negotiating a different deal. The Butler naming got caught up in that. Since everyone in Hollywood is an asshole now the movie has a stupid name and Lee Daniels looks like a Tyler Perry knockoff. 

So, there you go. Why is "The Butler" called "Lee Daniels' The Butler"? Because people are assholes. 

This does remind me of the one other interesting MPAA naming issue that I recall. The MPAA tried to revoke their approval of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut's title after first granting clearance. The reason? Someone explained that it was a penis joke. But it was too late to take renounce their approval.