Pittsburgh, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 before going straight to cable and DVD this year, is a mock documentary about Jeff Goldblum’s run starring in a production of The Music Man in his hometown. Some of the film is “real”; some of it is sketched to look real, ala Christopher Guest; some of it uses “real” situations, Borat-style, as the backdrop for improvisation. A stagehand captured in some of the latter antics is now suing to have her scene removed from the film.
Debbie Sue Croyle says she was never asked to sign a release, and in fact only learned of the film after it premiered on cable and “other people saw it and told her about it.” She says she is “humiliated” by her appearance in the film, because Goldblum used a double entendre in the scene in which she appears. But oddly, the actor is not named in suit: Croyle is suing the production companies that made the film, the film’s directors, and the Starz cable channel, for $4 million. Seems like a huge sum, considering the film had no theatrical release and all but flew under the radar of most non-Starz subscribers and non-Goldblum superfans. Still, it’s an interseting case; I’m fairly surprised the release form issue hasn’t come up before with higher-profile doc/com hybrids. More details here.
Robert Greenwald, who has made a living making unabashedly partisan documentaries about Wal-Mart and Iraq since scratching 
