The title of Chunky Monkey was enough to know that we would have some fun. An incredible story which became three years of litigation, the feature film Chunky Monkey has gone through five threatened law suits: Unilever, EMI, Rogers and Hammerstein, Julie Andrews and the original creator of ‘Chunky Monkey – the comic strip for kids’. With over 100 articles in the world's press and plenty of coverage on various television shows, this cult film won all five cases and is now being distributed by Headgear Films.

Although there is no copyright in titles, we did due diligence and had our lawyers check out the script for any potential legal problems. We received the green light and went into production. Once the film was complete, it was invited to a festival where it received a glowing write up which also detailed the set up: - the lead character has a sexual fantasy which involves Julie Andrews and Chunky Monkey ice cream.

Just as the film was completed, Unilever had very recently bought the Ben and Jerry ice cream brand for a rather large amount from the egalitarian slightly capitalistic $60m better off hippie brothers. The multi national decided to flex their muscles and churned out a rather heavy fax to our office demanding that we change the title of the film and take out all references to their product, at which point we politely declined the suggestion that our film be tampered with. We pointed out the law regarding copyright of title – and we were not passing off, nor were we defaming their product - indeed, we were suggesting another use for it.

However, Unilever threatened an injunction, so enough was enough and we took the David and Goliath story to the press who had a field day. All were very much in support of our independent film and our rights, making Unilever look rather foolish – we quoted the human rights act at them and they signed a contract saying that they were no longer going to sue. In fact they eventually saw the film and rather liked it, but despite our request they wouldn’t offer to invest in the P&A.

Meanwhile the estate of Rogers and Hammerstein called EMI up, rather upset with them for having licensed one of their tracks to what they decided was a depraved film. The song is a dub style rendition and played over the roller with Jesus Christ singing, (a kind of Jackson 5 character) accompanied by the Pink Panther playing the bongos.

Rogers and Hammerstein’s catalogue is worth around $50m per year to EMI which was in jeopardy if they could not make us retract the licence. We reminded them that a countersigned agreement meant that we had the right to use the music in the film and that if they wanted us to take the song out, perhaps an ex gratia payment may be in order or at least payment for our re-edit costs. Both were declined, so we continued to stand fast and not change the film. Then we heard from lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic who were threatening all sorts of well, rather illegal action. For reasons we are not permitted to mention we have had to stand down. However we hear that there is a website that has illegally got hold of the scene in question with a downloadable mp3 of the song if anyone is interested in viewing it…

During our correspondence with EMI, we were also being approached by Julie Andrews’ manager in LA. His client was none too happy about her being portrayed in an unusual manner and considered this a defamatory act. We did try and point out however that it’s really quite the contrary – the character in the film loves Julie Andrews so much that once a month a friend dresses up as Julie, they take the ice cream out of the freezer, she limbers up her vocal cords, and….. well…. it gets a little messy.

And just to round off the fun, we received an email from the original cartoon creator of ‘Chunky Monkey – the comic strip for kids’. Her take on it was that the character she created around 30 years ago was for children and that no other product containing the two words ‘chunky’ and ‘monkey’ should be stringed together in particular when there was adult content involved. She demanded the film never be shown, so I quoted the copyright act at her and that was the end of that.

When Ben and Jerry’s came up with their new flavour of banana and chocolate, they were looking at a comic strip called Chunky Monkey. They then proceeded to copy the name and subsequently received a call from a comic strip creator who they agreed to pay off if they could use the same name as her comic strip character. Many years later a very large multinational corporate giant buys Ben and Jerry’s that includes one of their previously ‘tainted’ goods. Within two weeks of the company buyout, Unilever then decide to protect their brand and call us up …… what goes around comes around?

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