La Dolce Lawsuit Vita

When New York Magazine calls your film a "glossy gay remake" of La Dolce Vita, it was probably inevitable that the people who have the rights to La Dolce Vita would sue. Whoever does own the rights to La Dolce Vita (Pathe?) is suing gay porn king Michael Lucas for violating trademark laws and sullying the original Federico Fellini classic's reputation. Here's how New York described the film last year:

Lucas has been rather busy of late. There was some pesky legal business to attend to, and he just wrapped his newest film, La Dolce Vita, a glossy gay remake of Fellini’s classic that includes a “non-sex” cameo by triple-X starlet Savanna Samson. For a porn production, it’s had an unusually public profile. Photographs of Lucas and Samson cavorting in the City Hall fountain (all proper permits were obtained) made it online, raising the ire of government officials, who with the most cursory of Google searches could have avoided this problem.

We bet the city is behind the lawsuit! Lucas tells the Post, "The similarities are so little, I would say it was maybe inspired." Yeah. For starters, La Dolce Vita takes place in Rome; Luca's version is in New York! And it stars Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, who are totally not in his film! And Nino Rota is not doing the score for the gay porn version. Plus, City Hall Fountain is nothing like the Trevi Fountain. Finally, wasn't La Dolce Vita about debauchery anyway? But if Lucas tried to remake 8 1/2 (10"?), maybe a lawsuit is appropriate.

Roger Ebert thinks the original La Dolce Vita is a great movie.