Oh, home videos.  I’m positive we have all suffered through our fair share. You know what I’m talking about, right?  Scenes from your kindergarten graduation,  the family vacation to Disneyland or moving into your college dorm – just to name a  few. These shot-with-love videos always guarantee to evoke some type of strong emotion,  ranging from happiness to embarassment to a longing for the past. The videos capture intimiate and personal moments of a person’s life  and, for the sake of a person’s privacy (and possibly, sanity), they are best kept under lock and key. Agreed?

Leave it to Jennifer Lopez’s  ex-husband, Ojani Noa (even less famous than Chris Judd), to want to use his home videos of  J. Lo for his monetary gain. As tacky as it sounds, Noa planned to shoot a ‘mockumentary’ based on the home footage of J. Lo and himself. The footage contained such intimate moments as the couple’s marriage proposal, wedding and honeymoon. J. Lo’s reaction? Lawsuit! In the amount of $10M!  In addition, with the uproar surrounding this ‘mockumentary,’ Noa violated a previously signed confidentiality agreement surrounding sharing details of his life with J. Lo.

On the other side of this situation, Noa can argue that  he should have the freedom to create a movie based on his marriage to J. Lo. After all, the home videos were his personal possession and perhaps making movies has become one of his creative outlets. Maybe he is trying to relive a happier time in his life.

If Noa’s motive was sentimental in nature, should the legal system really bar him from pursuing this creative avenue Case in point –  Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It’ is filled with live footage of Mr. Jackson performing/practicing and no one seemed to protest releasing that footage. ‘More Than a Game” was a documentary surrounding LeBron James, his high school teammates and all the drama surrounding James’ high school basketball team. This movie was  met with eagerness from fans, not controversy. I’m sure if Noa chose to portray J.Lo as solely sweet and loving (rather than racy and seductive), filing a lawsuit would never be an option.

However, it’s clear that Noa is simply doing all of this only for the money. A couple years ago, he tried to market a tell-all book of his marriage to J. Lo. The judge denied that idea back then, too. J. Lo is already so heavily scrutinized in the public eye (hello, AMA’s!) that an ex-husband should have the decency to not even think about sharing personal videos – all in exchange for a quick buck. If Noa didn’t learn his lesson when he signed that confidentiality agreement, perhaps the magnitude of that agreement will finally sink in… $10M later.

Posted by Melanie on December 2, 2009 at 11:55 pm.