Why is Tinseltown such a big, happy family? Every mogul is a fine upstanding citizen, and every diva is really Mother Teresa?
Hmmmm.
Confidentiality agreement, anyone? You know, those useful contracts that everybody in showbiz uses to protect their laundry, dirty or not. They're up there with prenups as one of Hollywood's most ubiquitous legal agreements with studios, stars and increasingly just any part of the celebrity-entertainment apparatus demanding them.
The true nature of confidentiality agreements has always perplexed me. Are they rightly protecting the rich from avaricious gold-diggers, or are they simply a license to behave badly, a permanent threat against the lowly? I imagine many drivers, nannies, cooks and cleaners (and decorators and pool men) don't read the fine print carefully before they sign, let alone send it over to their lawyers for perusal.
Let's face it, in much of Hollywood, what's at stake is not really trade secrets (or potentially hazardous products). It's just reputations and conceivably the true and accurate history of public, culturally significant figures. You can't sell a baby in this country or an organ or your vote, but free speech always has a price tag.
"Such contracts are enforceable," notes 1st Amendment specialist and professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA School of Law, although he adds, "None of the agreements can stand up in the face of a subpoena, if there is litigation."
So if a celebrity does something illegal, all bets are off. You're allowed to go to the authorities if you're attacked or sexually harassed by a mega-movie star, but "if you learned this person has really unpleasant ideas or says racist or anti-Semitic things, can you go and talk about it on a weblog? No," says Volokh. "The whole point of the contract was to allow this person to talk freely, that the things they say are not going to be revealed to the world at large."
"They're legally binding agreements," says attorney Larry Stein. "If properly prepared and executed and as part of a work environment, they can be extremely effective. They're not a violation of the 1st Amendment. It's not a private gag order. It's a contractual arrangement between two parties."
Nightmare case
Rob Lowe's current battle with two of his former nannies is a nightmare version of what can happen when the love sours between celebrities and their paid acolytes. (Stein happens to represent the Lowe family but declines to talk specifically about the case, as do both of the Lowes. The nannies have also refused to comment, though their attorney, Gloria Allred, was happy to weigh in.)
