PRIMARY MATERIALS - The Matusow Affair: Memoir of a National Scandal
Albert E. Kahn's book The Matusow Affair supplies the narrative framework for our series. It recounts Kahn’s unique, personal perspective on his relationship with Harvey Matusow and the struggle to publish Matusow’s tell-all memoir False Witness. Executive Producer Ben Kahn presides over all rights to The Matusow Affair, which will remain under copyright protection until at least 2049.
PRIMARY MATERIALS - False Witness
Harvey Matusow’s book, False Witness, which details his life as a paid informant and celebrity witness, published by Albert Kahn and Angus Cameron, fell out of copyright protection in 1983, when Matusow failed to renew its registration. It is out of print but in the “public domain”.
PRIMARY MATERIALS - Deadly Farce
We have also relied heavily on one other work of historical non-fiction to guide the historical accuracy of our writing in regards to these specific events. Deadly Farce: Harvey Matusow and the Informer System in the McCarthy Era, by Robert Lichtman and Robert Cohen, is the only published history of Matusow’s rise and fall. We have developed a strong relationship with Lichtman who has agreed to serve as advisor to our project. We are confident we would be able to secure rights to his work if needed.
PRIMARY MATERIALS - Pitch & Development materials
All creative treatments, synopses, outlines, story maps, and scripts contained within this development site or furnished in association with the site are the work product of A Bike And A Book LLC.
SECONDARY MATERIALS - Albert E. Kahn collection
Ben Kahn controls the rights to original tape recordings his grandfather made in 1954, 1976 and 1978 of interviews with Harvey Matusow, as well as other recordings made in the 70s with Clint Jencks and Angus Cameron. Ben also controls all rights to Albert Kahn’s other published and unpublished written and photographic works, including his diaries, story drafts and notes, and personal correspondence with Harvey Matusow.
SECONDARY MATERIALS - Harvey Matusow collection
Matusow’s unpublished writings from the period of our story, though not registered with the Copyright Office, will remain under unregistered copyright protection until 2072, the 70th anniversary of Matusow’s death. According to Ann Matusow, Harvey Matusow’s adult daughter, the rights to Matusow’s works (other than False Witness) are controlled by a testamentary trust established upon Matusow’s death in 2002. Ann tells us the trustee is one of Matusow’s cousins on his mother’s side. We have not reached out to that cousin to inquire about licensing or optioning Harvey Matusow’s works, but believe it could be worthwhile to do so in order to secure rights to some of Harvey’s more unique, as-yet unpublished, accounts of his personal experiences.
SECONDARY MATERIALS - Roy Cohn materials
We have drawn inspiration for our Roy Cohn character from various sources, including Citizen Cohn, a biography of Cohn written by Nicholas von Hoffman. In 1992, HBO made Citizen Cohn into a tv-movie starring James Woods as Roy Cohn. HBO presumably continues to control the rights to von Hoffman’s telling of Cohn’s life (though, of course, the facts of Cohn’s life are not copyright-able).
SECONDARY MATERIALS - FBI materials
Through the Freedom Of Information Act, we have acquired FBI records specific to the events and characters described in Matusow Affair. The records supply details of Bureau protocol, the FBI's account and assessment of its interactions with Harvey Matusow, and J. Edgar Hoover's perspective on the events in question and his commands regarding them. This information has been made available to the public by the FBI.
Though we’ve drawn inspiration for our “composite” FBI characters from various published accounts of life as an FBI agent during the early 1950s, the names, actions, and motivations of those characters are entirely our invention.
SECONDARY MATERIALS - Lavender Scare materials
Though not as widely publicized as the public crackdown on Communists, the systematic persecution and purge of homosexuals from goverment jobs during the McCarthy Era (dubbed the “Lavender Scare”) ruined arguably more lives than the Red Scare ever did. Accusations of being Communist and being a homoexual often went hand in hand, as both were seen as signs of moral deviance. Even when they didn’t, being outed as homosexual was as damaging personally and professionally as being outed for communist sympathies. The Army-McCarthy hearings famously illustrated the moral panic of the Lavender Scare when Roy Cohn, who as Joe McCarthy’s sidekick had delighted in accusing others, was first outed as a homosexual on live television, and then promptly forced to resign from McCarthy’s staff. In weaving themes of the Lavender Scare into Matusow Affair, Ben and George have drawn inspiration from The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, by David K. Johnson, and Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” Program, by Douglas M. Charles.
SECONDARY MATERIALS - Misc. McCarthy Era texts
Many Are the Crimes, by Ellen Schrecker, is widely viewed as a definitive history of the McCarthy Era. We have developed a strong relationship with Schrecker, who has agreed to serve as advisor to our project. We are confident we would be able to secure rights to her work if needed.
"LIFE RIGHTS"
All of our real-life characters are deceased, save for Timothy Kahn, Steven Kahn, and Brian Kahn (respectively, the father to and uncles of Ben Kahn). As such, the project does not face a risk of claims of defamation or invasion of privacy arising from our depiction of those characters.