Model's Lawsuit Pretty Much Describes The Purpose Of Modeling
Did you see the atrocious Vince Vaughn movie Couple’s Retreat? You might have. It did pretty well at the box office for some inexplicable reason. In any event, if you didn’t take some kind of PTSD memory-blocking drug to obliterate the horror of having endured that film, you may recall a scene in which Jon Favreau’s character jacks it to a picture of a pretty lady on a brochure. Turns out said lady is actually a real person, and she’s none too pleased about the whole thing. In fact, she’s suing!
The New York Post-which helpfully identifies the picture as a “Universal film,” lest you be concerned that it was released under the imprimatur of Fox-reports that “Irina Krupnik ‘only learned of defendants’ lascivious use of her photo in the film’ after it was released in theaters — and was horrified to discover it was being used as a ‘masturbatory prop’ for a character played by Jon Favreau, the makeup artist says in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.”
It gets even better! The Times notes that:
Universal Pictures bought the photo from a stock agency, JupiterImages, for $500, according to the lawsuit. The filmmakers doctored the photo for the movie by “inserting it into a fictitious resort brochure,” according to the complaint. They further altered the context, the lawsuit continued, by using the photo “as a prop for an overweight, unhappily married male character to masturbate while his wife is in the washroom.”
In that scene, the lawsuit said, Mr. Favreau’s character waits for his wife to leave the hotel room “before lifting his sleeveless T-shirt over his prominent belly. He then liberally lubricates himself while leering at the image of the youthful Ms. Krupnik on a beach, a scenario apparently intended to be humorous.”
The thought of an older man pleasuring himself at the sight of a younger woman is what made the scene especially troubling, according to the lawsuit.
“In fact, it is the very juxtaposition of the wholesome image of a healthy 21-year-old woman on a beach, with Mr. Favreau’s much older, desiccated and overweight character creeping around his darkened hotel room to pleasure himself, that is supposed to provide humor,” the lawsuit read. “This juxtaposition, into a scene that would be a crime if Mr. Favreau attempted it on a New York City subway, is not something that Ms. Krupnik could have anticipated or should be subjected to.”
Yes, it’s true! Every scantily-clad model who is photographed tugging suggestively at her bikini bottom only imagines her picture being used in the most wholesome of manners, perhaps being taped on the chalkboard of a Kindergarten to illustrate the concept of summer, or placed in the locker room of a women’s fitness center to provide inspiration. The idea that a swimsuit picture might be used as a prop for a spank session-and by a fat, elderly person at that-is almost too horrible to contemplate. No wonder this woman is seeking legal redress; can you imagine the anguish she’s gone through? You cannot! Unless you’ve seen Couple’s Retreat, which was awful.