(© Julieta Cervantes)
On Tuesday, attorneys representing Kenneth Caillat and Steven Stiefel filed a lawsuit in the United States Court for the Southern District of New York against playwright David Adjmi and the Broadway producers of Stereophonic, winner of this year’s Tony Award for Best Play.
The complaint alleges that Stereophonic is an “unauthorized adaptation” of Caillat’s 2012 memoir, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album (which he co-wrote with Stiefel) about his time as a sound engineer (later promoted to co-producer) of one of the most popular albums in history. Caillat and Stiefel are seeking damages and a possible injunction on performances.
Story of the Week will take a deep dive into the suit and its prospects for success. But first, a quick refresher:
What is Stereophonic?
David Adjmi’s drama is about a band comprising two Americans and three Brits. It’s 1976 and they’ve settled into a Sausalito recording studio to lay down their forthcoming album, which takes over a year to record. Seated on the other side of the control panel, we witness their personal trials and professional triumphs as the band becomes increasingly famous. As far as three-hour hyper-naturalistic dramas go, it’s absolutely riveting — made even more delightful by Will Butler’s original music.
The play debuted last October at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway and the similarities to Fleetwood Mac were immediately apparent. “Adjmi’s five-member band is made up of two couples, who are loose stand-ins for John and Christine McVie, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, as well as a Mick Fleetwood-esque drummer,” TheaterMania critic David Gordon wrote in his review, which, like almost every other review of the play, was glowing.
The show transferred to Broadway’s John Golden Theatre in April 2024, opening in time to be considered for the Tony Awards — and boy was it ever. The show received 13 nominations, more than any other play in history. It went on to win five Tonys on June 16, including the all-important Best Play Award, which our team unanimously predicted.
(© Julieta Cervantes)
It was several weeks before that, in May, when critic Hannah Gold first noted the similarities between Stereophonic and Making Rumours in the New York Review of Books. She writes, “Caillat also claims that Buckingham once pressured him to record over a guitar riff in the hopes that his next take would be even better. Caillat did what he was asked. Then Buckingham decided he liked the previous take after all, but it no longer existed, so he vented his frustration at Caillat by screaming in his face — an exchange nearly identical to one in the play between Peter and Grover.” Grover is the character played by Eli Gelb in Stereophonic, whose journey from sound engineer to co-producer seems to mirror Caillat’s.
Last week, the New Yorker published an article by Michael Schulman in which Caillat attends a performance of Stereophonic — his very first Broadway show! His review? “I feel ripped off!” In retrospect, this article was a harbinger of the lawsuit to come.
What does the lawsuit claim?
The complaint calls Stereophonic a “flagrant and willful infringement of [Caillat and Stiefel’s] copyrighted work.” It lays out in detail the similarities between the book and the script, often presenting the texts back-to-back in a manner that is uncommonly theatrical (and devastating) for a lawsuit.
In addition to the above-described scene, in which Peter screams at Grover for taping over his guitar solo, the complaint cites the scene in which Holly screams at Grover, “You start paying attention to the tempo and the key and the instruments and give us a little fucking help,” comparing it to a similar line uttered by Christine McVie in Making Rumours: “We want you guys to start paying attention to tempos and keys and tuning and other important things to help us out here.”
There are others, including a scene in which Peter decides to record a bass part for Reg that parallels an anecdote in Making Rumours, in which Buckingham records a bass part for John McVie. There’s the passage about the Sausalito Houseboat Wars, which comes as an odd digression in Stereophonic, and is also a subject covered in the book. The suit also notes references to Tony Orlando and Grover’s use of the phrase “wheels up” to indicate the start of recording — the exact phrase Caillat used during the recording process of Rumours.
Cleverly, Caillat and Stiefel’s lawyers anticipate a potential defense that worked for Adjmi in a suit brought against him by the rights holder of the sitcom Three’s Company concerning his play 3C. A court found that play, a parody of the original sitcom, fell under the “fair use” doctrine, which is meant to prevent rights holders from using their copyright to stifle criticism. “The case of Stereophonic is very different because the show is not a parody or other fair use of Making Rumours,” the suit contends, “Indeed…Mr. Adjmi denies that he used Making Rumours at all, so he cannot claim fair use of the book.”
If Stereophonic had quietly played out its run at Playwrights Horizons and never transferred to Broadway, I wouldn’t be writing about this lawsuit today, because I doubt anyone would have discovered the similarities (off-Broadway is, to my eternal frustration, a passion for a very boutique audience). But again, Stereophonic is the most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history and, according to the complaint, “has grossed more than $20 million since opening on Broadway in April 2024.” Caillat and Stiefel obviously want some of that bounty, but the far bigger prize seems to be the potential future of the property.
“The Stereophonic show is harming the downstream market for adaptations of Making Rumours,” the suit contends. It notes that Adjmi has discussed a film adaptation with Deadline, and that Caillat is engaged in “ongoing efforts” to adapt his book into a movie. “A movie version of Stereophonic would not only continue to infringe on Plaintiffs’ copyright,” the complaint reads, “but also undermines the potential for Plaintiffs to make their own film.”
(© Tricia Baron)
Will we see Stereophonic in court?
It’s certainly possible, but I suspect Adjmi’s co-defendants (a group that includes Playwrights Horizons, John Johnson and Sue Wagner, Seaview, Sonia Friedman Productions, and the Shubert Organization) will see the writing on the wall and quietly seek a settlement. It’s hard to imagine a court injunction shuttering an ongoing Broadway play (as the lawsuit threatens), much less one that has been so laureled. Why slaughter the goose when there’s still so much more gold to enjoy?
Caillat and Stiefel may be satisfied with a “based on” credit and a big fat check. They might even happily consult on the film — for a fee. Because in Hollywood, we really can have “Happily Ever After.”
TheaterMania reached out to the Stereophonic team for comment but has not heard back as of publication. However, responding to the plagiarism allegations in the New Yorker article, Adjmi said, “When writing Stereophonic I drew from multiple sources — including autobiographical details from my own life — to create a deeply personal work of fiction. Any similarities to Ken Caillat’s excellent book are unintentional.”
He’s obviously read it, and “excellent” might make a lovely cover blurb for the second edition.
While similarities in storytelling and songwriting are endemic to the creative process, that kind of unintentional plagiarism is often sorted out by lawyers (poor Anton Bruckner is dead, lawyerless, and in the public domain).
In this case, it’s hard to believe so many exact similarities are the product a creative mind playing tricks on itself. But who knows? Adjmi may choose to keep singing that song.