Overworked Mule Stands Up to Hollywood Producers

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 12, 2000

It didn't seem like much money compared with the costs we hear all the time about Hollywood movies, but still the producers were stubborn enough to take it to court.

The producers of the about-to-be-released film Morgan's Creek; shot in Wilmington, N.C., sued animal trainer and handler Alicia Rudd, saying she had lied to them when she told them she could keep a movie mule named El Berta moving at all times in the scenes the animal played in.

But first, El Berta's reins broke three times after she refused stubbornly to do what she was commanded to do. Then she absolutely, totally and completely refused to sit down on cue, and that's when producers Eric Epperson and Alan James of Oregon Trail Films took Rudd to federal court for misrepresentation of her might over the moody mule.

Epperson and James said that Rudd's inability to force the animal to perform when she was supposed to set the film's production back a whole eight hours and cost the company a total of $111,111, according to the Associated Press, or AP. Moreover, Epperson claimed that El Berta was part of the reason production went into an extra day of filming, which caused a budget overrun of about $450,000.

But U.S. District Court Judge Earl Britt wasn't convinced and dismissed the case, saying there was no proof that the animal trainer had breached her contract. Rudd showed she knew her animal when she told AP that the film's producers "wanted to overwork her, and she became stubborn."