Under California law, where we lived and signed our deal one cannot be bound to a contract for more than seven years. Leto explained the predicament on the band’s web site: “We had been signed with them for nine years. This, as the film makes clear, is the standard operating procedure of the record companies, who are in the business, as one commentator notes, “of not paying musicians.” Leto and his band mates were understandably aggrieved at the fact that having sold over 2 million albums at the time of being taken to court, they had not received a penny in royalties and … were still $1.4 million in debt to EMI. EMI, however, claimed that Thirty Seconds to Mars had failed to deliver the three albums required by their agreement. The “crime” committed by Leto’s group was simply wanting to excuse themselves from their existing, demonstrably illegitimate contract.

The film was screened November 8 as part of the New York City documentary festival DOC NYC and previously, in September, at the Toronto film festival. Seuss fame), revolves around major record label EMI’s decision to sue the band for $30 million in August 2008. However, in recent years he has devoted his attention to the world of music, as the lead singer of Thirty Seconds to Mars.Īrtifact, directed by Leto himself, under the pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins (of Dr. Jared Leto is perhaps best known to the general public for his work as a film actor, most notably in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000).

Artifact 30 seconds to mars legendado