Re: Happy Birthday!

Lincoln Richman <lrichman[_at_]aaas.org> wrote:
>
> Recently, my wife and I went to dinner at a very popular national chain
> restaurant. As part of the restaurant's regular shtick, if a guest is
> celebrating a birthday, all of the waiters and waitresses gather around
> the celebrant and sing the "Happy Birthday" song ('Happy Birthday to
> you, Happy Birthday to you,' etc.).

As an interesting side bar to this recent thread...

I went to see Michael Douglas' new movie, The Game, last night. There is a scene, early on in the movie where the staff of the restaurant at a club to which his character belongs sing "Happy Birthday" to him. Sad as it may seem, I actually sat throughout the movie in anticipation of the credits to see whether this would be included (although I've seen the song used in many movies, I don't recall it ever being credited). For the record, this movie does acknowledge authorship for the ditty in the credits, so I assume some royalty was paid.

However, more apropos to this thread, I can't speak to whether the mythical restaurant in question has a blanket license to use the song. B^)

For anyone who is interested, I thought the movie was pretty good. It has been a long time since I've been to a movie where I haven't been able to see through the thin veil of a plot in the first ten minutes of film. This one had me guessing to the end...

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