During the '90s, Prince was riding high after a string of amazing albums. However, it was his recording partner Warner Bros. that was benefiting the most from his musical genius. Per the terms of his typically unfair contract, all of his master tapes were the property of Warner Bros., meaning he would never actually own any of the music he wrote and recorded for them. Even worse, he still owed the company five albums before he would be allowed out of that deal. Prince was a prolific artist to say the least, and he had a ton of unused material burning a hole in his velvet pocket, so he figured he could just hand in five albums worth of songs and move on. Warner Bros. refused to accept the material, insisting that nothing in the contract obligated them to do so.

So, Prince became another person.

In 1993, he announced he was no longer Prince and would henceforth be working only as an unpronounceable symbol. He told WB he would still provide them with his mandatory Prince albums, but that they had no right to claim the output of this new creature, whom baffled journalists referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince," presumably because you can't say "Coconut Fucking A Trumpet" in most news outlets.

Warner Bros. Records
If you pronounced it as "fart noises plus angry Tasmanian Devil babbling,"
you were as correct as anyone else.

Note: This is not how contract law works. It does seem like somebody should have told Prince that, somewhere along the way.

While Warner Bros. cobbled together a greatest hits record, Previously-Prince dove into some very expensive projects in non-recorded music media, such as a weird stage musical based on Homer's Odyssey, an ill-advised perfume called Get Wild, and sending entire crews to Egypt to film Carmen Electra videos that were never released (for an album that tanked). When it became clear that his renaming plan wasn't working out, he went over to Plan B: writing the world "SLAVE" on his right cheek and putting Warner Bros. on blast in a full-page ad in Billboard magazine. In the end, both sides lost millions, and Prince would later refer to the feud as the worst years of his life.

Peter Still/Redferns/Getty Images
He could barely concentrate on having freaky funky sex with the
three dozen supermodels living in his hot tub.

Prince kept the symbol until his contract expired in 2000, at which point he returned to using his actual name and eventually renegotiated a deal with Warner Bros. that gave him ownership of all his old music. Lesson: Crazy stunts like that always work out in the end. If you're Prince.

On top of making the book bad, Hemingway doubly ensured that Liveright wouldn't dare publish The Torrents Of Spring by using it to mercilessly parody their star author, Sherwood Anderson. First, he mimicked Anderson's old-fashioned, repetitive writing style -- here's a sample, from Torrents Of Spring:

In some ways it was the happiest year of his life. In other ways it was a nightmare. A hideous nightmare. In the end he grew to like it. In other ways he hated it. Before he knew it, a year had passed. He was still collaring pistons. But what strange things had happened in that year. Often he wondered about them.

Also, he made the protagonist a shitty writer who can't stop getting married (another direct shot at Anderson). It was less than subtle.

Lloyd Arnold
"Chapter 1: Derrrr, I'm Sherwood Anderson."

Hey, did we mention that Anderson and Hemingway were friends before this? And that this book ruined their friendship?

Still, Hemingway had put Liveright in an impossible situation. Even if they could get past the quality and brazen contempt, accepting Hemingway's book meant pissing off Anderson, a writer who was making the company a lot more money than young Ernest. Not wanting to risk losing their cash cow, Liveright rejected the novel, freeing Hemingway from his deal. He quickly darted over to Scribner, who got their hands on one of the most iconic books ever to be written and made Hemingway rich in the process.

"But didn't people look at the calendar and assume it was a prank?" you ask. They accounted for that -- they intentionally set up a different April Fools' prank -- that Pearl Jam had broken up -- as a decoy, hamming up the Pearl Jam story while quietly and respectfully telling listeners to tune in to the 6 o'clock news for the official announcement of Menino's death.

As the mayor was out of town, the story had spread like wildfire before Menino returned to the city in totally not-dead condition to quash it. The mayor was understandably pissed and demanded that Opie and Anthony be fired from WAAF-FM, which is exactly what they wanted in the first place. The pair immediately bounced back and moved to New York, where their careers skyrocketed. They lived happily ever after, until Anthony went on a series of racist rants in 2014 that got him fired for good. So, yeah, maybe this type of success has a limited shelf life.

Cindy Ord/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
It's almost like the white dudes sporting Native-American headdresses and
African cannibal pro wrestler body paint were giving us a warning.

The idea was to create a plausible excuse to legally stop doing the TV series (since any contract would give you an out if you got injured), and then use that as leverage. And if you're thinking the plan involved simply claiming McQueen was in an accident, congratulations -- you think like a sane person. But you're underestimating how much proof the producers would have demanded.

The two schemers knew that McQueen, a highly skilled driver, could make a staged accident look real enough without actually getting hurt (too much). But that's not to say it was drama-free: Not only did McQueen take his wife along for the ride, he also almost ran over a cop before plowing headlights-first into the Bank of Boston (in McQueen's defense, this was all part of making the accident look believable). There wasn't a newspaper in the world that didn't cover the crash, and McQueen came back to Hollywood the next day wearing a neck brace. You know, one of those soft-tissue injuries that don't show up on an X-ray.

CBS Television Distribution, United Artists
"They said the only known cure is switching from black-and-white-TV cowboy roles
to color movie ones. So sorry, guys."

Elkins informed McQueen's TV producer that his client was too injured to do the show or the movie, which made the whole thing seem more legit. The producer, however, knew what was going on -- it was clear that the moment he acquiesced to the earlier demands, McQueen's neck would suddenly start feeling better. He begrudgingly agreed to loosen the deal, saying, "This isn't what we like to do, but you get this round." This allowed McQueen to make The Magnificent Seven and remain on his TV show at double his original salary (presumably because they didn't want McQueen to "accidentally" drive his car through the fucking studio).

Mercury poisoning experts at the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program as well as the National Fisheries Institute pointed out that Piven's claims were both unprecedented and utter bullshit. The cast and crew were of the same opinion, claiming that Piven was bailing out by using the lamest rich-guy excuse possible. And they weren't wrong.

Piven had asked for time off long before his "illness," which is like asking for a day off at work and then calling in sick when it doesn't get approved. It was also suspiciously coincidental that he started seeing his doctor exactly one day after the production's first rehearsal. Piven had even started interviewing other actors to take over his job, which he claimed was just him trying to "be helpful."

Sara Krulwich / New York Times
Which makes sense, because people who hate their job help out tons by not being at the job.

Then, after canceling the first bunch of rehearsals due to such poor health that he was supposedly bedridden, one of the Speed-The-Plow producers bumped into him at an Entourage party. He also signed on to do the movie The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, the biggest leading role in his career, because he was apparently not too sick to negotiate movie deals.

Paramount Vantage
Live hard. Sell hard. Work ... whenever ...

The producers were so furious they dragged Piven into a Screen Actors Guild arbitration (or "actors' court"), which quickly acquitted him of any wrongdoing, because that's what happens when you have actors enforce the rules of what actors can and cannot do. This didn't stop his former co-stars from badmouthing him in public, including David Mamet himself, who said, "My understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer." Get it? Because of the mercury. Sick burn, David Mamet.

Unfortunately, Monroe had signed an exclusive contract with 20th Century Fox, who wanted her to keep doing sexy musicals and romantic comedies until she got too old (read: turned 40). Her next project was a disrespectful triple whammy: It was titled Pink Tights, they wouldn't let her read the script beforehand, and she'd be paid a measly $1,500 a week -- a third of the pay of her male co-star, Frank Sinatra. So Monroe simply moved to New York, started her own production company called Marilyn Monroe Productions, and refused to act in any movie that she didn't pick herself.

Of course, Fox sued her for breach of contract, because that's exactly what she had done. However, Monroe had appointed her very shrewd lawyer as her only partner in her production company, and her lawyer proceeded to tie up the lawsuit for so long that Fox couldn't force her to do any of the shitty movies they wanted to put her in.

20th Century Fox
Shockingly, a lifetime of "LOL dumb blonde" jokes wasn't her idea of a good time.

20th Century Fox started throwing everything they had into the movies Monroe refused to do, hoping to prove that she was easily replaceable and they could put any busty blonde into their pictures and still make money. They were sadly mistaken, and a series of box-office bombs made them realize how crucial Monroe's star power was to their bank accounts. Fox was forced to cave and offer her a better contract, a phrase here meaning "the same contract they would offer a male star of similar popularity," making her the highest-paid actress in the world.

20th Century Fox
And she lived happily ever af- shit.

For more of Cedric Voets' attempts at witticisms or his famous recipes for toilet wine, do follow him on Twitter.

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