The 2013 film Out of the Furnace, which DiCaprio was a producer on, based on the Ramapo Mountain people of New Jersey, has raised the ire of some of the people it depicted, with some claiming they were unfairly portrayed as drug-using “inbreds” in the film and now they’re suffering from “emotional distress”.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, eight members of the Ramapo Mountain community filed a defamation lawsuit in early January over the film, which starred Casey Affleck and Christian Bale.
In particular, they take issue with statements in the film calling the Ramapo Mountain people “inbred mountain folk from Jersey” who “have fights” and are “nasty” and “crazy.”
Plaintiffs in the case said that, “Out of the Furnace characterises the Ramapo Mountain people in an extremely negative manner,” with Woody Harrelson‘s character Harlen DeGroat “characterised as the most awful human walking”.
“The movie and [a review] in the New York Post,” another defendant in the case, “places Plaintiffs and their family members in a false light,” the court documents claim. “Each have had an extremely negative effect on the Plaintiff’s community. It is extremely embarrassing to the Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs and their family members are harassed and discriminated against. The children are teased at school. The conduct of the defendants constitutes defamation …” the papers claim, as well as false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress. “The Plaintiffs are not the worst people, do not live in trailer homes, are not involved in an underground bare-knuckle fight ring, and do not live in a self-contained world of drugs and violence.”
As such, they claim to “continue to suffer emotional and psychological damages,” and want a jury to award them restitutions “in an amount to be determined by a jury.
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