That’s another fine Messiah you’ve got me into

It seems that simply being dead for four hundred years isn’t quite enough.

As pre-production activities enter their final panic, the little things are starting to catch us out. With our heads already down and focussed on ensuring that all our ducks are in line for next Sunday, jobs that we once thought we could leave till the last moment now need addressing.

To be clear, these aren’t big tasks. Nothing for which a good procrastination wasn’t entirely appropriate at the time. These were once competing with essential activities, and quite rightly they dropped down the priority list. And are now raining down all around us with smug told-you-sos written all over them.

One of these was finding a painting of Jesus.

Yeah – that’s what we thought. How hard can it be? I mean, this is the fellow that has inspired centuries of devotional art across the free world. And what with most of the artists having long since shuffled off to find out whether they were wasting their time or not, it’s not like they can object to having the fruits of their labour appearing in a zombie movie. A quick trawl through Google Images and a trip to the printer should do it.

And then it came back and bit us firmly on the assumptions.

So it turns out that while the Caravaggios and Michelangelos have safely decomposed through the whole of the term of their post-mortem copyright (and then some), the people that took the photos of the old masters probably haven’t. It’s called Mechanical Copyright, and these guys will need to sign a piece of paper to let us use their images.

And so the two-minute job turns into a problem. A problem that needs solving now, and draws on that most precious of Charmed commodities – time.

In the end it was my brother that fixed it, and in the process bought himself some bonus camera time. Sofa covering by Habitat, hair by Photoshop, and the beard is all his own.

Phew. We’re safe unless Jessica Simpson’s hair-dresser ever gets wind of this and comes after his pound of flesh. Sacrelicious.