When I was researching it.

There was nothing stopping a person from referring to something like eastwood/ man with no name/man named joe or yoda/jedi/padawan, as long as there is no actual character called eastwood or yoda. At the same time it is copyright property an if the owners want to make a big deal about it they can. That is why a lot of people call harry potter - HP - in reference, because everyone knows JK Rowling will not let anyone say harry potter. So they say something like - a certain wizard boy with the glasses. The only time you're not going to want to take a chance is if you think you might make actual money off it. If the writing makes money, the lawyers will start swarming.

That's my basic understanding,

but the experts here probably know better,

In art/design work I have had to hunt down copyright owners and ask permission, and for the most part they appreciated that I took the time to ask and granted me permission. The law states that if you give an absolute effort to get permission and cannot find the owner or get no response you are protected from copyright suit, but you have to actually give it your best and keep the records of your attempts - e-mail and phone call, date and times, copies of any written correspondence, etc.

W.

I think what your doing is fine as long as you are not quoting more than 5 % of the movie, but here are some links to US copy laws just to make sure.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/copyrightmystery/#/reading/

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Good luck with this.

From my investigations, for any quote or lyric in the last 75 years, permission by the copyright holder should be considered necessary and be obtained.

See:
http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/permission.html
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
http://www.copyright.com/
http://www.suite101.com/content/use-quotes-in-your-book-a9237
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-30100.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0471146544/copylawonlineA/
[This may be a necessary purchase for anyone quoting another's work--but just another thing to keep me from creative writing (>sigh< ); however you will find templates for Copyright Permission and Release letter requests in the "Look Inside" feature as examples of what you will need to write to the Copyright owners.]

I've made revisions to use quotes from open sources (e.g. old literature like Scripture, Homer, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, and early H.P. Lovecraft), and I've changed some direct quotes to oblique references, but I have retained three movie quotes, one LOTR line, and one line of a 1940's lyric I would very much like to keep. I've begun the process to discover the cost of using them.

As much as I enjoyed using these cultural references as I was writing and feel they are apropos for an Urban Fantasy story, I have discovered doing so reportedly identifies me to agents/editors/publishers as an amateur, precisely for the tsouris (trouble)--the cost and inefficiency-- associated with obtaining permission to use copyrighted material.

It is something I will not be repeating -- and I am already considering rewriting the story segments eliminating their use, despite how well I think it works in this case.

Be certain you have permission before utilizing any copyrighted material.
Be sure to obtain permission and provide this documentation before submitting your work.
Better yet, minimize or eliminate their use.

Respectfully,
Dr. Bob

Some other thoughts (not to be confused with expertise, please):

Stories about people who think they are someone famous have been done many times.

You would not be using the actual copyrighted characters of another writer, just your character's interpretation of those characters.

In my limited research thus far, I found the term 'fair use' coming up time and time again, so here is also a link to that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use