Gerald “Jerry” Heller, the N.W.A. music manager played so memorably — and, to Heller himself, hurtfully – by Paul Giamatti in Straight Outta Compton, died of a heart attack Friday in California at 75.
The death and heart attack were confirmed to Billboard by Heller’s cousin Gary Ballen, who said Heller died Friday evening at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California. Early reports suggested Heller suffered some sort of medical emergency while driving.
Heller, whose music biz career stretched back to involvement with such superstars of the 1960s and 70s as Marvin Gaye and the Who, was so angered by what he claimed was defamation, misappropriation of likeness and copyright infringement that he sued Universal and the film’s producers for $110 million. Though a federal judge ruled in March that the lawsuit could proceed, most of the case was dismissed in June and likely will end entirely with Heller’s death.
The suit also named director F. Gary Gray, Legendary Pictures Funding, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube among the defendants.
The hip-hop biopic, which chronicled N.W.A. and West Coast rap history from 1986 to ’96, won critical and audience raves, but Heller dismissed his acclaimed portrayal by Giamatti as being a “sleazy manager.”
In 2006, Heller’s own version of his co-founding Ruthless Records with Eazy-E, was laid out in his 2006 book Ruthless: A Memoir.
