When I was working in Wagoner, Okla. at the Tribune, the company (which was owned by one of the Walton kids, nonetheless) got the idea we were going to be offering pictures online to be sold. It was a great idea that came with one flaw – we had to upload them ourselves. This added to the other numerous tedious things I had to do at the paper. What was so disheartening was that those who were editors before I became editor in late 2009 would’ve have never put up with all the work they were expected to do. And many of them didn’t as it seemed an editor working two years was a phenomenon.
Needless to say, many of the other editors who were there when I started in 2006 were what would be called “seasoned journalists.” In other words, they were older. They couldn’t grasp the importance of the website and their rationale was simple. Since they weren’t being paid more, why should they do more? In a perfect world, they would’ve hired someone to handle all this while we could focus on other things? But that didn’t happen even though they had someone whose title was “Internet Copy Editor.” But all this person seemed to do was to criticize why we didn’t have stuff on social media or the website in a timely manner.
Speaking of the photos, we were supposed to get royalties. Not a month would go back where some parent would walk in and say they wanted a copy of a picture I had taken emailed to them. Sometimes, it was a weekly basis. We’d give them out because sometimes it was to non-profit organizations. But I don’t think I made $10 in royalties the whole time they were for sale. Later, I found a picture I had taken of the baseball team was being issued on some items. If these were given out for free, I can understand and didn’t have a problem. Yet, I could never find if they were being sold on T-shirts to others.
It was one of many things that made me just want to give it up and do something else. People always seem to be looking for ways to rip others off. I and the advertising department were told so many times about how since it was a “community newspaper,” we should do stuff for free. All newsapers are “community newspapers.” All fast-food restaurants are “community restaurants,” but you shouldn’t expect a free Big Mac or Nacho Bel Grande.
I guess it’s because our country was built on forcing enslaved people to work that we’ve never fully grasped the concept of paying people for their labor. They’ll say things like “Pay you in exposure.” This has become the newest thing for “influencers.” But I read a quote earlier that goes, “Being popular online is like being rich with Monopoly money.” And there have been videos all over the web of people with millions of followers showing up to conventions where no one is in their line.
For the last 72 hours as of this posting, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has been on strike alongside the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who has been on strike since early May. The two unions are fighting for better pay and residuals from studios. And while some people might say this is about greed, many actors and writers make little money at the end of the day.
Years ago, an attempt was made to publicly shame actor Geoffrey Owens who is most notable for his recurring role as Elvin Tibideaux on The Cosby Show where he during a memorable episode spoofed Bill Cosby during an impersonation. He also hilariously started getting contraction pains when his wife, Sondra, went into labor. Owens has a resume that includes over 60 credits. But he was spotted as a cashier/clerk at a Trader’s Joes. His picture was taken and it was shown on social media. The shaming backfired as people turned out to support Owens who was doing what needs to be done to pay the bills. It also caused an influx of job offers. So I guess Owens got the last laugh.
Unfortunately, Owens was probably in dire straits following the accusations and later conviction of Cosby on sexual assault charges. TV stations pulled The Cosby Show, which had been in syndication for more than two decades, off the air as news reports spread. It’s very common for actors to receive residual checks arrive in the mail or their back accounts for TV shows they were on decades earlier that are still in syndication. This was the primary reason for the last strike in 1960 when the writers and actors joined the picket lines in solidarity concerned about how much money they’d get as television was becoming more popular through the 1950s. Needless to say, that “sumbitch Reagan” was the president of the SAG. The irony is lost on many.
So, Owens had to work at Trader Joe’s? It’s always about telling people there’s no shame in flipping burgers until we want to shame them for flipping burgers. The story has been told that in 1978, a young actor named Kevin Bacon had to miss the premiere of his first movie National Lampoon’s Animal House because he couldn’t get time off work from the restaurant where he was employed. Other pieces of the story say that Bacon went to the premiere but couldn’t attend the after-party because he was scheduled to work earlier that next day at the restaurant.
Either way, Bacon was still just a struggling actor. He was probably only paid scale for his role as smarmy Omega Chip Diller in Animal House, which only had a mere budget of $3 million, with some residuals coming much, much later. Not until Footloose did Bacon become a bigger name and celebrity. He still made Friday the 13th which only had a budget of $550,000 in between. He still needed a steady job to well, bring home the bacon.
And sometimes, residuals are very thin. If a movie bombs, then the actor gets virtually nothing. Emo Phillips appeared in a memorable scene in the 1989 cult classic comedy UHF which only made $6.1 million worldwide. After everything was deducted and taken out, his final residual check was a mere 30 cents, which ironically probably costed less than the ink and paper it was printed on as well as the postage to send it to him. That’s a fortune compared to what character actor Peter Michael Goetz (Jumping Jack Flash, Glory, My Girl) for his role in the 1986 bomb King Kong Lives. His residual check was a mere three cents. Remember that Seinfeld episode where Jerry has residual checks for 12 cents each? That’s not a joke. It’s a reality for some actors.
And the straw that broke the camel’s back for actors is concerns over the use of capturing a likeness on screen to be used in other movies and TV shows. This is similar to problems among actors dating back decades. In 1973, the cast of The Three Musketeers produced by Ilya Salkind learned that the grandiose movie, intended to be a thee-hour epic, was going to be split into two movies. Naturally, they were mad. How would you like to sign on to do one thing then someone else said that you’re actually going to do two things for the same pay? Many don’t have to imagine because that has become more common in the workforce. But this caused some changes in the industry to ensure actors got paid evenly for appearing in the movies and had to agree for them to split into two movies.
Then following the release of Back to the Future Part II, Crispin Glover, who didn’t reprise his role as George McFly, discovered they had used archival and unused footage of himself without his approval. He sued and won. Then, in the early 1990s, Michael Biehn sued and won a settlement against the production of Alien 3 for using his likeness without his permission. You’d think people would learn it’s best not to go the cheaper route, but they still do it. That’s why so many damned DIY calamities exist.
But let’s just say they factor in the cost of the technology versus having to pay anywhere between 25 to hundreds of extras $10 a day at $120 a day for a big budget movie. Then, a director cuts a scene out. That’s money that has been wasted on the cutting room floor. It’s not just paying extras but paying a casting agency to handle their hiring. Then, if it’s a period piece movie or a sci-fi action thriller, they have to have their own costumes and that can be expensive. And then you add in the cost of the regular cast and crew just for a director and editor to say months later, “No, this isn’t going to work here. We don’t need it.”
Studios can just incorporate background extras through special effects on movies. It’s cost-efficient sure and many times it’s been used in movies. Take 2000’s Gladiator where you can tell it’s CGI characters in the Rome Coliseum or the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies. But still for scenes that are more up close, you need actors especially in crowd scenes. And aside from extras, if an actor has to be on set even if they don’t have any lines, they have to be paid regardless. Even if there is a production delay, that actor still gets paid.
Charactor actor Troy Evans (Under Seige, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Demolition Man) was cast as a truck driver in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Reportedly, according to a shooting delay, he ended up spending a whole week on the set even though he only filmed one day of work. And just like many other actors in that movie (Michael McKean, Sally Kellerman and Gary Riley), most of his footage was axed. He got paid for each day he was supposed to be available.
This is what the bigwigs in Hollywood are trying to prevent. You can film an actor for one day’s work in front of a green screen and incorporate them throughout. It’s cheating the actors out of their work. Even worse, we’re blaming actors for the problems that directors, celebrity with huge egos and producers have amongst each other and studio brass. You can look at the production of Myra Breckinridge where director Michael Sarne spent days filming food of the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau where production was delayed because Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer both refused to come out of their trailers until the other did first.
It’s ironic for an industry that has made billions off movies focusing on the “dangers of artificial intelligence,” that now it finds itself siding with the AI. I’ve been wondering how are they going to prevent the technology that will allow people to choose their own actors. We have deep fakes all over the Internet incorporating Arnold Schwarzeneggers’ face in popular movies. Don’t like Julia Roberts? Replace her in Pretty Woman or Erin Brockovich with Sanra Bullock of Jennifer Aniston. You didn’t like Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher? Well, there’s a whole cache of taller actors (Jason Momoa, Idris Elba, Ben Affleck, Liam Neeson) to work with.
The same can be said for the writers. This is going back to 1992’s The Player which shows that nothing has changed in the past 30 years. There’s a scene where the movie executives played by Tim Robbins, Cyntia Stevenson, Jeremy Piven and Peter Gallagher flip through a newspaper and come up with ways they can make movies just off what they read thus eliminating the need for writers. While TV shows use the “Ripped from the headlines” style, what’s to stop an AI format from doing just that. (Incidentally, even though the movie seem to show the importance of writers, it ruffled feathers with actors because a fake banquet was filmed using real members of a catering service, some of which were SAG members, and they were unaware they’d be filmed for a movie, as they didn’t receive any extra compensation.)
And while people think romcoms and action thrillers are all basically the same, there’s a difference in how they’re written, filmed and edited. I remember people making comparisons between The Fast and the Furious and Driven before the former had already came out, mostly because Driven had been a box office bomb. So, it’s easy just to assume that another movie that really doesn’t have any similarities would fail too. Aside from people racing in cars, the two movies are polar opposites in tone and in style. Taylor Sheridan, who’s riding high with a string of TV shows, told CBS News that Hollywood executives are always afraid of doing something after a similar movie or TV show wasn’t a success.
And while Sheridan is currently one of the biggest writers we have, most writers struggle to find work. Jeff Maguire only got story credit on the movie Victory in 1981 and spent years trying to sell his script In the Line of Fire. Because of so many changes demanded and the bidding wars among Hollywood elites, he reportedly was so broke his wife returned a dress so they could go out and celebrate. He had to use the money and residuals to pay back people who had loaned him money.
But even 30 years later, Maguire has only been credited on two other movies, Timeline and Gridiron Gang. Many writers go years without selling a script. If they do, they run the risk of it going into turnaround, a one-word explanation for the studio and/or star power behind a script just realizing they don’t want to do a movie. It happens to even some of the best writers. Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was all set to go at Columbia TriStar before it went into turnaround. Even Schwarzenegger couldn’t get a movie about the Crusades made.
And few writers have the clout to make a lot of money off their works. Shane Black and Joe Ezterhas have sold scripts that set and broke records. Other writers can find themselves working for years on a movie script only to be let go when a bigger director comes on board, who has their own preferred writer or wants to write the script themselves. Kevin Smith says that Tim Burton had him removed from the ill-fated Superman Lives for Wesley Strick.
Then, if a movie does bomb, the writer can be blamed. A lot of times it’s studio interference that leads to movie’s bombing. J. David Shapiro had worked with Mel Brooks on the script for Robin Hood: Men in Tights. But he later said he was fired from the set of Battlefield Earth over creative differences and said the finished movie had little of his work in it. Despite this and his attempts to have his name removed, it was still on the movie. Needless to say, Shapiro’s work since 2000 hasn’t been the best with many forgettable movie and TV credits.
People might argue, why don’t these actors and writers go out and get a real job. Well, look at Owens. A “real job” is determined from a certain point of view. A lot of Gen Xers and Millennials were told to avoid trade schools and technical schools for “real jobs.” Instead, they discovered many of their former classmates who went into weilding or carpentry are making more money than them. And considering how people are treated in the food service, retail service and hospitality fields which others don’t consider “real jobs,” many are taking their chances as writers and actors.
The sad part is the jobs that aren’t really needed are these “real jobs.” Peter Gibbons in Office Space says he has eight different bosses. That’s a reality. There’s too many generals and not enough foot soliders. And if you haven’t work somewhere that more than one person makes more money than you but no one knows what they actually do consider yourself lucky. The end goal we’ve been told is to have a supervisory/managerial position but most in those positions are just passing their work (and the blame) off to others.
Look at David Zaslav, current CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, following the merger two years ago. He makes about $246 million a year. That’s a quarter of a billion dollars. And he seems to be one of these types who thinks he deserves the praise when a movie does good but blame someone else when a movie does bad. It’s the typical Boomer grab-all-you-can mentality that it’s best to make as much money as you can while you can.
It’s ironic the people who benefitted the most from the labor unions of the post-WWII era, you know Boomers, have become the most volitile critics of labor unions. They’re the ones who have screamed at younger people to be grateful for the pay they get. Yet none of them would work under the conditions Gen Xers, Millennials and now Gen Zers have to. Maybe some Gen Xers lived comfortably. But most are in their 40s and early 50s now realizing that they aren’t near as financially stable as their parents were.
Robert Reich, who was the Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton, said that using artificial intelligence or advanced technlogy is taking away money from people. And that affects the economy because people don’t have money to spend. The strike isn’t just affecting writers and actors but catering services, the motels/hotels, restaurants, consruction companies and thus building suppliers.
Prior to the pandemic, my nephew was working on an 18-month contract in construction with Marvel Studios as they were filming in the metro Atlanta area. And part of the reason they have developed a good film industry is the metro Atlanta area has many good amenities for celebrities to use. You’re not going to stick some A-list Oscar-winning celebrity in a Motel 6 off the highway with only a Waffle House and QuikTrip to use.
Switching to AI is going to hurt these industries too. If actors can film all their scenes in a few days in front of a green screen, motels and hotels suffer. This also affects building workers because you don’t need sets And you can even change the costumes on the actors with AI. Following the awfulness of that third Ant-Man movie, maybe Hollywood executives should reconsider where and how they used special effects.
Am I the only one not laughing that Disney is blasting the strikers? We’re talking about the same fucking company that successfully sued a day care center for (check notes) likenesses of Disney characters on a mural. Apparently, the House of Mouse didn’t like that three day care centers in B.F.E. Hallendale, Fla. were using likeness of Mickey, Donald and Goofy were on the walls for kids to look at.
You can’t make this up.
Stay strong, writers and actors.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 