Saw this today on Galactica SITREP and wanted to pass it along to you guys. It’s a video created by Peter Hyoguchi about the writers who probably make about as much as an average person does and who are on strike for their future right now. It’s a good look at how hard it is for some of these guys and what it’s like to try and earn a living in Hollywood.
I think many people tend to think that if you are on TV or write for TV or are involved with TV, you make good money.
But it’s really not like that. Sure, some celebrities make tons of cash, but the many writers behind the scenes doing the real work don’t get as much and most definitely don’t always have yearly salaries.
I read an article on the Movie Blog a few weeks ago, where they basically bashed the WGA for going on strike, comparing it to a carpenter who builds a chair, gets paid for that chair and then asks for money every time someone sits on that chair in the future.
Yes, that comparison is essentially what happens here. A writer creates a script, sells it and gets paid for it, plus residual income everytime the script is used to make money. Except on the internet of course. For now.
Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s just the way things are. The entertainment industry is so much different than what most of us do. I go to work, get paid, do a job and make a salary. An average writer is always looking for work and trying to sell his next script or screenplay or whatever. It’s just a different world.
And they need to be compensated for additional money that is made off what they do. This is the entertainment world. A singer or music band doesn’t get paid to make a CD and walk away. They get paid to make it, on how much it sells, no matter how long it sells for. If someone takes their music and uses it for something, they get money. Same for authors of books.
It’s how this industry works. These are artists.
Anyways, that’s just how I feel about it. These people create entertainment and though-provoking words for the rest of us to enjoy for a long time…as long as we want usually. The least the big networks can do is cut them in a bit more.
And hopefully, since we heard good news yesterday, this will end and everyone will go back to work happy.
Chris Kelly had this clear explanation of residuals on Huffington Post a couple of weeks back. And of course there’s Craig Mazin’s magic cake analogy. And I’ll close out with John August’s piece.
R.A. Porter’s last blog post..The Impossible Deuce
Thanks for the comment, I read all of those articles and have a clearer understanding of it now. I think I knew all of this stuff, but not the specifics.
It’s amazing to me how the Movie Blog produced a video about this and totally got it wrong, casting writers as greedy people…they had no idea really what they were talking about.;l