Cavemen in Cashmere
Sexism. Corporate malfeasance. Ageism. Wage inequality. These are all issues at the forefront of the progressive battlefield. Hollywood leaders as well as the rank and file have given a great deal of their time and money to defeat these abuses in the corporate world. It is ironic that these very same issues are never tackled within our own industry.
As we prepare for yet another strike to ensure future wages and residual rights for yet another union, this time the Screen Actor's Guild, it is important to point out that current wages and residual rights are insufficient to sustain the professional class of actors, writers and directors. All of the wealth in our industry has been crowded into the teeniest tiniest top percentile. Anyone who is not A-list is on the F-list. We are starving out the B's C's and D's.
No one wants to raise this topic, due to fear of reprisal. This is one town where talking truth to power is a good way to lose your lunch money, but I am a light eater and I am a forty-nine year-old woman. Common wisdom dictates that I have nothing to lose and less to gain. So let's talk. We need much more than the renegotiation of a contract. We need a reordering of priorities and we need to admit that the trickle down theory has failed. Mostly the guys at the top have just peed on our heads.
The Guild minimum wages were meant to be... well the minimum that an artist could be paid. In today's industry the minimum has become the standard and there is no exception for merit or God forbid seniority. This is bad for artists. For many of us, what was once a proud profession has been downgraded to a high stress hobby. It is also, not surprisingly bad for business. Today's standard of ten million for the star and scale for the rest of the team betrays the values of artistic collaboration and suppresses wages across the board.
In series television the star cannot function without a strong supporting cast. These folks are called series "regulars" and they are crucial to a show's identity. In the past these folks were well paid and they in turn hired publicists whose efforts contributed to the show's promotion. Yesterday's "regulars" are today's "recurring roles" many of whom are paid SAG minimum week in and week out. They can not afford to promote themselves or the show. This means the chances of having a "break out" star are slim, which puts all the pressure for a show's success right back at the top of the ticket.
Is it any wonder that show after show is being canceled? There is no such thing as a One-man or One-woman television show.
Then there are the agents and managers who discover and nurture those B, C and D folks. They are the risk takers, the promoters of the unknown and the underdogs. This is where the A list comes from. They do not materialize out of thin air. These folks are the innovators and they cannot survive on ten percent of scale. Like so many industries, the boutique retailers are at risk of being gobbled up by the monoliths and the implications are just as grim for art as they are for banking. BofA meet CAA.
With the deterioration of Anti-trust laws and massive mergers the entire industry is dominated by four multi-national corporations. These folks also make widgets and Windex and washing machines. They are looking at the bottom line and in so doing sending creativity to the bottom of the barrel. And yes those same executives who insist that directors, writers and actors are lucky to be paid the minimum are of course cadging gigantic salaries and flying private jets armed with golden parachutes.
The economics of the business no longer make sense. We are told that there are record profits at the movies this year and yet the average worker on a movie is paid... you guessed it scale. The way forward is going to require true intra-union collaboration as well as intervention from the artists who are on the receiving end of this huge disparity. If you are being paid millions on a project that is holding all of the other talent to minimum wage, you must speak up. Give back a percentage point and empower your fellow artists. If you are a director or writer with clout, part of your deal needs to include reasonable wages for your cast and crew.
All of the artists unions can cite dreadful statistics regarding minorities, women and older artists. These inequalities are decades old and yet there has been little or no improvement. In the DGA women make up 6% of the industry over all and the percentage goes down for television. A woman can run for president, but she cannot direct episodic television? Really? A black man can BE president, but most minority programming is still ghettoized? Really? Still? Hollywood is notorious for its progressive views and yet remains twenty years behind the nation in terms of equality in the workplace. I wonder... can that be why the public is rejecting or worse ignoring much of our product?
The health of a society can be measured by the vitality of its middle class. This is true of Industry as well. Hollywood has pushed the middle class of artists to the bottom. They are on the verge of extinction. The strike will do nothing to address this. Future residuals are important, but, if the middle keeps being held to the minimum, the unions themselves may have no future. It is time for Hollywood's liberal leaders to look inward and ask themselves why the values they fight for in politics are not worth promoting in their own practice. The truth is this town is fully dominated by a good old boys club of straight white men. Yes there are a few women and the occasional gay in the mix, but they are following the same corrupt path. The powers that be may be sophisticates but their policies are pure back room bully. You can put cashmere on a caveman but he is still a caveman. Really. Still.
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The title of your blog drew me in because I thought you would write about the corporate lack of placement on any moral or ethical scale, except the bottom. Greed, quick fame, self-aggrandizement and physical beauty are the norms, apparently. Cavemen in cashmere, unlike perhaps the real cave men and women, didn't have to advertise so much that they had made it; just surviving was good enough.
i've been in the film & tv business for nearly 25 years. my scale wage has not increased in all that time, which, by the way, is higher in the male-oriented categories. we've given up meal breaks and overtime has been capped at triple time for quite some time now. this means i never become too expensive so they can work me for 18-20 hours with minimal penalty. those penalties were in place not to make me rich, but to keep me from dangerous exhaustion. now they do neither. the tax man takes the bulk of the overtime.
Excellent post. If things don't become more fair for all workers in the U.S. there is going to be chaos, but I guess the ones with the money will just relocate to another country
Yanno, it is a great post and I don't really disagree on any particular point but...
In an economy such as we have I wonder what happens to all the people behind the camera when the people in front of the camera aren't working. When the Writers went on strike the "teamsters" were put into a bit of a tailspin. While I don't think there is ever a good time to strike, now would certainly qualify as a bad time. In other words it won't just be the actors striking, it's the lighting and sound people who will be forced into a strike as well.
I fully support unions (both my parents were presidents of out local teachers union) and I think they do so much good for their members. I'm not even saying a strike isn't an effective way of getting the things that you deserve from people who are unwilling to give them to you.
But I just feel in a climate where 53,000 people are laid off in a single day, people are walking around with their resumes on their t-shirts in order to get a job and so many others are being thrown out of their homes, perhaps walking out of your job is not the best move. From experience I know I crappy income is better than no income.
L
This is why is will take extra courage and support for the actors. The timing is not theirs, their contract expired in June. The people on the other side of the negotiating table from SAG have proven brutally manipulative with DGA WGA and IATSE. And of course they ARE media so slanted 'news' is a given.
If you read the history of the labour movement in America you'll see this is just a modernised version of the same old song.
What is being fought for (I'm not a member of SAG nor an actor) is much bigger than dollars. If the actors lose this get ready for your creative work to be 'outsourced.' You may never regain your dominance in global media and that, more than Bush, more than Iraq, more than financial meltdown, will redefine America.
Hey Beth -- I sat with you and the Gelbarts before the Lit. Awards Dinner last Wed. night. Really enjoyed our chat. Would love to stay in touch -- (this sounds like one of those Craigslist Missed Opportunity ads!) I didn't have a biz card so contact me at: www.davidharringtoncampbell.com
if you're so inclined.
Finance in Hollywood followed the GOP finance model, just as it was followed globally.
Welcome the chickens, they are coming home to roost
Ms. Broderick has certainly addressed many issues that I as a 54 y o woman face every day as I go about putting together work assignments. The comments on her post also make many valid points, however, as with any issue the current problems within the creative community are not caused by one set of people. (Lech - "I can speak from personal experience that most Hollywood execs are not the least bit interested in art or creativity." There are quite a few Hwood execs who care a great deal about art & creativity.) As long as these issues are viewed as sainted labor v. greedy, stupid management or greedy, stupid labor v sainted management, nothing will change. All - all - sectors of this biz need all of the others, that includes creative talent, managerial talent, production talent, catering talent. You can't make a movie without a script and actors, you can't make a movie without production people, money and distribution and, hey, you can't even make a movie without a catering truck or at least some guy who makes the pizza run.
I don't know how it works in television, but my friends who hold ANY position in TV have far more security and income than 90% of the artists who don't work in TV. And, "SCALE" DOES NOT EQUAL "MINIMUM WAGE" IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY! Independent producers and directors don't have a union that protects them. SAG "scale" is absolutely fair. However, scale on anything over $10M for anyone (cast or crew) is shameful. And equality? It can't even be discussed publicly in Los Angeles County without retribution. Even more shameful is the fact that "scale" for assistants is the same as it was 20 years ago. Thousands of people have been laid off ... many of them are the worker bees who champion projects endlessly, work 70 hour weeks with no OT, return the phone calls of independent producers and directors and are the reason an "A" list exists. Surely the studios could spend $20M less on the next blockbuster and "reward" the "little people" they just fired with employment for another year?! A SAG strike should focus on figuring out how to protect their members in new media and creating dvd language that makes sense. And by the way, the gay community in Hollywood is extremely powerful, just as it always has been. They've been running studios since the 1930s. They don't need our help, for they have chosen their battles wisely for decades. Hollywood needs re-booting, undeniably...but so does America. Share the wealth? What a concept!
For those who would 'blame Canada' - well Canadian actors are not doing great either. US productions are great for Canadian crews, the actors get the leftovers, those small roles that allow the producers to gain points that qualify for Canadian tax breaks. Other creatives are completely left out in the cold which is destructive to Canadian culture.
As to Alliance/Atlantic, that corporation grew on Canadian tax dollars through Government funding and I have yet to see any payback to Canada.
I fully support SAG in having the courage to take on these corporate giants and hope the American people get behind them as well. It is in everyone's interest to keep your artists alive. The tabloids that trumpet actors excessive payments and lifestyles are owned by the media corps that keep the actors down.As long as the public thinks that they all performers are spoiled and over-indulged, why would they be sympathetic.>? Perhaps especially in the current economic climate when bread and butter issues are widespread.
The latest nightmare for actors is expecting them to become corporate shills with product placement everywhere. You don't even have to watch the commercials if the programme IS the commercial.
I have been a voice crying in the wilderness about all of this for some time. Great to see Huffpo not only allow (some) actors a blogging voice but also get behind the tinsel and glitter to the real issues facing working artists.
Well done. Those multi-nationals have been attempting to destroy the acting profession since the 80s. Reality Shows. Computer-generated performances. Squeezing pay scales, and now blatant union busting. And I still don't see anyone connecting the dots to create the big picture. WHat of the dreaded C word -CULTURE. Exporting the US culture has been the mainstay of American power and influence since the 30s. At the Cannes Film Festival market this year the United States had no place for the first time in 65 years. The corporate heads don't care, they have branches everywhere, there is no loyalty to the US.
Great article. I hope things in Hollywood do change for you and the other 'middle class' actors/actresses. But keep in mind the words of Frederick Douglass.... Power concedes nothing without a demand !!!
Beth, You're right on the money. Thanks for the clear, intelligent, accurate post.
"The health of a society can be measured by the vitality of its middle class."
This is an astonishingly disgusting lie.
It's a gross oversimplification, perhaps. Historically speaking, the middle class has been the vital catalyst for progress in modern civilization... but "progress" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing socially as it does technologically.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the health of a society can never be higher than the vitality of its middle class?
You evidently astonish easily and seem to have missed the point. For most of human history--and in most countries, even today--there are two social classes: the rich and the poor. Only in modern representative democracies--usually with some mixture of capitalism, public education and social safety nets--have systems evolved that permit a middle class of any size or vitality to form, via upward social mobility.
If not by the well-being of a middle class, then by what should social health be measured? How oppressive and self-indulgent the rich can be with impunity? How hopelessly downtrodden the underclass stays? How sustained the ambient level of actual guns-and-bullets class warfare is?
Great article, Now let's include EVERYONE creative. Painters, sculptors, writers, dancers----all of us. All the money goes to a few top stars, mostly white males annointed by the system. I'm an artist in Santa Fe, NM; we used to sell $93 million a year in art products....now, we are becoming a film town. Guess what, the money is being siphoned off the working local painters & artists. I can only suggest that we BOYCOTT the products. Just don't go to the movies and tell them why. Turn off the TV.
Pulling our energy away is the only answer to these tapeworms. Creative people deserve a living.
H Margret, Santa Fe
It's even worse for novelists. I'm a member of the Authors Guild, but there's no minimum pay for authors. I have five published novels and one novella, and all combined I haven't made on them what I make in a year at my "day job." Far less, in fact. (And my day job is nothing special.)
I think for authors the answer is probably in self-publishing, though I don't think I have the gumption to do all my own self-promotion. Maybe someday. I suspect the answer may be the same for those in film: Pool resources and make and promote your own film. Not that it'll be easy!
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