Okay, PD, there are, I'm afraid, a number of mistakes.
If you don't mind, I'll try to respond, in general, both to the
original poster, and to your response to her.
Her complaint, I'm afraid, is one that I hear a lot, in reference to a
whole bunch of different things -- why do (fill in the blank -- rock
stars, movie stars, sports stars, whatever) get paid so much while (fill
in the blank again -- nurses, cops, teachers, poets?) can hardly earn a
living.
The original poster, I'm afraid, has made a common mistake, which is to
conflate *importance* with *value.*
Obviously, nurses are more important to our society than, say, rock
stars. No nurses, we'd be in big trouble. No rock stars -- eh.
So why shouldn't we pay nurses more than rock stars?
Because what we pay people isn't based on how *important* they are. Pay
is a function of market forces, not importance. And that is a measure
of value. Value is a measure of supply and demand. How available are
the skill sets that allow people to become nurses and what is the demand
for nurses. That's what determines the going pay rate for nurses.
That's why Doctors get paid more than nurses.
That's why top-rated screenwriters and directors -- admittedly
significantly less *important* occupations than either doctor or nurse, get
paid significantly more than both.
I graduated from NYU Grad Film School which, at the time I graduated,
had a graduating class of around thirty students. Pretty much all of
them wanted to go on to become feature directors.
Now, at that time, if you graduated from medical school, presuming you
wanted to be a doctor, there was a very good chance that, ten years
from graduation, you would be working as a doctor -- you'd be doing what
you studied to do.
You know what the success rate was, graduating from NYU -- one of the
top two or three film school in the country?
Less than one student per class. That is, out of three graduating
classes, maybe you'd have two students who went on to be professional full
time directors of feature films.
Screenwriting is slightly less competitive -- but only slightly less.
And when you think about it, it makes sense.
Look at how many features are released in this country in a year --
even including indie features.
Maybe three hundred -- three hundred and fifty.
How many people want to be one of those directors -- not simply a
director directing a feature that ends up going direct to video, or ends up
unrelreased (of which there are hundreds more) but of directing one of
those features that actually gets a theatrical release?
And how many would-be feature directors -- recent graduates of film
school, commercial directors, directors of music videos, people directing
their own stuff in their back yards, or raising their own money and
shooting their own features, are clambering to be one of that elite group?
Tens of thousands?
Hundreds of thousands?
Meanwhile, Scorsese is making his next feature, and Spielberg is making
his, and ever major director is making his -- and the kid who just
graduated from NYU is not only competing against them, but against every
other kid in his graduating class, and in every other graduating class
from every other film school, and against every kid who's already
graduated and is already out there working.
Ditto with screenwriters.
That's what's known as -- a highly competitive market.
You write a poem, what is at stake financially? Someone might publish
it in the New Yorker, or in a small literary magazine, or they might
publish a book of your poems, if you are sufficiently well-known. But even
very successful poets aren't all that terribly "successful" in that
business sense -- in the sense that there is a huge market demand for
their material.
There is, even for the most popular living poet in the world, at best,
only a tiny demand, in a financial sense.
So why in the world could there ever be more than a tiny financial
return for even the most popular living poet?
On the other hand, Hollywood movies, which these days cost, at the low
end anywhere from ten up to a hundred and fifty million dollars, are
looking for writers who are capable of delivering work that can attract
audiences that justify that kind of expenditure. Hundreds of millions of
dollars are at stake based on their ability to deliver work of
suitable quality (and again, we're not talking quality in a critical sense,
but quality in the sense of -- will the movie that comes out the other
end succeed or fail).
If I can write a movie for a million dollars that goes on to earn half
a billion -- it seems to me that I've more than earned my million.
If someone else thinks it's easy -- give it a try. And while you're at
it, the Super Bowl is coming up tomorrow. Trot on out to the field and
see how you do out there. It's easy to win games and call this or that
player a bum sitting at home in your chair. Not so easy when you're
actually playing out on the field.
Regarding the distinction between writers of fiction and screenwriters,
you almost have it right but not quite.
Novelists, poets, playwrights retain copyright. When their work is
published or performed, they are licensing their material for limited use
in certain markets for a set period of time. They retain the underlying
rights, unless they specifically sell them (which of course, they can
do -- an author can, for instance, sell the movie rights to his book,
retaining all other rights).
It is a different state of affairs for other kinds of writers. Not only
for movie writers, but also for game writers and certain other
writers.
We perform what is known as "work for hire." We do not own what we
write. The author, for legal purposes, and thus the copyright holder, is
the studio or the producer who has either hired us to write the
screenplay or, in the case of an original screenplay that we may write and sell,
it is whoever has bought the screenplay.
That may sound a bit backward, but that's the way it works. I can come
up with something totally original to me, write it, sell it to someone
else -- and then *they* become the author, legally.
They own all rights, in perpetuity, in all media currently in existence
or yet to be invented, throughout the universe. That sounds like a
funny phrase, but that's how it is, in fact, phrased in the contract.
So yes. We get a lot (or at least in principle, we can get a lot) --
but we also give up a lot. Everything, in fact.
However, there is one advantage to our work being considered "work for
hire" which owning your own copyright denies you.
It means that you are, from the perspective of the Board of Labor,
considered to be an employee. That means that we had the right to organize.
And we did. We formed the Writers Guild of America.
This was back in the thirties and the Guild did things like set minimum
pay scales for low and high budget features (and these aren't exactly
budget busting -- for a high budget feature -- anything over 5 million
dollars, the minimum is $77,000), allows us to retain certain other
rights -- not by way of copyright, but through *contract* with the guild
and - and this is an important correction -- the Guild took control of
credit arbitration.
That is, producers have the right to replace the writer. That can do
that if they choose. In fact they can have as many writers as they want
on a project.
What they can't do is decide who gets credit. When the movie gets close
to being released, they generate a "tentative credit notification"
document which they have to send to every writer who was involved in the
project -- saying how they'd like the credits to read.
If anyone objects, it then goes to the *guild* to be arbitrated. Then
all the relevant drafts will be sent over, presumably without anyone's
name attached, and the various parties can attach statements making
their case -- and the guild decides who gets final credit and how it will
read.
Obviously, however these decisions turn out, someone is going to be
happy and someone isn't. But the point is, we are no longer at the mercy
of producers or directors to decide who gets credit (say, maybe --
*they* do, for our work).
As for the strike -- in general terms, the issue comes down to this. In
the past, much of the money that we've been paid for television
episodes, what we call "residuals" -- are really deferred payments. The
argument has always run -- look guys, we make these things at a loss up
front. We don't really make any money until they go into repeats. So we say
-- fine. Pay us X amount up front and we'll take the rest as "residual
payment." So we get a certain amount up front, and then less for the
first repeat, then less for the next, less for the next, less for the
next.
And the idea is, since we agreed to this deferred business, rather than
getting paid up front -- we're always going to get something, so long
as these things get aired -- we'll always get a few pennies. We'll
always get a share -- although the majority of it comes from the first
dozen or so airings.
And when the VHS market came along our feeling was -- it's the same
kind of thing -- it's like repeating the show, only in a more tangible
form. But, they said -- hey, it's a new market, we don't know whether it
fly or not. So we substantially reduced the percentage, on the basis
that, as the numbers became clearer, we'd renegotiate.
Well, the numbers became clearer, as that market became the dominant
source of income for the industry. But the numbers never changed.
Now, as we're shifting in the direction of the internet, we find
ourselves facing a real sea change. Because, for instance, LOST has foregone
traditional reruns in favor of straight-to-internet airings. What would
have earned a writer of Lost $20,000 in residual payments -- not extra
money, but money that was really deferred, is now going to be a mere
fraction of that based on any formula that the producers are now
advancing.
And what happens five years from now, or ten years from now when,
potentially, every show is rerun in this way -- when traditional re-runs
simply cease to exist?
And when traditional DVDs, when that whole market has given way to
streaming video, for which we currently are being offered next to nothing?
I know that there is probably a whole world full of people who are
saying -- so what? They already are earning enough. They already are
earning more that I do, writing my poetry part time.
I'm not trying to knock anyone else. I've been very fortunate in recent
years -- but you also have to realize that there have been many years
when I've starved. I've had years when I've earned six figures, five
figures -- and four figures from my writing (back when I was working in
TV).
There have been years when I and my wife have lived in our one bedroom
apartment with our two kids and our two offices and I've cranked out
scripts and lived half off an option check and some residual payments and
our credit cards.
The nature of this business is cyclical. You can sell a script for a
quarter of a million bucks -- and not work again for three years. And
having residuals and having royalties (and for DVD income, by the way,
they are called royalties -- I'm not exactly sure why the distinction is
made) can make the difference, for many of us, between financial
survival or destruction during those fallow periods.
I recently had a discussion with a friend of ours on this subject and
the question drifted to the Baseball Players strike of several years
ago, and she had said that she was annoyed about it -- that she felt that
the players didn't need to strike, that they "earned enough."
And I had asked her -- did she think that the team owners, who
certainly earned far more, not only than any individual player, but far more
than all of the team players put together, "earned enough."
And she said that she hadn't really thought about it.
And that's the point. What the players earn get it the papers. What
Steinbrenner earns -- and what the "corporation" earns -- doesn't.
Again, people seem ready enough to say that we are "earning enough" --
but don't seem disposed to ask whether or not the heads of massive
corporations who, while they are awarding themselves multi-million dollar
deals that far exceed what the guild *as a whole* is taking in, are
stonewalling us and trying to get us to take a deal that will -- five or
ten years from now, put us in a situation where a substantial portion of
our income has been cut away -- that just maybe *they* are not only
earning enough, but have, for a good many years, been earning too much.
NMS
