Spinal Tap Royalties Lawsuit

Although I know nothing at all about the situation regarding Spinal Tap, I agree that this is an important attempt to thwart the highway robbery that has been ongoing in Hollyweird since the silent film, with the writers on the short end of the stick.

cmhbob said:

...Shearer talks about "Hollywood accounting" (in which Return of the Jedi and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix never broke even) and how the lawsuit affects all creatives.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/...inal-tap-lawsuit-affects-all-creators-w474441

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Ironically, whenever a movie is called a flop, the studio will argue that it's actually quite profitable. Otherwise, I suppose, they'd be in trouble with the stockholders.

I gather in Hollywood, all movies, from Avatar to Ishtar, make just enough money that they don't have to pay the people who actually made them.

For years, producers/studios would give talent "a percentage of the net profit." There never was any. Le's say the epic flicker garnered $1 million a the box office. A percentage of that was owed to the theaters that screened the show. So let's say the producers' share was was now $600.000.Then the bills come in, which lower everyone's percentage and thus, the money owed them. There's $80,000 for a full length mink for the leading lady (and who is Mrs. Producer) to wear at the Paris premiere, not to mention another $150,000 to take the stars of the flicker across country on a posh train, plus hotel suites and $90,000 for roses for the ladies in the cast. There's $17,000 for Bernardo of Hollywood to photograph all the stars and $300,000 to rent a yacht at the Cannes Film Festival and $75,000 for Champagne and $40,000 for brandy.
Every year someone from Hollywood bills the production for the Cannes trip and for new teak furniture in his office in Hollywood. Everything man can dream up goes against the net and the net is so far underwater you could not make an Esther Williams film there lest she get the bends and bleeds from the ears. This year -- 70 years after the epic opened -- hep cats who were not even born yet when the movie was made are taking teak office furniture off against the net. It is called "Hollywood Accounting." And don't forget the hookers and rent boys who somehow get hired to work on the movie even though nobody much sees them.
Of course Czarina Putin has absconded with $400 billion dollars in funds owed to the Russian masses but we are new to all this over here.

Then there's always the cost of distribution. The bigger the film, the more copies needed, the higher the distribution costs ... so that the cost of distribution exactly equals the otherwise unallocated income from the box office -- and never mind that the distributor is the studio using a different letterhead....

Compared to Hollywood and music, publishing is squeaky-clean and run by Boy Scouts.

Twick said:

Ironically, whenever a movie is called a flop, the studio will argue that it's actually quite profitable. Otherwise, I suppose, they'd be in trouble with the stockholders.

I gather in Hollywood, all movies, from Avatar to Ishtar, make just enough money that they don't have to pay the people who actually made them.

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See also: Buchwald v. Paramount