Right, the very naive way I was thinking about it is this:
There are jobs that produce goods/services where the ultimate payoff to those goods/services is uncertain. The question is how to allocate that uncertain risk and payoff across “creatives” vs. “corporates” (for lack of better terms). At one end of the spectrum, you have a fixed wage (and corporates bear all the risk/reward) while at the other end of the spectrum you have a minimum wage with high residuals (where creatives bear most of the risk/reward).
Residuals shift more of the high payoffs to creatives. If you’re talking about a setting where the total payoff is fixed (which I think is true here; aggregate profits certainly don’t seem to be growing for the producers/distributors), then that shift should be accompanied by a tradeoff; if creatives are asking/demanding more upside, they should be willing to accept more downside as well. That means lower fixed salaries, shorter guaranteed seasons, smaller guaranteed writers room members, etc. to accompany the high residuals. But as far as I can tell, the creatives don’t seem to be willing to compromise in that direction. Instead, they seem to be asking for both a higher floor (in terms of guaranteed salaries for creatives involved with projects that turn out to be flops) and a higher ceiling in terms of residuals for hits.
It’s just an unusual industry that I really don’t know anything about, but I find the whole thing both confusing and fascinating.
I mean, he AGREED to the terms of the profession when he APPLIED to join the profession. The most strident libertarian freeze peachers alive should resoundingly agree with the process here, except they don’t actually believe in what they profess to believe in.
When they were originally negotiating streaming was an unknown and neither the studios or actors knew the business model. Because no one knew what it was or how to count residuals they left them out of the contracts. Then Netflix blew up, became a studio on its own and showed the studios that they could run their own streaming services and cut actors and writer residuals out of the expense column.
With hindsight the actors and writers would have negotiated residuals up front.
It’s not all there is though. Part of “learning the lessons” from kinda being getting caught off guard by the switch to streaming is that the writers and actors are now also trying to anticipate the impact of AI and other technology on the future. Will some version of ChatGPT draft spec scripts or suggest alt jokes? Could an art AI read a script and generate storyboards? Can you use a standard day player contract that assigns images and likeness rights to the production company in perpetuity? These are all things that the unions seem to be trying to negotiate about now, and the studios aren’t really engaging so far.
Dont think this is neccesarily true. If you were a main cast member on a show that got into syndication with 100+ episodes, you were essentially set for life.
All I’m saying is, if the residual formulas mean Warner Brothers pays Matt Savage more for Lucky You than Netflix pays Aaron Paul for BB, we can probably at least discuss some changes…
I think the only thing that I would add is that while it’s natural that when we talk about actors, writers, and directors, everybody immediately thinks of the rich and famous, the vast majority of these people, even the ones who are working, are not rich and famous.
The question of why the pay structures are like this is less important than the fact that it’s always been like this. And like everybody else, these professions do not want to be victims of the disruptiano.
In general its hard to gross me out but holy shit at this one.
"And on June 30, a traveler on an Air France flight from Paris to Toronto found his seat’s footwell still wet with a a previous passenger’s blood and diarrhea.
Habib Battah told CNN that he noticed a strange smell, “like manure,” but when he alerted a flight attendant he was handed wet wipes and had to clean the area himself, before being offered blankets from business class to soak up the waste. “We had to sit there smelling the blood for the next seven hours,” he told CNN."
