There is no net

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Screenwriters have "scoffed at a plan that would scrap the current residuals system -- which makes additional payments for the reissues of movies and television shows on DVDs and elsewhere -- and replace it with an approach that would pay a bonus only when a property becomes profitable. Producers, meanwhile, [have] brushed off the writers' demand for expanded residuals." -- from Michael Ceiply's appraisal of the looming strike situation in today's (9.1) N.Y. Times.

The bonus only-with-a-profit idea sounds fair to the unititiated. The bottom line on the writers' side, as I understand the thinking, is that nobody trusts producers and studio execs' definition of a film being in profit because of the decades of experience that led to that famous line in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow: "There is no net."

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on September 1, 2007 at 10:48 AM

comment #1

Hickenlooper says ...

This idea of a bonus is absolutely and laughably ludicrous. A good friend of mine who has directed, written and produced a number of very, very profitable indies has never seen what is fairly owed. He has had to spend hundreds of hours filing one lawsuit after another just to get proper accounting. Something radical has to be done because as creatives we are living in a business model that is very 19th Century.

Posted by Hickenlooper at September 1, 2007 12:34 PM

comment #2

malibugigolo says ...

Get all you can upfront and run as fast as you can.

Posted by malibugigolo at September 1, 2007 12:49 PM

comment #3

Dzayson says ...

STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!

Posted by Dzayson at September 1, 2007 2:52 PM

comment #4

Jack Price says ...

When people like Peter Jackson can't even get Bob Shaye to cough up the proper accounting records for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy... or studios like Fox refuse to acknowledge that low-budget lotto tickets like Napoleon Dynamite did anything more than "break even" despite all the overwhelming evidence proving otherwise...

Hell, I honestly feel hopeless here. I feel like something even more radical than a strike has to happen before this prevalent corruption comes anywhere close to finding correction.

"What then must we do?"

Posted by Jack Price at September 1, 2007 4:10 PM

comment #5

christian says ...

revolution.

Posted by christian at September 1, 2007 7:19 PM

comment #6

Hickenlooper says ...

I don't mean to sound like chicken little but there is so much arrogance at the studio level now, they have gotten away with so much for so long, I think we are looking at a very ugly, long, drawn out strike that will ultimately change the business as we know it, and conceivably break the unions or make them stronger. Insiders I've talked to are looking at a year or more walk out with millions of movie goers turning away from features and network TV forever, much like the MLB strike of 1994. It's come to a head and there is no turning back.

Posted by Hickenlooper at September 1, 2007 7:30 PM

comment #7