Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread [ARCHIVED] • Page 459

The script likely gives away the obvious bad shit. When it comes to big budget stuff with lots of action and/or CGI, it’s gotta be much harder to tell since they have such little conception of what the finished product looks like

 

Nothing wrong with getting paid

 

Though it's wild how bad people are with money. I read through that list and tons of people doing jobs because they went bankrupt or were in debt.

 

It depends on the frequency. Doing a blockbuster or two can help pay for an actor or director to do a lot of interesting work, but when they start phoning it in and mostly taking the easy roles it is a waste of talent. DeNiro did so much garbage for years until The Irishman came along.

 

Actors always talk about doing shitty work to help support themselves financially, but I never see anyone talk about exactly how much money they’re actually making. Jonah Hill famously talked about only getting paid $60k for Wolf of Wall Street, and it’s like sorry dude but that alone is still quite a bit of money, even if that is the gross that ends up getting split between you and your agent and whoever else. Not to mention what leading actors get normally. A leading role in a film probably takes up, what, 1-3 months of an actor’s life? Not to mention all of the shit that just gets comped for them, or if they do commercials or whatever else.

 

please respect dirty grandpa

 

Doesn't seem like hill complained about getting 60k. He just wanted to really work with Scorsese.

 

I didn’t mean to imply that he complained. But he and others have talked about it as a notable thing by virtue of how little it relatively is.

 

We are definitely talking in relative terms. Actors will make more money in "small budget" movies than most people make in a year.

 

That’s what I’m getting at, though. Everyone very easily buys into the “one for them, one for me” framing that actors love to use as an explanation for why they do the work they do, but the actors who are even in that position to begin with aren’t exactly the ones who are struggling to make ends meet.

The point is just that if you’re going to sell out, simply own up to it rather than try to paint yourself as a more sympathetic victim of a system that rewards you far more than you deserve lol

 

I don’t think they’re painting themselves as victims, most of the time. Just showing that to get the movie made they had to take a notable pay cut. And huge actors take reduced pay to make passion projects all the time. It’s not about their personal financial situation, it’s about the finances of what movies get funded and what movies don’t.

 

Like Robert Downey Jr can get $15 million for a supporting role in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but a lead role in a mid-budget movie probably isn’t going to pay even half that. Most actors seem to acknowledge they get paid a lot and live luxurious lifestyles, but their pay is indicative of what studios are willing to fund.

I’m sure Brad Pitt made more on Happy Feet 2 than he did for Tree of Life.

 

I can't fault actors too much for the money they make when you see how much the studios are raking in.

 

“Victims” is hyperbole of course, but they absolutely frame it that way to get sympathy and try to maintain the idea that they are doing it for a greater purpose. Again, you frame it as them taking “reduced pay” as if they aren’t making a perfectly livable income that any actor who is sincerely struggling would take without a second thought

 

Exactly. An actor taking less both makes the film possible and increases its potential for financial success.

 

But it’s all part of the same logic. The famous actors who profit off of this system are never going to be the ones making noise about how much the studio rakes in by comparison. They are the ones who help give cover to it

 

Wow he won’t even get half of $15mil for a single mid-budget movie lol

 

it literally is “reduced pay”. No one is arguing that famous movie stars are barely scraping by. And from what I see it’s not framed as “I had to take less money how will I survive” and more as “I had to take less money to even get this made”, more a sacrifice for the art than for their lifestyle or finances. Critique that if you like, fine. And I’m sure there are oblivious dumb actors who make it seem like a bigger deal than it is but generally that’s truly not what I see

 

no one is arguing that the numbers aren’t absurd. Just talking in literal facts and what they speak to about how movies get made and which movies get made

 

Who is the customer paying to see, though? The vision of the director, the cinematography, the writing, the acting. They aren't paying based on the talents of a board of directors. A lot of the salaries some movie stars gets sound extreme, but relative to the mega-corporations that own the movies it is not that much.

 

If someone is intentionally reducing their earning potential to help interesting movies get made, we all benefit. It can sound silly to say someone made "only" 200K for a role, but that is objectively less than 20 million.

 

Again, you frame it as them making a “sacrifice for the art over than for their lifestyle of finances.” It’s only a sacrifice in the sense that they are sacrificing a comically large paycheck for just a large paycheck. In what other world do we think of such logic as a sacrifice? It is not something to be commended in the slightest.

I’m not disagreeing with this at all. I’m saying that it is just as often the big actors themselves who give credence to this unjust system you’re describing, because even though they may not be making as much as execs, they still greatly profit from it. Just because they don’t profit off it *as much* doesn’t mean that they don’t have the incentive to maintain it

 

if that’s your stance, fine. It’s fair. But when talking about movies and what gets made and actors and what they do, I am going to relatively commend a Brad Pitt who takes smaller paychecks than what he usually makes to get interesting stuff made, when compared to like, say, Dwayne Johnson or something, who seems to go huge blockbuster big payday every movie. It’s a case by case thing and I’m not lauding rich actors as noble heroes, but as someone who likes when small, interesting movies get made, I’ll celebrate the actions that make them happen.

 

It is something that is a lot bigger than them. You can be principled and make only art films, but then someone else is going to pick up that huge paycheck. Pretty much everyone takes the money at some point. Alfonso Cuaron made a Harry Potter movie. Tilda Swinton did superhero movies. There used to be a taboo against movie stars doing commercials, so they only did them in places like Japan, but even that taboo is gone now.

The star system is much less powerful now than it was in the past, so it isn't even as if we can fault them the same way. Other than The Rock, a lot of movie stars are now mainly known for a character. If you look at most of the major blockbusters over the last decade, they tend to cast people who are unknown, from the independent world, or no longer a huge star. Where people used to go see movies for the stars they are now often going for the franchise.

 

That’s the other thing, if you’re upset at actors pay scales, they’re changing. MCU stars are really the last people making that absurd $20 million a movie, give or take a Tom Cruise/Dwayne Johnson.