Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread [ARCHIVED] • Page 460

I always think about Harrison Ford when this sort of thing comes up. What did he use his fame for? Maybe there are a handful of examples I am forgetting or don't know about, but he spent his career jumping from blockbuster to blockbuster. Some of them are still great movies, but that seemed mostly coincidental.

 

The problem is that you are both comparing such actors to *complete* “sell outs” like The Rock and Harrison Ford, rather than successful actors who can and do purposely avoid such big movies in the first place. In the former framework, yes they would be more commendable. In the latter, it is laughable to think that they are doing something that is at all worthy of even the slightest praise that you are giving them. Like them all you want and be happy that they do more artful work, but again it is comical to think of it as if they are making a sacrifice (no matter how minor) in the first place. I’m not “upset at actors pay scales,” and to frame what I’m saying that way just makes it seem like you aren’t even reading what I’m saying.

“Someone else is just going to make that money anyway” is an absurd way of looking at it, and allows for excusing the exact system that you complained about one post ago. One facet of our celebrity culture is that an A-list actor is not actually as tiny of a cog in the machine as they are if you look at is solely through the lens of the amount of work that they contribute to a project. They are the mouthpieces of the system, and they have an influential voice and consciously use it all the time. To then excuse their culpability in that system on the basis that they aren’t making *as* much money as before or that others are profiting off of it more than them is just ridiculous.

 

The actors are not really the reason these mega-franchises exist, but instead the mega-franchises are a large part of the reason many other films cannot make money.

Tilda Swinton has probably made a decent amount of money in years of work in independent cinema, but she took the superhero money anyway. In real terms, every time someone is in one of those movies it means there is another movie they cannot do, and on that level it is disappointing. However, judged on the sum of their work, she comes out looking better than most other actors. Are there other actors who have never taken the paycheck? Sure, but it has become harder and harder to find them.

It isn't so much about commending them, but rather taking what we can get and scaling things relatively. I understand your frustration at the supposed valor; if George Clooney gets "only" 500K for a movie, has to share a trailer, and the catering is from Olive Garden instead of a five-star restaurant, that really isn't slumming in a country with people freezing to death in Texas and an eviction crisis looming over our heads. However, when someone doesn't take the 20 million for Star Wars 19 or Avengers 6 but makes a movie with a respected indie director, they are, in a way, giving back to the film community. Brad Pitt can still light cigars with hundred dollar bills while many of us delay paying a bill until the next paycheck gets direct deposited, but it is unrealistic to expect actors to live in a cockroach-infested apartment so they can do micro-budget movies and off-off-Broadway. Even the great actors were at least partly motivated to enter the field because of the money.

 

why does it feel like the big actors ARE the execs now lol

 

Brad Pitt seems to have used his money and clout well. Plan B studios has funded some great stuff.

But what exactly do you want people to do, here? Do you want actors to collectively establish a cap on their salaries? Do you want us as consumers to collectively decide to stop paying to see huge movies where actors are getting paid in the multi-millions? Do you want actors to stop talking about taking less money for a project? Or for people online to not think that's kind of cool because it helped an interesting movie get made?

 

sortof yes to that last part haha

 

Are there well-known actors who never took the paycheck? I can't think of any.

 

it's a pretty normal career path for big stars, to get into producing. Most of them are still collectively nowhere near the big studio execs, but yeah many have gone into producing. Some of the differences are guys like Pitt have invested in independent movies/mid-budget movies because not many other places are providing money for those projects.

 

Actors actually used to have a lot more power than they do now, at least when they remain just actors. Actors used to be able to choose their own directors and were the selling point for a movie. Nowadays it is much more about the franchise. That is why they can change Spider-Mans every other year or kill off Han Solo and keep making billions.

 

it kinda seems from the outside like the industry now is just a bunch of people who farm out jobs to their collective inner circle of powerful friends. the whole things pretty weird if you ask me.

marvel franchise literally is every single known actor ever except for no poc actors.

 

The odds of "making it" as an actor are so insanely low. I'd never hold it against any anybody who achieved some level of demand within the industry and used it to collect some big paychecks.

Different actors are motivated by different things, just like everybody else. As long as they're professional / friendly / competent, I couldn't care less if they go for the money or choose to focus on other things. They don't owe anybody anything.

 

I’m not proposing anything, but yes all of those things do sound good?

 

daniel day lewis, unless you count lincoln or nine

 

I agree, they’d be great.

 

Again, this downplaying just removes the actors from the equation entirely. Just because they aren’t *as* powerful as before, doesn’t mean they are voiceless. There are few people whose voices are heard as much as famous actors. That’s why politicians and advertisements leap for the chance to get endorsements from them. You don’t even have to make the full argument that they have an ethical obligation to speak against the system in order to make the much more basic argument that at the very least, them doing such franchises and spinning it as commendable in the broader sense is them functionally running cover for those exact franchises.

There’s just no need to do this, though. You of all people are typically the last to try to make some half measure justification for something that is simply bad lol.

It’s as simple as this: doing something for money is fundamentally just not commendable. At best, and for most people in most cases, it is simply ethically neutral — that they are doing something for money because they need money to survive, etc etc. In the case of big name actors, they can make in a matter of months what most people will never make in their lifetimes. Those who do so should be looked upon negatively, as it is not just that they do it for an absurd amount of money, but by doing so, they are also lending significant credence to a system that I think we can all agree is categorically bad. Actors who solely do such work are worse obviously, but even those who operate under the framework of “one for them, one for me” are still just as much a part of that. Such people should be criticized for doing the franchise movies, rather than particularly commended for the non-franchise work they do simply on the basis that they *could* instead be selling out.

Making a structural critique does not mean having to categorically excuse the actions of the actors operating within that structure, especially when they knowingly benefit greatly from it and work to perpetuate it on that basis

Again, this juxtaposition just obscures the reality. It’s not either/or, and it shouldn’t be. A successful actor can easily make more than enough for multiple people to live off.

 

I definitely count Nine.

 

I am always disappointed when I see a director or actor who has made good work go the franchise route. The months and years spent doing that stuff is time they aren't making bold or challenging cinema. We agree on the basics. However, I am going to prefer someone who only occasionally does blockbusters or someone who abandons blockbusters as compared to people who do them pretty much exclusively.

It doesn't mean they are heroes or great people or anything like that. Actors and directors have huge egos and are probably mostly awful in real life. People are generally too invested in these people.

 

I mean the road to the sort of thing being talked about here is extremely long and actors are not the core problem so while I agree with a lot of the critiques, the change has to come from energy directed elsewhere. Actors aren’t going to collectively strike for lower pay, and while there are lots of famous and rich actors there are far more in SAG who actually are scraping by and worried about health insurance so as with anything, the problem is structural. I don’t complain about athletes in sports making millions, I complain about the owners

 

I wouldn’t really compare it to athletes on the basis that for athletes it actually is pretty binary: they play in the one league or they don’t. I guess I don’t know if there are many nuances about international sports leagues, but I have to imagine that the basketball leagues in Europe are likely structured in the same way and have similar issues as the NBA, at least when it comes to the financial issues I have with them lol

Successful actors do have a wide swath of choices, though. Outside of fame/money, having those kinds of choices is likely one of the bigger reasons actors seek to become successful in the first place.

And yeah I’m not at all saying such people are at all on the same level of bad as studio execs or whoever else we all agree to be completely bad.

 

some athletes make much more in international leagues (thinking nba here) for having star roles in those leagues vs being benchwarmers in the nba and making a minimum salary

 

There are lots of athletes that will switch teams for higher salary or to play in a city with a bigger media profile. In many ways it is a bigger issue in sports because there is a salary cap, which means if you ask for a raise someone else has to take a paycut or lose their job.

 

well, not all sports have a cap, but yes. if anything it’s worse in sports without a cap, where teams in lower revenue cities are paying their players peanuts vs. what someone on the yankees makes. and those players all inevitably leave to the big cities to make exponentially more.

 

Michael Oher Tells the REAL Story Behind The Blind Side

 

Finished RE4! I read that there's extra content where you can play as Ada, so that's exciting. I think Raccoon City in 2-3 has the better setting/story/atmosphere (and it doesn't hurt that they're updated remakes where the controls aren't clunky) but 4 was just so much fun.

 

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