Royalties

I don't know about the other chewers, but I get a nickel every time someone types my name on the boards. Thanks.

nortabihpmA, nortabihpmA, nortabihpmA, nortabihpmA.
I could ruin you if I wanted to...

There's money falling right out of your bank account everytime Mr. Crowley does that!

I feel terribly sorry for whatever Hollywood accounting place has to keep track of every little bit actor in every movie ever made versus the number of times x movie played on tv to cut them appropriate cheques

Crowley, of all people, should know the dangers of saying my name backwards. Either edit that shit or draw a protective circle around yourself as quick as possible.

This is what gets me. I simply can't fathom that there is some studio accounting department keeping track of Al Leong's TV appearances so that he's never shortchanged for every time someone has the pleasure of watching him die in the comfort of their own home.

And let's face it, the only reason to watch Al Leong is to see him die.

(Okay, I'll be honest, I have no idea who that is, but it sounded funny in my head)

The short Asian henchman with the big goatee in all your favourite 80's action flicks.

It's not actors like Quinn or even Leong that intrigue me when the ideas of royalties come up. It's the actors and actresses who are onscreen for all of 4 or 5 seconds, maybe get one line, and then disappear to never be seen in a movie again. 20, 30 years later and these people still get royalty checks?

Unless they had a bad ass agent, I'm pretty sure most of these bit actors get a one time paycheck and that's it.

See, that's what I would figure but these two posts from Quarant in the Lethal Weapon 3 thread prompted the question...

Well, it just seems kind of odd that every bit actor would get royalties. If they did, the main talent wouldn't ever make any money and the studios wouldn't ever have any money for new films.

I don't know how they do it in the film industry, but in the music industry there's a couple of different types of royalty checks.

First, there's the mechanical royalties to the artist. Say nortabihpmA is signed to a label and releases his first CD. His manager/attorney negotiated a royalty rate for him, and once he pays up on his recoupable expenses (the money fronted by the label), he'll get that royalty rate for each copy of the cd. Supposedly. That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway.

Second, there's performance rights royalties. When nortabihpmA's song is on the radio he's supposed to get paid for that. ASCAP and BMI go around to the radio stations in the country and have them write down the songs they play, and then use funky algorithms to determine how many times the song's actually been played and how many people have heard it (in reality, they audit a station for a week and extrapolate how many stations of that size are like it, and how many listeners they serve, and a whole lot of other crap). Then nortabihpmA gets a check for the supposed number of radio plays for that quarter.

My guess is that the headliners of the movie industry accept a certain upfront salary, plus a percentage on the back end....a percentage of the "profits" of a flick...plus a percentage of additional ancillary income from tv broadcasts and whatnot. One would assume they'd negotiate a percentage of dvd sales, too.

I can't imagine anyone other than the main players getting offered anything beyond an upfront salary, unless there's a formula mandated by their union.

An ex-boyfriend of mine's mother was a child actress back in the 30s. She never made it big, but she'd get the occassional "Third orphan from the left" in a Shirley Temple movie once in a while. And even though she died some years back, he still gets these tiny little residual checks for her. A couple times a year, he'd get in these checks for around 75 cents with the name of the movie printed in the memo. They were like the "Super Terriffic Happy Hour" checks that Jerry used to get on Seinfeld - completely worthless. I think he would just toss them in the trash when he'd get them.

Hey, I've got kids to feed!

Congratulated on getting signed, dude.

Double quote? You owe me royalties, Amfibatron.

Al Leong's agent just contacted me. Apparently I owe him a cheque for $3 for posting his image here.

Thanks a lot, Doc..