Wait hold on Tumblr girlies have been carrying that show on netflix for well over 10 years now and the guy responsible for it hasn’t gotten a GOD DAMN DIME?????
Nor the actors, writers, set people, tech folks, and anyone else involved that made it happen. This - this is why they’re angry. This is why they deserve a new contract!
"It's gotten to the point where I think a lot of people can't believe it if they get a residual for $25," O'Brien said. "They're so used to opening those envelopes and it's 30 cents."
O'Brien, who has appeared on dozens of shows, from "Grey's Anatomy" to "Pretty Little Liars," shared images of residual checks from more than two decades ago worth $47.49, $87.77 and $216.25. Others, from the past few years, amounted to $1.63, 43 cents and 1 cent.
ID: a tweet by Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. @\ClapIfYouLikeMe,
do the studios realize that the current state of streaming residuals absolutely destroys the moral case against piracy
like the moral case against piracy is "people deserve to get paid for their work" except it turns out the people getting paid aren't the people who did the work
/ end ID
Rise of the Pink Ladies was nominated for choreography Emmy this week. You cannot legally watch an Emmy-nominated show because god forbid the studio has to pay workers for it—that’s the state of the industry with streaming right now. That’s why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Nobody is making anyone go into scriptwriting. No one is born in a Netflix company town where their dad takes them into the script mines at age 12. Fuck writers who want to get paid more than once for the same job. They should only get residuals AFTER all the people who do REAL WORK, like construction, grips, costume, makeup & animators etc. Most of them are much better at their jobs than writers especially for streaming services, and they are what screenwriters can lean on & novelists can't.
People need to realize that the unions for white collar people like WGA or SIEU or NEA (public sector unions are why cops who kill the people they were supposed to serve & protect remain employed get pensions) is not the AFL-CIO or any other historical union fighting for the lives of the people who built the country's industry and made it run, any more than the NRA are the Minutemen of 1775 New England.
First, go fuck yourself, you fucking scab. No, seriously - you don't come to my blog and spout off about what workers deserve unions and decent pay and what ones don't, like it's your fucking decision. The intellectual labor that writers perform is just as real as any other work done on a film set - "all who labor by hand or brain" is the inherent logic of industrial unionism for a reason.
Second, writers aren't asking to get paid more than once: residuals are deferred pay, you absolute moron. In Hollywood, whether it's writers or actors or voice talent or whatever, you get a small fraction up front - it's usually an ok check, depending on the union's day rates and so forth, but you can't make a living off stitching these together - and then most of your pay comes from monthly royalty checks that provide you with the income you need to live off when you're between jobs.
The problem is that, historically in Hollywood, residuals have been structured with a very long "tail" - the payments start out relatively low and then get more generous over time as the show has more seasons and (presumably) goes into syndication. This doesn't work with streaming's new business model, where increasingly shows are getting 2-3 seasons max and streaming services have become increasingly quick to not just cancel shows but yank them off their servers in order to avoid paying residuals.
So what WGA writers are fighting for is a system that ensures writers (but also actors and other creative workers, because the unions pattern bargain) get a fair share of the show's revenue, even if the show is only given 2-3 seasons.
Third, the U.S labor movement would not exist today if it wasn't for white collar workers and public sector workers. About half of the U.S labor movement - 7 million workers - is public sector, and those workers are overwhelmingly women of color, mostly working as either teachers or postal workers. Likewise, about half the U.S labor movement is made up of white collar workers, and we're graduate students and adjuncts and lab researchers, teachers and social workers, administrators and IT departments.
I'm both public sector and white collar, and I'm a member of an NEA union. I'm an adjunct professor who earns $6,000 a course and it's my job to get working adults with jobs and families who've never gone to college or who've been out of higher ed for a decade to graduate with a bachelor's or a master's. If you don't think that's real work, you're free to research and write all the lectures and powerpoints, deliver those in an entertaining and educational fashion, answer a flood of questions from students who need help navigating academia, and then grade all the midterms and finals and research papers.
...FYI.
One other data point to add: at any given point in time, 95% of the WGA is unemployed.* So what money you do manage to make needs to be enough to last you a while. (A five-figure script minimum may look like a lot, viewed from the outside... until state and Federal taxes have had their bite of it, and you realize that whatever's left may be the only writing money that person makes for a year. Or two. Or five.) This is where residuals become vital.
*I refuse to use the anodyne old theatrical-arts euphemism for not being engaged in paid work, "resting". If you're about to be broke (again!), trust me, rest is the last thing on your mind.
Hey y'all. With the Writer's Guild of America on strike, you might be hearing a lot more about something called "residuals," which are payments that the writers get for the studios continuing to air their work on reruns and such. Already I'm seeing people trying to frame the union trying to bargain for better residuals as greedy and unreasonable, so I just wanted to give you guys a peek into my dad's full, 100% real residual payments for writing some of the most watched episodes of American late night television.
Yeah lol. If u hear anyone trying to frame the conversation around residuals as writers being greedy, please do me a favor and punch them straight in the face ❤️🙃🙃
What the fuck… netflix only pay in full once a show reaches season 3? And by rebooting daredevil and restarting it as season 1, Disney+ can get away with not paying the crew in full
yeah netflix doesn’t pay residuals to actors/writers/etc. until after season 3, meaning none of them get paid for streams of their episodes the way they would if the show aired on live broadcast. now you know why Netflix almost always cancels its own original programming after 3 seasons
This is so true I didn’t think about important reruns.
This makes so much more sense than “they canceled your favorite show because you weren’t posting hard enough”
There’s more that could be said about this, of course. (There’s always more.)
…But this is why some of us who’re in possession of what could be enjoyable filmed properties look at the present situation and think, “Why would I willingly enter into this kind of deal, knowing what’s all too likely to happen—both to my series and the people who’re going to sweat blood to make it happen?”
…With the additional thought, kind of growled in the background: “Maybe it’s time for another strike.”
