05.02.01
The first official space tourist has happened.
Some yahoo paid 20-million dollars to the Russians, for a ride in their rocket to the International Space Station. I am deeply disturbed that some guy, just the be cooler than everyone else, had nothing better to do with more money than, barring unforseen circumstance*, I will ever make in my entire life. 20-fucking-million dollars.
Which got me thinking about the nature of money itself. Well, sort of.
As wel all know, I love television. I like movies a lot, too. If contract negotiations don't go through, all of the writers of television and movie scripts are going to go on strike. Which means that there will be no shows to tape for me to watch in the fall, nor any movies to be filmed for me to watch in the theaters next spring. And, potentially, if the strike demands don't get met, should the strike occur, all of the ACTORS may go on strike too. This is ultra bad.
Now, the studios say that they can't afford to pay the writers more than they already do pay them. I say poppycock. I'll say it again: POPPYCOCK!
Do the cast members of Friends really need to make some ridiculous amount of money, like a quarter of a million dollars each, PER EPISODE recorded? Will their quality of living be degraded so much if we cut that down to say, $100k per episode? That would put $900k (6 primary cast members x $150k each they'd get paid less) back into the budget for each episode, which I'm sure could pay for ALL of the studios writers for ALL the shows on NBC for an ENTIRE YEAR. I'm fairly certain that the quality of Matt LeBlanc's life isn't going to suffer all that greatly if he has to take 3 years to pay off the mortgage on his $5-million dollar mansion instead of being able to pay for it in cash up front.
The same goes for all of the television shows. If a show needs to have a 2-million dollar budget per episode, it sure as fuck better have the coolest special effects EVER. I'm serious. None of this "I can actually see the bluescreen behind the actor's heads" crap that they shovel onto our screens with shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch/Goes to College -- dude, they could at least TRY to make the animatronic cat look real.
Don't even get me started on the movie industry. I like Julia Roberts, I like Bruce Willis, hell, I even like Kevin Costner -- he was good in Bull Durham and Tin Cup -- but do these people really need to make 10- to 20-million dollars per film**?
I liked Erin Brokovich. I think Julia Roberts did a great job in it, but for someone who claims that they love acting so much that they'd do it even without the big paychecks, she doesn't really seem to be rushing down to the soup kitchen to donate one of the 3+ $10- to $20-million dollar paychecks that she makes each year. Trust me, Julia Honey, if I can live off less than $20k a year and be relatively happy, you can make do with a piddling $40-million. Trust me.
Now, I don't want to cramp the Hollywood lifestyle -- I know it costs a lot to live bi-coastally and maintain a house in Europe somewhere, so I'll say that the top actors should make $5-million per picture, with or without a percentage of the back end profits from domestic, foreign and video rentals/sales. If every big actor that's making more than $5-million dollars per movie right now took a pay cut, the writers could also be paid more at every studio for at least the next year or ten. If it weren't for the words flowing out of their brains and into scripts, Julia and Leo and Bruce and Kevin wouldn't have anything to draw a fat paycheck with -- I doubt they'd get paid $20-million to just stand there and be pretty on-screen -- we already have supermodels to do that.
Of course, they'll never listen to me. I'm just Joe Q. Viewer, with a strong opinion about the state of affairs in the entertainment industry today. It's not the violence and sex that is wrong, it's the crazy pay scale.
*Not all unforseen circumstances are negative, mind you. The ones of which I speak would be if one of the following were to happen: a) inadvertent invention of something that netted me millions -- I'm unlikely to ever purposely invent anything, b) inheriting fat wads of cash from a benevolent and wealthy stranger -- I don't know anyone offhand who is either of these, much less willing to leave me a cent, or c) marry extremely well. I always did want to be a trophy wife.
**I thought about lumping Leonardo DiCaprio into that list, as an example of an over-paid actor -- he made $10-million for that piece of shit The Beach, about which the only positive thing I can say is that it gave Virginie Ledoyen an intro to the American public, but then I'd have to say I liked him to maintain the flow, and I really really don't like him at all. He did a really great, extremely convincing job playing the retard in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, but I don't see what the appeal is beyond that***. I thought he was funny-looking when he was a little twerp on Growing Pains, and I think he didn't change all that much as an adult. God knows, he's still got the physique of a little boy. Ew.
***Half the time, Keanu Reeves does a better job of emoting, and is certainly a far more attractive specimen. He was so yummy in The Matrix, that I wanted to get up and lick the screen midway through. Meow.
