Sunday, June 12, 2005

Maybe Set the TiVo!

We've had a lot of items here lately about our dear friend, the late Howard Morris. So I thought I'd mention that one of his big movie roles — Boys' Night Out, co-starring Tony Randall, James Garner, Howard Duff and Kim Novak — airs this coming Thursday morning on Turner Classic Movies. It's not a great film but Howie is fun to watch in it. And if you do tune in, see if you can spot composer-actor Frank DeVol ("Happy" Kyne on the old Fernwood Tonight show) in a funny, unbilled cameo under a lot of make-up.

• Posted at 10:02 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

People have been debating whether Mark "Deep Throat" Felt was a good guy or a bad guy, and these debates often seem to be conducted on the assumption that he had to have been one or the other.

I don't think many public figures — especially in government — can be fit wholly into one of those two classifications, and I see no reason to expect that Mr. Felt can be so tidily rated. His motives in leaking to Bob Woodward were probably some mixture of wanting to protect the F.B.I. from abuse by the Nixon administration and wanting to advance his personal agenda. In the grand scheme of things, I suspect he was less important to the toppling of a president than he was to the career advancement of Woodward and Bernstein. I don't think what he did was dishonorable or illegal — that's the spin of those who cast their lot with Richard M. Nixon — and to the extent he did it to expose corruption, I guess he's a hero.

But only for that one series of actions. He wasn't a hero for what he did soon after. This article tells all about that.

• Posted at 4:20 PM · LINK

No Strike, No Residuals

I should have posted this the other day but a potential strike has been averted by actors who provide voices for video games. The rough terms can be read in several articles online like this one. As you'll see, the unions backed down on their demand for residual payments, which is not good. On the other hand, they got a nice increase in up-front fees, and the residuals battle can be fought again another day.

I did want to comment on this paragraph from the article to which I just linked...

Game producers had balked at providing residuals, arguing that people don't buy games because of the actors who appear in them. "That would set a precedent for hundreds of other people who created a game to say, 'What about us?''' industry attorney Howard Fabrick recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Both sentences are a little light on logic. Obviously, the actors are a factor in the sales of a game. If not, the employers would just grab a delivery boy, give him fifty dollars and stick him in front of a microphone. That they pay to get accomplished actors is proof that it does make a difference.

And, yeah, if actors got residuals, then everyone would want residuals. But voice actors have been receiving residuals in conventional animation for many decades, and the producers haven't had a lot of trouble in denying them to everyone else. And directors, writers and actors get residuals on live-action films and TV shows and somehow, this hasn't led to the cameraguys and caterers getting residuals.

One other point: If you Google for some of the other articles on the settlement, you'll see a number which refer to residuals as "profit-sharing." No, residuals are not profit-sharing. Profits are amounts that are calculated based on subtracting what something cost to make from what it grosses. Residuals are fixed fees for re-use that have nothing to do with what a project cost to produce or how much money it took in. This may seem like a trivial distinction but it isn't when you work on a show that's popular enough to be rerun hundreds of times but the studio is still claiming it's not in profit. (Has Paramount stopped claiming that Star Trek lost money?)

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK

June 13, 2005 • Current • June 11, 2005