Friday, May 22, 2009

Wanna-Be Be-Ware

One of my "pet" issues is stopping the exploitation of the young and aspiring by entrepreneurs who seem (sometimes deceptively) to be in a position to make their dreams come true. In the field of cartoon voiceover work, we have a lot of folks out there who are offering "coaching" and lessons and access to agents, and kids who yearn to follow in the voicesteps of Mel Blanc and June Foray flock to them. Some charge reasonable rates and do their charges much good. But some charge them a fortune and deliver little of value. One way to separate the latter from the former is that the former often turn down potential students as lacking sufficient talent. The sleazy kind never seems to turn away anyone who has sufficient cash, no matter how little promise they may show.

Artists get scammed in different but no less scummy ways. Lately, aspiring or outta-work animators are being solicited to enter "contests" in which they labor for free on projects which may or may not ever amount to anything...and if successful, may or may not reward their volunteers. The terms might as well say, "We get everything, you get nothing except what we decide to give you." That's not good for an artist's wallet, career or soul. (Last time I pontificated on this subject, I got an e-mail from a self-proclaimed "enterpreneur" who insisted there's nothing wrong with gambling and he pointed out that I once spent a lot of time playing Blackjack. I wrote back to him that, first of all, I didn't bet my career on Blackjack, and I was also playing a game with clearly-defined payoffs if I won.)

Lately, Amid Amidi over at Cartoon Brew has spotlighted a couple of these cases of getting kids to work for free by calling it a contest. Here's one and here's another. Amid and I have friendly disagreements about many aspects of the cartoon biz but we're on the same page on this one. And I fear that with the economy zooming about like a well-greased luge ride, it's only going to become more prevalent.

• Posted at 5:35 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

The McClatchy newspaper folks do a fact check on Dick Cheney's noxious speech yesterday. And Joe Conason compares it with the Obama approach to democracy.

• Posted at 10:10 AM · LINK

Stripped Down

The L.A. Times, a newspaper with declining sales, on the declining market for newspaper comic strips.

• Posted at 10:05 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I saw this on the blog of my pal Paul Harris and decided it belonged here, too. It's a video from the mid-seventies (around early '77, I'd say) — excerpts from a local talk show in the midwest. The guests were all new, up-and-coming stand-up comedians discussing what their lives were like and this video has been edited to focus on one of them, a new kid named Dave Letterman. The other two are Dottie Archibald and Gary Muledeer. I dunno what's happened with Ms. Archibald but Muledeer is still out on the road touring and performing, usually as the opening act for Johnny Mathis.

At the end, Letterman is asked about how he feels about performing sans pay, which was then the norm at most comedy clubs. It would not be the norm for long.

• Posted at 12:31 AM · LINK