| re: You are fundamentally incorrect. | |
| Posted by: ryhog 11:33 pm EDT 05/29/23 | |
| In reply to: re: You are fundamentally incorrect. - sondheimobsessed7090 09:42 pm EDT 05/29/23 | |
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| I would say that what you are doing here is advocating for theatre authors, which is you job and that is fine. You say that union members have a leg up over writers in the theatre but I think a lot of people would beg to differ. A writer in the theatre owns the sine qua non of every production and can negotiate as they see fit. Every other person is replaceable. When they succeed, there is no cap on the upside for the writer; and it is the gift that keeps on giving: an annuity. Obviously for a WGA writer who is a one-hit wonder, it's one and done. I'll take the annuity of the theatrical one hit wonders without blinking. It's pretty facile to say that employees may be better paid in the moment than a playwright. Ask your writer clients if they would rather have the WGA deal. If the answer were yes, the League would jump on it. (And it is laughable to think that the cash flow would be significantly higher. ) Which brings us to your second paragraph. The simple answer is, what you are proposing is intellectually untenable. It's not some mysterious "law." It is the same principle that applies across the board. I have a friend whose family owns a small chain of high end dress shops. The top sales people make more than the owner. But when they die, their heirs do not inherit anything. This notion explains this situation and it has been thus since the invention of capitalism. As I say above, if the DG seriously decided it wanted to be a group of "laborers" rather than owners, they can become employees and the producers will become rights holders. But you can't have it both ways: there is no version of economics in which that can be validated. Owners work hard as hell. Walk into most nice chef-owned restaurants and you will find that the hardest workers are the chef and their dishwashers. You say "if authors had a union and had a union agreement that required authorial approval over orchestrations, I'm sure there would have been an actual precedent set for situations like this in the League's agreement with AFM." Guess what? Any writer who wants approval over orchestrations (or casting, or the color of the set, or anything else) just has to have their agent or lawyer negotiate it in their contract. Writers in the theatre have something quite precious: control. The theatre is a crazy business but most of the people I know who have chosen to jump in have an abiding faith in the success of what they believe in. That's true of producers, writers, and everyone else who has a stake. They don't want to give up what is precious. |
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