bouybye🪴

I make films

[Jordan Crucchiola @JorCru]

What bums me out the most about this Obsession discourse is the amount of “way to bury your career with an IG post.” It treats reprisal/blacklisting like a foregone conclusion instead of something that takes participation to uphold. No one should be punished for raising concern!

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

Girl, you’re mad about people wanting to restructure a broken institution and transform it into something that provides a sustainable life? You’re fucking weird for that.

[Minh Do @minhsmind]

The moronic producers and Hollywood people justifying that an art director shouldn’t get part of the upside of Obsession’s $300mil take DO NOT actually understand the history of Hollywood.

This is a direct letter to people like: @lukebarnett @mjarbo @notmikeharlow

Residuals (the way that creatives, actors, directors, etc get paid long-term for their work on films and tv shows) were a hard fought journey for unions spanning strikes and decades of battles as the economics of film and tv changed from the 1940-1960s.

These were hard fought battles that creatives went through to get paid. And these battles happened during massive transformation to production and distribution. The economics of Hollywood have changed multiple times in the last decade and these battles are still being fought. We’re in the midst of even more transformation now. Today, I think the unions have still not found the best deals for people. The fight continues. And to imply that the status quo is okay is: cynical, mean spirited, likely privileged, and gate keepy. In my opinion, people who justify the status quo suffer from a failure of creativity and imagination (an irony given they claim to be creative or are in a creative industry).

The fact that Sally Choi @kiwisupreez went on a limb, put her reputation on the line, and let the public know the situation, should be commended and we should take this chance to interrogate entertainment economics, as we always should. It should never stop. Just because she didn’t invest any money doesn’t mean she didn’t take a risk with her time and expertise and cannot be potentially compensated on that with a percentage. Even if it’s a small percentage.

Who knows where this goes. If this gets noisy enough that the producers and investors do something about it, that would be great. With YouTube, AI, social video, micro dramas, and more threatening and diversifying the paths for audience building, distribution, monetization, talent discovery, and more I think talking about how people are compensated for creative work of all kinds needs to be a constant exercise.

[Richard Newby @RichardLNewby3]

I think people should be able to openly talk about compensation on indie movies when studios make millions after purchasing the film. I think it’s weird to try to discredit someone’s job or suggest their time and skills are less valuable because they’re new in the industry.

[Jeff Zhang 张佶润 @strangeharbors]

“That’s not how it works.” Yeah, no fucking shit. That’s why we need to have a conversation about it? You’re all Marxists until it comes to a horror movie you love that just grossed $200 million.

[Joseph Kahn @JosephKahn]

Indie films are a cheat code for distributors to put all the legal and financial burden on independent producers. Crews get underpaid in exploitive working conditions, occasionally harmed or killed, but none of that affects the studios that cherry pick the survivors.

Theoretically there should be a budget floor to these movies - a line that shouldn't be crossed to ensure safety and fairness - but it's actually applauded when labor is crushed as sticking it to the Man, when ironically the Man is who actually profits. It's celebrated when a filmmaker is able to make their film as close to zero as possible in one of the most hand crafted, labor intensive industries today.

Micro budget indie film market is an unregulated cheat code for studios to make the cheapest product possible, hammering crews, with none of the risk or responsibility.

What we should have are major studios and streamers green lighting more $10 million films. Yes, more $10 million Backrooms, less $750k Obsession. The only reason Obsession wasn't made for $10 million when the script was clearly great is either a failure of imagination from the executive class, or the filmmakers trying to avoid dumb ass notes.

Yes Backrooms was heavily supervised so it's a bit of a triumph of producer supervision, but Obsession could have been made with that budget without Osgood Perkins looking over Curry Barker's shoulder.

Instead of indie filmmaking Hunger Games, the solution to all this is smarter executives making more decently funded smaller films and staying the fuck out of the filmmaker's way.

[Joseph Kahn @JosephKahn]

"Art director making $300 a day is a livable wage."

One thing people don't understand about the film business is it's feast or famine. You may not work for weeks or months so that money has to be saved and amortized.

Then the Obsession crew lives in LA, so they're paying the highest rents, highest gas, highest utilities, highest insurance (to be fair they keep voting for it, but that's another story).

A 14 hour day doesn't account for 1 hour of traffic each way. Indies can routinely go 12-18 hours.

Art department is an especially brutal crew. They are the first to get on set, the last to leave. No set, no shoot.

Then crew heads don't really get paid for their time. Reading the script? Free. Thinking about it? Free. Talking with the director? Free. Creative discussion, creative obsessing, detail planning on weekends. Free free free. The time on the clock is not the time on the job.

$300 a day on an 18 hour day, before gas or any other expenses, is $16 an hour. The off the clock work is double that. So $8 an hour. Now save that to survive the next actor/writer strike.

Is it a livable wage? Sure. In Iowa if you're a mid level stripper. Not a film crew in LA.

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

do better.

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

It doesn’t have to be a perfect world for equitable film financing structures to exist and be made the norm. It takes people, more specifically, men, to use their privilege to advocate for new structures that benefit EVERYONE involved in the long term.

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

whether it was this little indie movie that popped or another one.

Also, I’m not targeting Curry with this. Idk what they have going on with their team. I’m talking about the bigger picture here and how ALL OF US contribute to an ecosystem of exploitation and how ALL OF US can

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

Insane takes on indie feature crew rates. I’m gonna go take an edible and log the fuck off before I catch a case lmao.

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

They too have complete access to learn their cultures/language yet don’t or can’t. Not that people too focused on the same lore repeating in every adaptation would care to engage with that nuance meaningfully.

Anyway!!!

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

What I find FASCINATING are the complaints about Superman not knowing Kryptonian as if there aren’t first/second/third gen children of immigrants here in this country who can only speak English. I think it’s an interesting nod to diasporic identities.

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

I like IMAX because it reminds me of medium format photography but I don’t need a stoner comedy to look like a fine art tableaux. Different canvases for different purposes is a beautiful thing.

[bouybye🪴 @bouybye]

always fascinated by the difference in appreciation of the arts between general audiences, artists, and critics. The only thing that matters is if you find it worth your time to create. Everything else is noise.