The Disruption Series Part 4: If Actors Say They Don't Take Roles For Paychecks, Why Should We Take Them Seriously When They Say They're Underpaid?

 

During the release and raves about Good Will Hunting in the fall of 1997, the lion’s share of the publicity surrounded the discovery of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both as actors and writers. Left out of the discussion well after the Oscar nominations was Gus Van Sant as the director.

There was a reason for this.  Van Sant had a reputation for being one of the most daring independent filmmakers of the 1990s ever since he had broken on to the national consciousness with Drugstore Cowboy in 1989. Since then he directly the landmark My Own Private Idaho, the messy but interesting Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and the brilliant satire To Die For, the film that officially registered Nicole Kidman as one of the great actresses of our time. Good Will Hunting wasn’t so much a departure for Van Sant as it was an aberration.

With the exception of Finding Forrester, Van Sant soon returned to the independent film world he loved. In the course of a rave review for his movie Elephant, Roger Ebert quoted Van Sant. In it he said, “Because of Good Will Hunting, I have the financial freedom to tell the stories I want.”

In the quarter of a century I have been following Hollywood, this is as close as any creative figure has ever come to admitting that they chose to do a project purely for financial motivation. And to be clear Van Sant only did so in 2003, six years after Good Will Hunting had been a success. Even he tempered his bluntness with the reality of the industry.

I have spent a lot of time and energy berating film critics for their narrow viewpoint that commerce should play any role in the making of movies. However,  they are not entirely to blame for that perspective. For the entirety of the existence of the film industry, everybody connected with any motion picture, be it as small a project as Women Talking or as big a blockbuster as Top Gun: Maverick, as brilliant an artistic project as Tar or as much a franchise film as The Eternals, will always give the same narrative. That they took this project because they saw how brilliant the artistic metal was, that the script captivated them, that the story was one that needed to be told. No one will ever tell you that they took it for the paycheck. You might wonder why Judi Dench chose to work in Chronicles of Riddick the same year she did Ladies in Lavender but in the publicity tours for either, she will say she was equally proud of both. And yes now Anthony Hopkins is telling the world that his performances in the Thor franchise weren’t really acting; he didn’t say it ten years ago when the movie was coming out and he was more than willing to do it in the sequels and say he liked playing Odin again.

The entire creative industry might bitch in private about having to write comic books movies or star in Star Wars franchises, but in public they say they loved the work as much as they would any other film. At no point have any of them ever said something as blunt as Van Sant did when he told Ebert why he made Good Will Hunting. It is for that reason I have a very hard time regarding the WGA and SAG-AFTRA work stoppages with perhaps the sympathy they truly deserve.  When you spend all of your publicity tours say that you are working for artistic purposes but now suddenly argue that the pay isn’t fair, it’s a disconnect that many of the average workers will never be able to bridge. I am far more aware of the problems in Hollywood than the average person, and even I find it hard to find sympathy for the same group of people who have spent so much time and energy convincing the world that they always wanted to play a storm trooper or a superhero’s sidekick rather than the fact it had the highest paycheck possible.

I feel this particularly in regard to everybody who has worked in the MCU. I know the work that actors like Anthony Mackie or Benedict Cumberbatch or Brie Larson are capable of in any other film: I honestly have a hard time buying that they built their careers for this. I find it hard to fathom that Jeremy Renner prefers playing Hawkeye to his work in The Hurt Locker or The Town or that Scarlet Johansson who had gotten four Golden Globe  nominations before she was twenty-two, loved spending her life as Black Widow or that Robert Redford or Jude Law or Glenn Close or basically almost anybody who had a supporting role in the MCU for the last decade really thinks that these roles are of the same artistic merit that they received so much critical acclaim for.

To be clear, I know that in a sense comparing the MCU and franchise films to what the creative forces are fighting for may seem like apples and oranges.  And they may not be. But they speak to the larger problem that I have with the SAG-AFTRA strike overall. If you spend your career publicly saying that  is a privilege to do films like this and that money has no part in your decision-making progress, then how can you walk a picket-line to claim that you are just another member of the working class? I’ve argued already this is a tough sell for the Dwayne Johnsons and Meryl Streep’s; its far more difficult to do so when you’ve spent your life denying that your career isn’t a career in the same sense that most of us view it.  How can you argue that you’re the same as those of us living paycheck to paycheck when you’ve spent your life denying the paycheck isn’t why you do your job?

While this is not generally true when it comes to TV, I find a certain irony that so many of the showrunners who spent so much time arguing their earlier works were art rather than commercial now are making the argument that the business doesn’t help. David Simon spent much of his career for HBO arguing that ‘crowd-pleasers’ like The Shield and Dexter weren’t the kind of thing worthy of the viewer’s dignity, which implied those people were in it for the money. Shawn Ryan was willing to take the money to write The Night Agent for Netflix but is now upset he’s not making enough money in residuals. The Jenji Kohan’s and Amy Sherman-Palladino’s that loved making their art for Netflix and Amazon are now upset that that it isn’t adequately compensating them. So much of their attitude seems to be of buyer’s remorse more than that of the plebian.

Now they’ll all claim they’re not doing it for themselves, but for the rank and file – which I guess I’d take more seriously if they weren’t the ones doing all the talking and furthermore, since they work taking most of the credit for all of the awards shows for their series or the performers of their movies.

 

Don’t get me wrong: I do support many of your battles in principle. But after this strike, a little candor would be appreciated going forward for all involved.  Perhaps one side or the other should include riders for all celebrities associated with any project to make at least one comment saying something along the lines of this: “I’m appearing in a DC movie so I can earn money to make the movies I want” or “No one should compare this franchise as the kind of work I’d rather be doing” or “There really aren’t any better roles for me going forward.” All of this would at least do something to make it seem like you celebrities are just like us: sometimes you do jobs you hate just so you can make a living. Maybe then we could work up a modicum of sympathy the next time you complain about being underpaid.