Bonus: How The Sausage Gets Made

Her post is regularly framed as some kind of attack on Curry Barker, the director, or the producers, Tea Shop Productions and their financiers. That’s blatantly not true. Choi lays no blame at any of their feet directly and seems mostly proud of her work and of the film, even if she notes the times she and the crew didn’t get enough support. The complaint is much larger than any individual people or singular organizations. It’s about the culture of indie filmmaking.

The most common attitude is roughly “the crew are just hired hands and didn’t earn participation in the film’s box office success.” Which is, to me, both shocking and enraging. It’s shocking to me that so many people apparently possess no instinct to self-preservation and go around saying these things, with their full chest, on Jalen Brunson’s internet. Calling your crew “hired hands” and treating them, essentially, as non-human tools to fulfill your own, all-important vision is beyond horrible and would reasonably make anyone not want to work with you. It’s also a flashing neon sign that you have no idea how anything is made, how a film set works, or what even your job is. It’s a staggering self-admission. And it’s enraging because, my sibling in the universe, how can you treat your collaborators like that? The number of comments liking and seconding that attitude is enough to make a person never want to work in this industry. And certainly never work with any of those people.

The next most common is that the producers took all the risk, sank in their equity and should receive 100% of the profit. We’ll get to the idea of equity in a second, but for right now, let’s talk about risk and reward and who got rewarded and when. The film was made for under $1 million dollar. That came from Tea Shop Productions and from their financiers. I’ve done a little dancing in that particular space lately and, let me tell you, even if it’s a “low budget” film, you’re still talking about millions of dollars and time and energy invested from the producers. Being a producer is a hard, complicated job. And yes, the film has made nearly $200 million dollars so far, but that’s not the important number when we’re talking about risk and reward. The important number is $15 million. That’s what Focus Features paid to buy the rights to the finished film for distribution. That’s when the original producers got their risk paid off. The bulk of the $200 million is going to Focus Features and Universal Studios. I’m sure Tea Shop and Blumhouse/Atomic Monster (who also came on after the film was finished) are doing just fine. But the initial investment has already been paid out. And it was paid out on the strength of the finished film. So the work of all of the artisans involved got that money. Remember that, as I move onto…

“But,” they say, “the crew agreed to do the job for that rate and they were paid for their time. They didn’t put any equity into the production.” To them, I ask you to read Choi’s post again. She details how she did several people’s jobs, wasn’t paid for mileage, went far above and beyond her job description to make this film. She saved the production hundreds of thousands of dollars that they didn’t have to pay to other crew and she did it because she believed in the script, in Curry’s vision, in the production. Sweat equity is still equity. She risked not covering her rent or other life expenses to make this movie the best she could. As a culture, we constantly downgrade the value of labor and this is just another way to do that. Labor is equity. Underpaid labor is equity.

And on that same point, indie filmmaking takes place outside of the boundaries of union protections. The implicit threat in any non-union negotiation is “I’ll get someone else who will do it for less.” There’s only so much leverage an employee can use to push their pay or benefits higher. Especially in a job environment like we’re in. Expecting people to sacrifice their livelihoods on principle or give up any ability to complain about it is owner class bullshit.

One of the things Choi says in her post is that she regrets not flipping the production to a union production. And the common refrain is that doing an indie film production at union rates would make doing indie film impossible. To those folks I say, you ran into the point and then right through it to the other side. What you’re saying is that indie filmmaking is built on the exploitation of labor and there’s no other way to do it. Which is, I don’t know, wrong? Because if you don’t have the money to pay to your crew, maybe you don’t have money to make this movie? Why do we absolutely have to balance the production on the backs of the crews? Union shoots do cost more…because the crew is better protected (and even then, not protected enough). What you’re saying is that you’re willing to sacrifice the lives, sanity and welfare of your crew to save a few bucks. Does that sound like something a good person says?

The final point that kept coming up is the “Do they want everything?” accusation. Like Choi was insisting that every dollar of the box office flow directly into her pockets. Which, again, is flagrantly false. But also ignores the sales price. Remember that? The producers made more than 15 times their investment to sell the finished film. If they had set aside just 2% for the crew to divide, it would have meant $300,000. They were still more than paid back their initial investment. But that money would have been life-saving to a crew that lives gig to gig. That’s the money their work earned. Yes, the movie may not have sold. Lots of movies do not sell or don’t sell for that much. But however much they do sell for, the crew is responsible for a significant portion of it. If you don’t want to divide that up, then pay them better upfront. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that you don’t have enough money to pay them properly in production and then turn around and say they didn’t earn any share of the sales prices. If a producer wants to assume all of the risk, then they should assume ALL of the risk. Pay union rates, even on non-union projects. Hire a full crew. Cover mileage. Go above and beyond, out of your own pocket. Then you can say I took the risk, I get the reward. But right now, you’re asking other people to take the risk along with you and then shutting them out when the reward comes. Again: does that sound like something a good person does?