Here’s in the transcript of an interesting interview with Barry Diller on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday. I don’t consider Diller an objective source by any means. He is on the mogul side of the issue. Still, he does have good insights on, and experience in, the industry. I know plenty of working actors and writers who belong to SAG or WGA, and who make a good living but are not living in Malibu mansions. I am more sympathetic to them. They have serious concerns about what’s going on. AI has them very worried, for example.
The SAG AFTRA and Writer’s Guild AI concerns are legit. Some of their members have already filed lawsuits against ChatGPT for copyright infringement for accessing their materials without compensation or credit. Academia and their publishers are also contemplating lawsuits, too.
Also, when members like Tiffany Haddish and Helen Hong are living in South Central because it is what they can afford, while Barry and the moguls live in Bel Air and Malibu in gated mansions like kings…it’s a problem.
Barry and a lot of the execs need a pay cut.
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From what I read last week, the studio’s proposal was that actors come in to have their likeness scanned, get paid for one single day’s work, then the studio has the rights to their digital likeness to be used in multiple mediums in perpetuity with no additional payments to the actor.
Sorry, but f*ck that.
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“while Barry and the moguls live in Bel Air and Malibu in gated mansions like kings…it’s a problem.
Barry and a lot of the execs need a pay cut.”
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I think that can be, maybe should be, applied to a very large portion of the C-Suite people. Pick your industry, it I suspect it will apply. IIRC even 50 years ago the C-suite pay was 100x the average pay for their workers. Now it approaches 1000x, plus the golden parachutes.
I’m all for people making tons of money, but not at the expense of everyone else. I realize that there are multiple factors that go into the pay discrepancy, but my gut says personal ethics need to be used once again at the C-suite level.
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Unfortunately, this system will never change until it is forced to. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I do know it won’t be pretty.
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As is always the case in these situations, the big stars are refusing to agree to that. Of course, the younger, less established ones, who may be big stars in a year or 2, or five or 10 years, are at the studios’ mercy.
It won’t be long before AI will not need the actor’s likeness because AI will create original likenesses. Probably many of you have already seen this type of stuff but AI creates some compelling images.