The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost nothing | Hacker News Reader

The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost nothing

bloomberg.com

175 pointsTerretta27 comments

Talk about method acting. The creators truly immersed themselves in the role, taking on the standard industry practice of getting screwed over by record labels and production companies.

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”

― Hunter S. Thompson

:-( that sucks.

One that surprised me not long ago was that The Verve never got anything from Bittersweet Symphony (ironically). They had sampled a song that itself was a cover of a Rolling Stones tunes from 20 years earlier. The Stones demanded (and got) all the royalties.

Fun fact - the volume on BBC iPlayer goes up to 11 :-)

The Stones didn't demand it, their former manager Allen Klein did. Ironically, the last person that got the money was producer Andrew Oldham who was pretty much solely responsible for writing and producing the string arrangement that was actually sampled (and I doubt the session musicians that actually played the instruments saw a penny)

tbf the Verve had the 18th best-selling UK album of all time and two other top ten hits off the back of Bittersweet Symphony's airplay, so I think they still ended up in credit

Are session musicians typically given royalties? I assumed they are just hired to to a job and are given a payment for time in studio.

It wasn't a Stones song that was sampled — Andrew Oldham Orchestra had done a cover of it in 1965 [1]. As I understand it the Stones had been ok with that, and then subsequently, he was ok with The Verve sampling some of it...until the Stones' former manager took exception [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKC5cdGBY04

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony#Song_cre...

Session musicians don't usually get writing credits. Nor do session arrangers.

Occasionally the session players get a credit if they've spent time with the artist co-writing the song.

The difference between making a session contribution and co-writing the song is ambiguous and contested.

As a guide, adding a single instrument line doesn't count as co-writing - not even if the line is so distinctive it effectively makes the song. (This is grossly unfair, but it's how it is.)

A string arrangement doesn't count as co-writing either. Not even if it adds a catchy tune.

Arguing with the performer/producer about chord sequences, lyrics, the main vocal melody, and song structure does count as co-writing. But session musicians who do this are on thin ice if they try it without tacit permission.

The irony being that "The Last Time" by the Stones, was a rip off of the Staple sisters

But it's super important that copyrights last forever so creators can be encouraged to create.

The Orchard is developing a film transparency platform that addresses pretty much exactly this problem.

http://transparency.theorchard.com/

http://www.indiewire.com/2016/09/orchard-transparency-platfo...

(disclosure: I'm working with them as a consultant.)

But the problem with Hollywood accounting isn't that distributors are unable to transparently share financial details. It's that they've worked very hard to find ways to obfuscate it, so as to reap higher profits.

What incentive do the distributors - your customers, and gatekeepers to using this approach - have to adopt it?

Surely, this is a technical solution to a non-technical problem?

The Orchard actually is a film (and music) distribution company itself. The idea is that transparency is a competitive advantage against other distributors.

If the talent demands all related transactions be disclosed through such a platform, then it might have some effect? The studios are going to resist it tooth & nail though.

Getting a screenplay bought is like winning the lottery. It's a buyer's market.

Plus, now that every single agent knows about hollywood accoutning (and probably knew about in 1980) it's not even a problem. If you want a cut, you ask for a cut of the revenue, which isn't fakeable.

Instead of a 1% of profit, you ask for 1% of revenue above 75 million.

Tell that to the Tolkien estate who had an agreement of 7.5% of the gross, but did not see a penny until after taking New Line to court.

http://deadline.com/2008/02/more-bad-news-for-new-line-tolki...

Apparently one trick is to delay paying royalties for years by saying "we still haven't received all the revenue on this feature from all the companies we licenced it to in year x".

Here's the Rolling Stone article Harry penned to get his side across:

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/harry-shearer-why-my...

Also relevant: Sly Stallone is suing over Demolition Man monies too.

This is getting effing way interesting. Hush money only goes so far considering Shearer has Simpsons F-YOU money and principles on his side.

Previous related discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14042871

I probably missed that in the article -- did their contract provide for sharing profits (so studios legally had to pay) or not (maybe poor contract, but at least the way things happened was legal).

I'm not a fan of studios or current copyright laws, they are horrendous. But, being the devil's advocate: I think the model often is that studios provide exposure for young artists and get profits from first success. If a movie is a hit, artists get real money on the second and later ones.

If that is the case, the contract is somewhat morally defensible (60k in 1984 was more than it is today).

In Hollywood, if your contract stipulates profit sharing, expect to get nothing. Hollywood accounting makes sure no profits are made within the company you have a contract with. You need to get paid up front, or based on gross revenue.

> Hollywood accounting makes sure no profits are made within the company you have a contract with.

A phrase I've heard to explain this is "Every time a building burns down in Tunisia, it gets charged against Star Wars"

The guy who played Darth Vader in the original trilogy has never received any royalties, because those films never made a profit.

Not just Hollywood. Any time someone offers to give you some proportion of "profits", in any industry, say no.

Well treat it like stock options.

Assume value is 0 and eval the deal. If the deal is otherwise good go for it. If you need an expected value to make the deal good, don't do it.

Demand a revenue share.

The problem is conflict of interest. If you make a deal with company A, but for no reason profits are moved to company B, then someone at company A is committing fraud.

Which reminds me of a thing that a niche but big-name-in-that-niche fiction publisher did a few years ago.

They channeled ebook sales through a foreign subsidiary and claimed it wasn't really a publisher but a distributor. This gave them an excuse to pay authors 30c for ebook sales, when they should have been getting $2.

Obviously Niche Publisher pocketed the difference.

There was a class action suit and eventually the publisher settled out of court for $4m. A quarter of that went to the lawyers.

BigCo content companies are staffed by thieves and parasites. Being creative isn't the worst job in the world, but it's unusually good at attracting thieves, fraudsters, and other vampires.

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