How much is enough?

As usual, let's begin with the numbers:

2022

$5.6 billion

$2.75 billion

$942 million

$876 million

$272 million

Between $8 million and $12 million.

The first five numbers are the 2022 profit/operating income of the top five studios in Hollywood. Respectively, they are Netflix, Warner Brothers, NBC/Universal, Sony and Paramount. Source: The Hollywood Reporter.

The range shown below those numbers is what The Hollywood Reporter estimates is the salary range for Studio Chiefs.

Businesses making hundreds of millions annually and apparently; it isn't enough for them. They want to earn a larger piece of the entertainment pie on the backs of the actors and writers. The people who generate the movies and TV series that allow them to earn those gigantic profits. AI is never going to replace the performers who bring in the audiences. Can AI write as well as the members of the WGA? Not in mind.

Full disclosure here: I am a writer. I am not a member of the WGA because there is no union for people who write in the very narrow niche where I eke out a small side income from each year. I tried screenwriting but my works never generated any commercial interest.  I prepare income tax returns as my primary source of income.

In doing tax returns, my client base includes producers, directors, performers and writers. I don't need anyone to tell me just how widely compensation paid to these people varies. I see their incomes. I see how mightily some of them struggle to survive on their meager incomes.

It is true that studios pay a small group of motion picture actors huge salaries. According to Screenrant.com, Tom Cruise earned $100 million from Top Gun: Maverick. It is just as true that some actors toil in front of the cameras and net peanuts in terms of pay.

These studios are so focused on maximizing their profits that they are not above stealing the ideas of others. Oh, you want an example. Okay, let's look at the lawsuit Buchwald v Paramount. You can get the details of the alleged theft of Mr. Buchwald's work here. One note from that tale of avarice. Paramount presented accounting evidence that Coming To America generated $288 million in revenue, but failed to turn a net profit; as defined by Mr. Buchwald's agreement with the studio.

***

If the studios were wise, they would compromise, turn slightly smaller profits and this could all be over. They are not that wise though.

So what is the answer? Perhaps it is found in what happened 104 years ago. In 1919, as studios were tying to merge all production companies and to lock in exhibitors to a series of five-year contracts, four of the biggest names in the entertainment industry got together and formed United Artists.

Suppose 20 of Hollywood's most successful actors and others got together to something similar. They would not have much difficulty in raising the money to compete against the current studios. They could adopt a philosophy wherein the use of AI would be minimized or eliminated. They could make films and TV shows and pay living wages to the performers, writers and others without whom movies and other content could not be made.

Just a thought.

On Independence Day, are we really independent?

July 4, 2023 is our nation's 247th birthday. Cellebrating the day when We the People declared we were free of a monarch who sat on a throne on the other side of the world's second largest ocean. Much has changed in the nearly 2.5 centuries since. Much has changed in just the last decade.

The level of partisan political acrimony is at one of the heights rarely reached in thatn 247 year history. One man's rhetoric only further enflamed the already high tensions between the two dominant political parties. If you disagree, perhaps we should ask Heather Heyer. Or Ashli Babbitt. Brian Sicknick. Roseann Boyland. Wait, we cannot ask them. Heyer was murdered during a peaceful protest of a white supremacy rally. The others died during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. For those who deny that it was an insurrection, let us examine the definition of the term

"Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto"

That is the legal definition of insurrection within federal law.

***

We are caught up in a conflict. Perhaps we should call it what it is, a war. A war for control of our government. A struggle to reduce and ultimately remove our freedoms. We are witnessing attempts at voter suppression not since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Only the illegality of a poll tax is stopping Republicans from instituting them. Not all Republicans are white supremacists. But all white supremacists are Republicans or they support the agenda of the Republican party.

To be crystal clear, it is not illegal to hold white supremacist beliefs. It is not illegal to peacefully rally in support of white supremacist beliefs. But it is illegal to do some things in support of those beliefs. Such as plotting to kidnap the govenor of Michigan. I could list the mass shooting incidents where the investigation deterined thatthe motive was right-wing beliefs, but that's a very long list. Here are just a few.

Colorado Springs night club shooting (shooter motivated by anti LGBTIA beliefs) - November 2022
Buffalo supermarket shooting (shooter motivated by white supremacists) - May 2022
Atlanta spa shooting (shooter motivated by Christian fundemantalist beliefs) - March 2021

In pointing the violence of those on the right (not all people on the right, but far too many), we cannot ignore the violence actions of those on the left. I'm not going to list the actions perpetrated by those on the left. What I will mention are the results of a study by the University of Maryland. It showed that violent actions by the left are 45% less likely to result in fatalities. That being said, violence on either side is wrong."

Violence on either side is wrong. It is the rising level of violence on both sides that is so concerning.

LLLLLL ***

Are we independent? I see attempts to outlaw things that shouldn't be concerning. I do not belief that a drag show library reading is an attempt to create new members of the LGBTIA communities. Christianity is not the official religion of this nation, in spite of the beliefs of some Christians. English is not the official language of the United States, but that does not stop a seemingly endless stream of bigots from screaming "Speak English" at people who are conversing in other languages.

It is 2023 but racial hatred contines. Two black men have filed a $400 million lawsuit alleging that Rankin County Mississippi deputies assaulted two black men inside the home where they lived. Rather than describe the actions of the officers, you can read about them here.

I have written about this before. A dozen years before we saw the video of the late Rodney King being beated by LAPD officers after a pursuit, police officers stopped an insurance salesman named Arthur McDuffie. He'd led them on an 8 minute high-speed pursuit before he . He was driving with a suspended license. When he stopped, they beat him to death. The officer who had lied on the initial statement he wrote, recanted. He testified that McDuffie had swung at him. That does not justify what transpired.

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno was the lead prosecutor when five of the eight officers invoved in the beating were tried. They were acquitted by an all-white uy after only three hours of deliberations. In the rioting that resuled in the Overtown and Liberty City areas of Miami.

Like it or not, the animus exists today. We are less free because of it."

We are less independent today that we were when I was born.

Looking at Legacy Admissions

I have not written much in this space lately. That failure is on me. In the wake of the horrible U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admssions Inc vs Fellows of Harard College; and the endless parsing of their decision, I want to discuss one facet of what are known as legacy admissions.

For those who have not been readers of my rantings, I spent 17 years working at an exclusive, pricy, private school on the Westside of Los Angeles. While I did not work in the Admissions Office, I observed the process from a close perspective due to my role as the administrator of the Financial Aid program. I remember seeing a white board in the Admissions Office where there were 26 blank lines. When that board was filled out each year, at the beginning of the admissions process, the names of the pending legacy admissions were filling a number of the spaces. It was assumed that they would all get one of the highly covveted spaces in the incoming Kindergarten class.

Critics of legacy admissions describe them as "affirmative action for white people." Are they wrong? 36% of Harvard's Class of 2022 are legacy admissions. A 2022 study showed that at Notre Dame, USC, Cornell and Dartmouth, legacy admissions outnumbered Black admissions. Clearly, legacy admissions reduce the diverrsity of the student bodies at universities that engage in such admissions.

Now let's examine the issue of legacy donations. Here are some numbers:

$184.6 billion
$23.07 billion
$49.4 billion?

Those numbers are:

Total endowment of the 8 Ivy League Universities
Average endowment of those 8 universities
Endowment of Harvard



Here's one more number. $4.96 million. That is the salary for the Chief Investment Officer of Yale University. That amount includes a bonus of $2.85 million.

In my humble opinion, legacy admissions at universities are affirmative action for white people.