
The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost nothing - Terretta
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-20/this-is-spinal-tap-s-400-million-lawsuit
======
fdej
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.

~~~
fuzzfactor
“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

------
aidos
:-( 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 :-)

~~~
notahacker
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

~~~
runeb
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.

~~~
aidos
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKC5cdGBY04)

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

------
empath75
But it's super important that copyrights last forever so creators can be
encouraged to create.

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

[http://transparency.theorchard.com/](http://transparency.theorchard.com/)

[http://www.indiewire.com/2016/09/orchard-transparency-
platfo...](http://www.indiewire.com/2016/09/orchard-transparency-platform-
cartel-land-indie-distribution-1201726035/)

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

~~~
Seol
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?

~~~
rhino369
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.

~~~
runeb
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...](http://deadline.com/2008/02/more-bad-news-for-new-line-tolkien-
sues-4846/)

------
6stringmerc
Here's the Rolling Stone article Harry penned to get his side across:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/harry-shearer-why-
my...](http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/harry-shearer-why-my-spinal-
tap-lawsuit-affects-all-creators-w474441)

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.

------
teh_klev
Previous related discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14042871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14042871)

------
ptero
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).

~~~
delinka
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.

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

~~~
brianwawok
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.

