Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2012 May 8

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May 8

Just how much do directors get paid anyway?

I've noticed that a number of my favourite films are directed by people who work on one film every 3 or 4 years or so, even as their actors tend to do at least a film a year. Indeed directors sometimes seem to go up to decade between films for no obvious reason. My question is this, how is that financially viable? Do directors get paid a lot more than I realise or do they all make money between films on TV or adverts to be able to make the big pictures? 130.88.172.34 (talk) 00:07, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Film director states "the most successful can earn over $500,000 per film plus a 'back-end' percentage of the profits, which in some cases can lift their income to several million dollars." I can think of several reasons why they work on fewer films. First, only x movies are made a year. Consider the numbers: usually one director per film versus dozens or hundreds of actors. Thus there are fewer opportunities. Second, directors do a lot of work before and after filming. Post-production says "typically, the post-production phase of creating a film takes longer than the actual shooting of the film". Clarityfiend (talk) 01:25, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Between films, some direct TV, write/edit scripts, work on other TV projects like spin-offs of films, direct adverts and pop videos, act, or teach (David Lynch and Wes Anderson make commercials, Spike Lee's doing a lot of TV these days, and successful but not legendary directors like Brett Ratner, McG, Peter Berg, Judd Apatow, or Paul Feig do a lot more than just direct cinematic feature films, with everything from TV producing to the ever-popular vineyard). If a director originates a project it can take many years to get finance together, write the script, get all the talent, etc, but there's a lot of time in that process to do other work, and directors who normally work "for hire" can do even more. Actors also have to spend lots of money looking beautiful and even more money hiding from their fans; the living expenses of a director are far less. --Colapeninsula (talk) 08:52, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both, that explains it nicely. 130.88.172.34 (talk) 14:17, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

A bit more related to this: Directors have a union (in America this is the Directors Guild of America, other countries have similar bodies) which has collectively bargained working conditions for directors, including salaries. Which is not to say that many of the really big name directors earn the minimum salary, but there is likely a "scale pay" for directors. --Jayron32 14:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Greg Ham

It's the time of year when, as a teacher, I normally cover the Land Down Under copyright case in my classes. It's obviously potentially sensitive this year because of Greg Ham's death.

When he died the media seemed to be reporting that there was some mystery surrounding his death, but I've heard no clarification since, and our article doesn't have anything.

Teenage students do tend to bluntly ask about these things. Do we know?

(There's a silly "citation needed" for the statement that "The cause of his death has not been made known." Dunno how one can prove that something hasn't happened yet. Might delete the tag.)

My newest pet peeve is "He died of life-threatening injuries". Duh! -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 10:42, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that's as redundant as it sounds. It is possible, for example, to die of an apparently non-life threatening injury, due to infection. StuRat (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

That is certainly true. But it doesn't alter the fact that it's somewhat weird to describe an injury that actually killed a person as "life-threatening". That type of injury might generally be described as a "life-threatening injury", because of its potential to cause death. But applied to a particular case where it has actually caused death, it's gone just a teensy step beyond "life-threatening", don't you think? It would be like arresting a person who succeeded in murdering someone, and prosecuting them for attempted murder and leaving it at that. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 00:52, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

The latest is that he wasn't murdered.[1] I suppose that may mean his death is now out of the public sphere, and it'll be up to the family if they want to tell us anything more. FiggyBee (talk) 04:19, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Was there an actual trigger for the popularity of spoiler warnings?

I'm aware that spoiler warnings were popularized by Usenet, or at least the term "spoiler warning", although the actual practice of shying away from information about the plot has been around possibly since the beginning of modern mass media. But was there an actual trigger? An event that made Usenet culture shy away from so-called "spoilers" or make users place "spoiler warnings" during descriptions of the plot? I know that the term "spoiler" itself was coined or popularized in an article of National Lampoon magazine called "Spoilers" (which IIRC ironically did not have a spoiler warning), but exactly how did the term "spoiler" as well as the concept of a spoiler warning spread? Although the article mentions the Usenet part, it does not state what was the actual trigger, unlike some of our article on some memes which mention how the meme started. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 11:11, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know whether there was a trigger for discussion communities. One of the earliest findable Usenet posts using "SPOILER ALERT" is from June 8, 1982 and about The Wrath of Khan. (I found it in Nate Freeman's 2010 article "The History and Use of Spoiler Alert") A famous example from 1960 was Hitchock's promotion and notorious "no late admission" policy for Psycho. Apparently, an even earlier "anti spoiler message" could be found in the closing credits of Les Diaboliques in 1955. TV Tropes' article on "Spoiler" might interest you as well, though it mentions no trigger. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:47, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap, which has been running continuously since 1952, includes an exhortation at the end not to reveal the identity of the killer to people who haven't seen it yet. Our article, rather unsportingly, does: Spoiler alert!. FiggyBee (talk) 04:25, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

That isn't exactly a spoiler warning though. Oh, and the detective was the murderer. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 04:41, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Not that I care at all, but there is absolutely no reason for your adding that particular spoiler to this discussion. A useless comment entirely. --Onorem♠Dil 05:03, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Never mind.... I just pointed out that the tradition about The Mousetrap had nothing to do with spoiler warnings at all. It does play a role in the world of spoilers, but not spoiler warnings. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 06:56, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe that the previous person mentioning how our article gives it away has to do with spoiler warnings. In any case, that's not a reason to reveal the spoiler here, but I agree with 'never mind' as your reply. --Onorem♠Dil 07:07, 15 May 2012 (UTC)