MIKA the better one wrote:
Look at it like this, back in 30s and 40s in film MGM, etc Film studios, OWNED Actors, paid them a daily rate and sorta screwed them.... Not paying them what they were worth...... then law was passed and studios could no longer do this, and the "Golden Age" of hollywood died, many said film would suffer and no artists would or could do what studios did for them...... But we found better more provocative, artistic films emerge...... A Clockwork Orange would never exist had studios still run Film....
Ahem...Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange 1971 (written by Anthony Burgess, who sold the movie rights to Mick Jagger for $500) was put out by Warner Bros. & Hawk Films, with Warner doing most of the distribution.
There was a scare that Kubrick might have had to go indie because his financial backers were worried (especially after the amount of money he spent filming Waterloo).
Also, without the financial backing he would never have been able to make Full Metal Jacket or The Shining.
And the 30s (I'm still undecided on the 40s) may have or may not have been the "Golden Age" of cinema. Sure the movies were good, but the golden age IMO came right after that when you had guys like Laurence Olivier (still the best actor in the world), Bogart, Gable, etc around. And then you had the musicals, think Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire (still the best dancer in the world)...Singing in the rain, Showboat, An American in Paris, Gigi, Carousel, Annie get your gun, Calamity Jane, Till the clouds roll by, High Society..jeez, i could go on. And later, there was Kirk Douglas in Spartacus (another Kubrick film)..and Brando.
And then, in the 70s you had Pacino (Serpico, Godfather) and DeNiro (Taxidriver, Deer Hunter). All i'm saying is that good movies are being made all the time. Its just Hollywood churns out a lot of commercial crap these days.
To a certain extent, i can understand studios putting their actors on an hourly rate etc, because the studios pay for everything that the actors want. The studios also paid for singing lessons, dancing lessons, language coaches (which pretty much equals what Bob said about big labels helping bands with managing tours, funding, recording etc) but its just as well that law was passed about studios paying actors an hourly rate (or similar).
