Just thought I'd post a quick movie review. It's a movie about a children's book-making team... the movie is 'Dedication'.
Just the facts ma'am:
The advance offered to the illustrator: $200,000.00 with a $5,000 bonus for meeting the deadline.
The advance offered to the author: $100,000.00
The book: A stupid story about a horribly behaved miscreant beaver named Bucky or something.
The deadline: The book is due in 3 weeks... but the author hasn't had any ideas yet.
The work: None to speak of. Even with a looming deadline of 3 weeks all this creative team could manage was to lollygag around in cafes, waiting for inspiration to strike. I never actually saw a single illustration being created, though in one scene I did see the writer finally get out a pen & paper.
The inspiration: Failing to come up with any good ideas about a misbehaved beaver in Manhattan, the creative team has to retire to the idyllic shores & waterfront mansion in the Hamptons to find inspiration. They couldn't seem to find any there either.
Total time working on the book out of the entire movie: About 8 seconds. The rest of the movie was all spent working on the so-called romance, though I fail to see what redeeming features the author guy had.
I thought Hollywood had painted our profession badly enough with 'The Door in the Floor'. But they've really outdone themselves with this one! The trailer was much better than the movie.
:0)
p.s. I do wish real life was like this movie and we did get paid like that.
6 comments:
The decimal point is certainly in the wrong place in that fictional advance! I suppose they were going to get a 30% royalty too!!!! LOL...
They probably thought that no one would believe it if they quoted realistic fees.
I can see we will be explaining forever that we aren't all rich beyond our dreams, and that it takes months of work to complete a book!
Such is the myth... it will continue.
Such is the myth. I remember before I started out thinking that with just one book published I could retire on the earnings.
Such a comedy of errors!
At first I thought you were making this up, now I see that this is an ACTUAL MOVIE.
Who says the fantasy genre is dead??? ha!
I just added the film to my MUST SEE list. Of course my must see list is over 400 titles long. But, I moved this one up to the first 100. Still, it might be a while before you see me drawing a movie review of it.
Heavens. It sounds like a horror flick.
I just finished a book WAY past its deadline. But in real life, editors are swamped, work piles up, deadlines get pushed back, and those decimal points are way off.
LOL
Hi John! I had really wanted to see this movie when it came out but never did. I wondered how realistic they would get it. Obviously, they didn't. I really love the amount of money the illustrator was given. Who came up with the numbers? I remember once a long time ago, back in my school days, when one classmate decided he wanted to be an illustrator only because "they make lots and lots of money.Maybe he became the creative consultant on this movie...LOL!
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