Is there pay discrimination against female movie stars? Helaine Olen at Reuters thinks so. She writes: Why should we begrudge [Robert] Downey a $50 million payday for The Avengers? The film brought in $1.5 billion globally. Downey’s take was a mere 3 percent of the haul. However ... Hunger Games producers first signed [Jennifer] Lawrence to a deal in 2011. She was still a relative unknown, albeit one with an Oscar nomination on her credits. So they could sign her to play the lead, Katniss Everdeen, for less than $1 million — a relative … [Read more...]
Droit de suite
Legislation is proposed to bring droit de suite - a rule in which some artists receive a share of proceeds from some resales of their art - to the United States. The New York Times reports here, and blog neighbour Lee Rosenbaum analyses the proposal here. I will just deal with one point. Patricia Cohen in the Times writes: Artists have long complained that unlike composers, filmmakers or writers, they do not receive a share of future sales. But that is a very partial view. All artists in all genres can receive one or both of two kinds of … [Read more...]
Today in film tax credits (Updated December 2, 2014)
It never ends: production companies asking for, and getting, tax credits for local production when the economic case is cloudy, to say the least. The Washington Post reports: A few weeks before Season 2 of “House of Cards” debuted online, the show’s production company sent Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley a letter with this warning: Give us millions more dollars in tax credits, or we will “break down our stage, sets and offices and set up in another state.” ... Both seasons of “House of Cards” were filmed in Maryland, mostly in Baltimore and … [Read more...]
Today in tax advice: the winner takes it all
The Guardian reports on Swedish tax incentives: The glittering hotpants, sequined jumpsuits and platform heels that Abba wore at the peak of their fame were designed not just for the four band members to stand out – but also for tax efficiency, according to claims over the weekend. Reflecting on the group's sartorial record in a new book, Björn Ulvaeus said: "In my honest opinion we looked like nuts in those years. Nobody can have been as badly dressed on stage as we were." And the reason for their bold fashion choices lay not just in … [Read more...]
Is Amazon good for readers?
I enjoyed George Packer's New Yorker article on Amazon, and recommend it. ArtsJournal's link to the story has the heading "Is Amazon good for books? Not just publishers, but books themselves?" The New Yorker's own sub-heading is "Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?" I find the question a bit puzzling. I can understand asking whether the rise of a particular corporation is good for buyers, publishers, authors, or other types of person. But what does it mean to ask, as a separate question, whether Amazon is "good for … [Read more...]
Pricing to fill the house
ArtsJournal links to this piece from Britain's Guardian on pricing at the Met (see here for an earlier post of mine on the subject). Tom Service writes: They filled just 79% of the seats in that huge, red-velvet covered house, and made only 69% of their projected box-office revenue. For all the millions who watched the cinema broadcasts, those are astonishingly low figures for the world's most expensive opera house. The Met's general manager, Peter Gelb, admits an experimentation with a more flexible pricing structure, borrowed from Broadway, … [Read more...]
Scaling the house, fifty years ago
Were there people who thought '$4 is an awful lot for a pops concert, I think I'll just go for a $2 seat'? Via Matt Yglesias. … [Read more...]
Rich man, poor man
My last post criticizing a recent study on the distribution of the benefits of NEA funding generated a lot of commentary. I thank everyone for contributing, and will try to respond to at least some of the points raised. First, I was not staking any claim on whether public funding of the arts is a good thing. As it turns out, I do think it is a good thing - I'll post my thoughts on this later - but all I was doing in the initial post was saying that the recent study out of SMU on arts funding was flawed. That the study was trying to say … [Read more...]
NEA funding and the ecological fallacy
Are rich voters more likely to favor candidates from the Republican Party? The richest states by per capita income are Maryland, Alaska, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Of these five, four are pretty reliably "blue" - i.e. leaning Democrat - with Alaska being the outlier. The five poorest states by per capita income are Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi, all of which are "red" - typically Republican. So the rich actually tend to vote Democrat, right? Wrong. That inference is an example of what statisticians … [Read more...]
Pricing at the Met
Today the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report on statements from the Metropolitan Opera regarding recent changes in prices and box office revenues. The WSJ reports, under the headline "Met Opera Suffers Budget Shortfall From Pricing Backlash": The Metropolitan Opera's $311 million budget fell short by $2.8 million last year, after a ticket price increase backfired and caused attendance to drop, according to a newly released financial-disclosure document. Last February, Met officials announced a … [Read more...]