Hello, Residuals
When the Apple iPhone commercial began airing, my first thought was that I wanted one. My second thought: How much will I get in residuals for the one-second clip from the first Charlie’s Angels?
The answer came yesterday in a big green envelope: $86.50.
UPDATE:
Because you asked, here’s the original scene as written:
- Her cell phone RINGS. She answers it.
- NATALIE
- Hello?…Pete, hi! How are you?
- INT. HOTEL KITCHEN - DAY
- Pete is on break from another catering job.
- PETE
- I’m good. I just — You said you wanted me to call.
- INT. TOWER OFFICE - DAY
- Natalie keeps checking the shelves, looking for a secret switch.
- NATALIE
- I did. I do. I mean, thank you for calling.
Articles
May 10th, 2007 at 10:39 am
DRINKS ON JOHN
May 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Haha, that’s awesome. Well, it probably won’t pay for the iPhone, but for one second of screen time it’s pretty cool.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:24 am
So will you keep working or retire immediately?
May 10th, 2007 at 11:31 am
You got paid $86.50 for writing “hello”?
Dude, I so want your job!
May 10th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Wait, how do you know John wrote “Hello.”.
Maybe John wrote “Hi.” and Cameron improvised “Hello.”.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Scott…do you really think Miss Diaz is capable of such an improvisation? I don’t.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
OT: I asked this before, and I know John is a director, but are there any directors on John’s level who are out there blogging who primarily focus on directing as the craft? What I mean (and I hope this doesn’t offend him) but I see John as writer-director rather than as director alone.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
So you got paid roughly $622,800.00 for writing that movie huh?
May 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I wonder how many Disney films were used in that commercial. I noticed Pixar’s Incredibles, but I haven’t gone through it all with a fine tooth comb. Synergy, baby, synergy!
By the way, I figure I’m owed about 15 cents for this comment.
I’ll accept stamps.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Is that $86.50 total? Or every time it airs a certain number of times?
May 10th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
So if John get’s $86.50 for writing it, which is probably the same for the other writers, then I’m guessing McG got even more for directing that spot, and Cameron Diaz got quite a bit more for acting it. Then you’ve got the producers AND the studio who, no doubt, make more than anyone else. Is it just me, or is that A LOT of money to pay for less than a second.
May 10th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
This may be a little off-topic, but as screenwriting is a minimalist art, I was really captivated by the simplicity of the ad. I told a friend once that a screenplay is a 90-page haiku, where you’re trying to cram as much meaning as possible into every single line. Although the ad was more like a music video than a movie, I thought it made an incredibly simple idea work really damn hard.
Assuming I’m not the only person who liked the ad, anyone care to venture an opinion as to what makes that simple idea work so well?
May 10th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Assuming I’m not the only person who liked the ad, anyone care to venture an opinion as to what makes that simple idea work so well?
I think it works because it gets the viewer to anticipate something they are probably not familiar with (the iPhone) by associating with something they are familiar with (scenes from popular movies with famous actors/characters).
The viewer still doesn’t know anything about the phone, other than what it looks like but is left with the good feelings associated with the movie clips.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
This isn´t one of those tech-geek cellphone commercials - cold atmosphere, CLOSE on the surprisingly shiny and visually outstanding device for 30 seconds in a flow of smooth cuts - nope. It´s about -talking-. Communicating. Something everybody does every day, and something everybody usually likes using a phone for.
In this clip the viewer doesn´t have to submit himself to the phone by seeing dozens of features, sliding covers, buttons and switches while asking himself “How the hell am I ever going to handle this”. No, the phone submits itself to the viewer. It says “Hey, I´m a beautiful thing, you know - you´ve seen that in the last second of the clip - but let´s face it: you and your interpersonal communication, your relationships, your friendships - THAT´S the important part. I´m just there to serve and help you accomplishing that.”
Brilliant in my opinion.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:34 am
86$, that’s more than I ever earned as a screenwriter!
May 11th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
This reminds me: my wife pointed out to me years ago that nobody ever seems to say goodbye on the phone in movies (or TV). They just hang up. What’s up with that, John?
May 11th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Jamaleddin has a great point. I, too, have noticed that. Maybe it’s just a waste of a second or two for each character to say goodbye?
A huge screenwriting thing (official term) is that characters say each other’s name way more than people do in real life.
“Hey John, I’m going to the store.”
“Oh, that’s great. Pick me up some milk, will you, Gary?”
“Sure, John.”
People rarely say the name of the person they are talking to, because in real life there is no need to; they know you’re talk to them!
May 11th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Jemaleddin and claude, it is just annoying to write goodbye because it would look like this:
JOHN
Goodbye.
EMILY
Goodbye.
That’s redundant crap and just looks bad on paper.
And there are millions of other reasons not to put that in a script or film. It’s a waste of time, leave the scene as early as possible, it doesn’t lead to anything, no additional information, additional headache for screenwriters figuring out the meaning of those words, etc.
Trust me, it just doesn’t work. It never will, unless it adds to the characters and story.
Don’t get me wrong and don’t let your senses and memories fool you. There are a lot of “goodbyes” on phones in a lot of movies. These “goodbyes” made sense in terms of character or story development.
May 11th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I heard the idea for this clip was copied from a short art film that also featured clips of people saying “hello” into the phone in various movies. I think there was an article about this on Digg.com that linked to the original film on Youtube.
May 12th, 2007 at 4:30 am
I dunno - once you notice the lack of goodbyes, you pay attention every time it happens. In all of the TV and movies I’ve watched since my wife told me about 8 years ago, we’ve noticed two actual normal telephone goodbyes.
You can say it’s a waste of time, but you can learn a lot about a person by watching them say goodbye on the phone. The tattooist we go to wears nothing but slipknot-inspired clothing, has little mini-dreads framing his pierced-up face, and enough tattoos for any 12 of his customers, but every 15 minutes his girlfriend calls and they finish up with, “Okay, goodbye… I love you… I love YOU!” He’s a sweetie-pie in disguise and we’d never have noticed without those goodbyes!
And to say that it looks bad on paper doesn’t explain why people say each other’s names so often (hello, people reading the script can see the names right there!) as Claude points out.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:59 am
“Okay, goodbye… I love you… I love YOU!â€? shows us a little more about the character and would fit in a script. But you can’t have all the goodbyes be character revealing, so you cut them out when they are just formal and add to nothing more then words.
And why the names pop up so often is to somehow introduce the character to the audience by giving that person a name. The audience doesn’t read scripts. They WATCH movies.
You notice in movies you almost never see people paying the cab driver. It just doesn’t add to the story or anything. It’s boring stuff.
My idea of writing, I think of many others too, is to have absolutely nothing unnecessary in the script and everything that is in the script has a right to be there.
P.S. I thought a little about the goodbye stuff during the writing of this post and I think there’s two sides. The script and the movie. While in the script the writer did it right and left out the goodbye for reasons like it adds nothing to it, the director of the movie films how the actor hangs the phone up and doing nothing for two more seconds. If that is the case, why didn’t the director, if he had to add two more seconds for the hang up, not just add the words goodbye too?
So either the director didn’t understand why the goodbye was left out or he did it intentionally for whatever reasons. Or the writer left out the goodbye but has written the hang up.
Anyway, it all depends on the script and context of the scene. You should maybe pick up an example.
May 12th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
To be honest, I almost never say “goodbye” on the phone. I usually say “later”, “see ya”, or in some cases “bye”.
May 13th, 2007 at 2:23 am
But I don’t think can justify unreal behavior by arguments like “it doesn’t tell me anything about the character” or “doesn’t move the plot forward”.
If you don’t need the “bye” or “talk to you later” and can’t add anything to the character or plot by ending the call in a normal manner, cut away from the scene before that or make someone take the phone of the character’s hand and throw it against the wall. Let the audience know before the call that this character would never spend time saying goodbye, he’s too busy saving the world. Something.
Same goes for calling people by their names. Don’t justify it by saying “but I’ve seen this done so many times before”. If it’s not real, it’s not real. You have to either make it real by setting it up or find another way for the audience to remember who’s Gary and who’s John.
Otherwise you’re just tricking yourself with excuses, making it easier for you to write and the minor problem you overlooked on page will magnify itself on the screen.
You should always aim for honest character behavior.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
“You should always aim for honest character behavior.”
Yeah. Honest character behavior. Not real behavior. Real behavior is boring. Real behavior is a person taking a long half an hour shit when they get up in the morning.
I’ve been aware of the lack of goodbyes in films for a while and they don’t stand out to me. Because I’m not looking for them. I’m permitting the story to have it’s own momentum, and thus artfully smoothing over the unreality.
“Don’t justify it by saying ‘but I’ve seen this done so many times before’”
Who was doing that? No, it’s a reasonable technique, which is why it’s used so often. Nothing on film is real, except perhaps documentary. It’s a story, in a medium with special constraints.
If the goal is to strive to make things “real” then remind me to never see movies again. You’d never understand what was going on in films, they’d go on for hour. They’d be like boring Robert Altman films.
The goal is to make acceptable, even inviting unreality. Otherwise we’d just watch people on the street.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Hey John,
Just wondering if you get the same deal with things like an add for a “Charlies Angles 2 Happy Meal”. I always see clips of movies on McDonalds and Burger King adds when they have a meal deal running in sync with a film’s release, so do you get paid for that too?
Thanks.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:30 am
“Yeah. Honest character behavior. Not real behavior. Real behavior is boring.”
That’s exactly why I said honest. In my last post, by ‘real’ I meant ‘natural/honest’, and I will continue using those words from here on.
Hanging up without any goodbyes is not how people usually behave. Then again, for Ethan Hunt or James Bond it is very natural, especially if they’re in the middle of defusing an armed nuclear bomb and have to be finished before lunch.
“No, it’s a reasonable technique, which is why it’s used so often. Nothing on film is real, except perhaps documentary.”
Not real, but it should be honest in the story’s own universe. There’s an endless amount of situations where calling someone by their name is very natural (the example in comment 17 is not one of them, except for maybe the first line). Why go down the unnatural road, when you can use them or come up with new natural ways to make your character’s name familiar? There are many films that do this well and I think this is very much a question of respecting the audience vs. laziness.
If the character and situation alone don’t make such behavior natural, the overall style of the film should support it strongly. But I don’t believe you should write unnatural behavior just because it’s so much easier. By “reasonable technique” do you mean “a way to avoid spending time writing it better”? The audience might let you get away with it because they’ve seen it done so many times (”oh, this trick”) but it’s still dishonest writing and might unconsciously diminish the believability of the story.
So why not do it better, make it natural and honest in the story’s own universe?
May 14th, 2007 at 9:18 am
That’s not bad for a day’s work. Remind me again why we’re talking strike?
May 14th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Love what Jason says (#14) - I saw that ad for the first time on this site and thought it was fantastic, but couldn’t put my finger on why. And what Jason says is exactly right!
And yeah, if you make normal behaviour interesting/about character/unusual then of course you can use it - and you’ll probably get more of a positive reaction out of having a quiet conversation and then screaming goodbye than just dropping in a normal goodbye.
May 15th, 2007 at 7:01 am
@akaison (Comment 7):
One director’s blog I know of is Greg Beeman’s http://gregbeeman.blogspot.com
You might not consider him “on John’s level”, but at least he’s a producer-director of the NBC television show “Heroes”.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Dang, $86 for one word. Most I’ve made yet was $60 for twenty pages (3 short scripts written for someone who was having trouble passing their screenwriting class–yeah, I’m still pondering the ethical implications of getting paid to help someone “cheat”).
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
I guess if you have 90 minutes to introduce characters, tell a story and clean everything up in a satisfying manner, every “goodbye” counts. Besides, if the audience had to watch a movie where people behaved like they normally do, they would get annoyed pretty quickly. Action movie scripts have to be as tight as possible. Complaining about missing “goodbyes” seems a bit pointless.