One. Million. Dollars.
This fall’s ongoing financial indigestion is depressing, if not an actual capital-d Depression. The world’s smartest folks are busy asking difficult questions about the billions and trillions of dollars involved. I certainly don’t have the answers.
Instead, I’d like to attempt to answer a question that’s perplexed me for a while: What’s so special about one million dollars?
In movies, TV, and actual conversation it’s by far the most frequently quoted dollar figure to mean “rich,” despite inflation. The top-shelf reality competition shows (Survivor, The Amazing Race) use that as the prize figure. But it’s not just a lot of money. It’s been mythologized as the transformative tipping point between the life we have and some mythological Good Life in which profound satisfaction is possible.
Consider this discussion from Office Space:
PETER
Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you’d do if you had a million dollars and you didn’t have to work. And invariably what you’d say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you’re supposed to be an auto mechanic.
SAMIR
So what did you say?
PETER
I never had an answer. I guess that’s why I’m working at Initech.
MICHAEL
No, you’re working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there’d be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.
SAMIR
You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...
MICHAEL
Samir, you’re missing the point.
But he’s not. Samir has it right: the question of what you’d do if you had a million dollars is essentially the same as what you’d do with a million dollars. Sure, you could answer, “If I had a million dollars, I’d light myself on fire and jump out of a tree.” But the question strongly implies “What would you do that you couldn’t do right now if you had a million dollars.” And while rich people often do stupid things, stupidity itself is free.
And Michael is right, too. The question is sort of bullshit. I’d argue that the phrase “and you didn’t have to work” is easy to challenge. Could you really retire on a one-time windfall of a million dollars? Even before taxes and inflation, it’s less than you think:
If you drew down 4 percent of your $1 million nest egg every year, a share many financial advisers recommend as prudent, you would receive about $40,000 annually, before adjusting for inflation — a pretty comfortable salary outside major metropolitan areas, especially if your house is paid off. Of course, how far that $3,333 a month goes depends on your lifestyle, health, and inflation.
Forty thousand dollars is not what most Americans would consider rich. It’s not first-class to Paris.
Of course, this is logic talking. And our mythologizing of one million dollars is more emotional than rational. I have a few working hunches why a million dollars seems so special.
We have no personal frame of reference for “million.” Most Americans earn five figures ($10,000 to $99,999). If we buy a house, we’re likely dealing with six figures ($100,000 to $999,999). But few Americans will ever encounter seven figures in relation to their own finances. So it seems like a magical and unobtainable sum.
All rich people are millionaires, so all millionaires must be rich. This failure of the symmetric property has been pointed out in books like The Millionaire Next Door
, which shows that cost-containment and steady investment is a more realistic lifestyle for the average millionaire. Along the same lines, having a million dollars isn’t the same as making a million dollars. It’s easy to confuse assets with income. When stocks and home prices were rising, an increasing number of Americans became millionaires on paper.1 But since that’s not spendable cash, it’s not what most people mean by millionaire.
What matters is the million, not the actual value. Americans would rather have the million dollars than 750,000 euros. And two million dollars doesn’t feel twice as good as one million.
When a million is meaningless
Despite these defenses, I think the million dollars’ cinematic days on top are numbered, and screenwriters would be wise to avoid the figure in scripts. It’s simply not enough money to have a clear meaning. Consider:
EVELYN
Have you met Tom, her fiancé? His apartment in New York cost almost a million dollars!
Is the proper response…
TAMI
I always knew she’d marry money.
or…
TAMI
What is that, a one-bedroom?
(In fact, a million could be as little as a loft.)
If you need to have characters talk about money, you’re much better off referring an object (or service) than its price.
EVELYN
Her ring cost more than my car.
TAMI
She gets her hair done by this woman who flies in from Paris. Can you imagine?
EVELYN
She ripped out the limestone in the bathroom because it wasn’t organic. Turns out they don’t make organic limestone. So she got this stone from Italy. Used to be a church.
Billion is the new million. Sort of.
For now, I think you can safely get away with calling a billionaire rich.2 Keep in mind, it’s a staggering amount of money, so any character thusly defined would have to have a plausible explanation. For example, rich as he is, Will Smith is likely not a billionaire. With rare exception, you become a billionaire though canny investments or lucky inheritance.
Do millionaires dream of being billionaires? I don’t golf, so I haven’t heard this topic come up in conversation. But my experience of earning money in Hollywood has been that one’s financial ambition caps out at a certain point. The dream of a million dollars is a life free from financial worry: paying for the mortgage, college, and retirement. Once those fears are addressed — at a figure likely significantly higher than one million dollars — there is less to reach for financially.
So while I don’t advocate using the million dollar figure in scripts, I think it still has some real-world years ahead of it as a psychological milestone. Wealth isn’t simply what you can buy; it’s how much protection you have from poverty. A million dollars may not be “rich,” but it’s a comforting distance from poor.
- “On paper” is really a terrible term, because I don’t know any millionaires who keep a million in gold laying around. ↩
- I’m speaking of the U.S. definition of billion, which is a thousand million. ↩
Articles
October 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am
It’s always fascinating to me when real figures turn up in movies or television as anything other than The Big Payday. Sneakers was on TV a while ago, and watching the characters get all excited about risking their safety (or their lives!) on a shady NSA-driven operation for, as Strathairn says excitedly, “a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars” rang weird today. On the one hand, it seems meant to imply that these guys reach for lower-hanging stars, but on the other hand is doesn’t help the movie play well a few years later. I mean, are all five or six dudes supposed to split that money?
I wish I could remember the figures, but on Seinfeld reruns recently, from early-ish in the show’s run, they talked money here and there, and all I could think was, “Shit, they still make more than I do.” I remember watching episodes of Friends where money comes up and marveling at how well (usually) the writers dodge actual figures, so the friends don’t slip too far away from the tax bracket of the viewer, even while the cast is being paid huge sums. Still, I know that my ability to relate to those characters waned as they got more and more money and talked about blowing it all on Monica’s wedding or some such.
Every time you cite an actual figure, you’re narrowing the audience that will relate to your characters, right? For me, that 4% annual cut of a million dollars is more than I make right now and more than I made at my last high-profile game-design gig. But it’s one thing to say that this or that heist will net our heroes a comfortable life and it’s another to say that they’ll end up becoming plutocrats.
There’s a larger meditation to be had on how the absence of firm metrics for rich and poor can be used or abused for rhetoric and drama, but that’s probably too big for a comment, isn’t it?
October 7th, 2008 at 10:54 am
It’s not just amounts of money either. I must hear “a million years” in movies and tv all the time (just yesterday I was watching a Simpsons episode where someone composes a love letter about “a million poets working for a million years”…. or that famous hoax book “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey…etc
I don’t think the actual amount is important “a million” is just symbolic of anything too big to count. I think “a billion” will work just as well, but I don’t think it adds anything to the symbolism… A billion poets working for a billion years…? Same thing.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I’ve pondered the specific number issue before with the general question of “How much is enough to make a character do this, but not so much that it becomes an unrelatable number?” Since, for me, no story ever progresses beyond the “idea in my head” stage to being placed on paper, it really hasn’t mattered and the question remained unanswered.
On a slightly off subject note, I must admit to loving and laughing at “Do millionaires dream of being billionaires? I don’t golf, so I haven’t heard this topic come up in conversation.”
October 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I dunno, it’s probably because I’m currently living off a lot less, but $40k seems like plenty a year.
If you know any millionaires (paper or otherwise) who’d like to sponsor a young fiction writer, please send them my way!
–
Really, though, good post. :)
October 7th, 2008 at 11:42 am
You have to admire the man, he referenced Office Space. Sometimes i think it would be great to be paid a million dollars for a screenplay, and then i think of what i’d do with it. I mean, i could by a RED camera, write for a year and then maybe knock out a low budget film. When im done, i’ll probably have nothing left. I’ll have to return to working a 9 to 5 until i can write another million dollar screenplay.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:54 am
This is the post where the rich, big time screenwriter makes everyone else feel poor.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Money is just a symbol; but it just happens to be the symbol our times. As such it is necessary to address it in some way in a movie. It is also important to make the movie for the marketplace- one who doesn’t want to be made self-conscious of their relative income bracket. Also, since most people lack either theoretical or practical knowledge regarding money, having actual numbers (could be any numbing, but vital statistic) in a movie is a good way to cause disorientation. I would be very cautious about investing script time to numbers unless I’m certain about wanting to dispel the illusion of the story.
Hell, we can’t all figure out money, now can we? That might make for a society without boundaries. Or something.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
My dad insisted that I read both The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind. I’ve got to say they were actually a good perspective on ideas of success. “Me, me, me is dull, dull, dull.” Side note: Regarding the millionaires having a million in gold lying around: During this current crisis, I read that Warren Buffet’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, keeps $10 Billion (with a B) in cash on hand so they be free to invest quickly without worrying about their assets.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
700 billion is the new million.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Great post John. As a side note, I think there was another great conversation in Office Space about the proverbial million.
After Peter’s wonderful neighbor Lawrence says that he would do “two chicks at the same time” with his million:
LAWRENCE
How about you? What would you do?
PETER
Well, I mean besides two chicks at the same time, I’ve never really been able to figure out an answer to that question. And then today when I was sitting there stuck in traffic, I started looking around at all those miserable people and it finally occurred to me for the first time what I would do if I had a million dollars.
LAWRENCE
What’s that?
PETER
Nothing.
LAWRENCE
Nothing, huh?
PETER
That’s right. I would do absolutely nothing. I would just sit on my ass all day and relax. You see, I’ve always tried to think of what I would do if I had a million dollars, but all I could come up with were things I wouldn’t do – like sitting in a traffic jam, going to staff meetings, listening to Lumbergh – I wouldn’t do any of that. That’s when I realized I would do nothing. Then I thought, why wait? I don’t need a million dollars. Why not just do nothing now.
LAWRENCE
Go for it dude. (Raising his beer) You only live once.
I think this scene sums up the entire plot of the movie, as Peter continues his quest to “do nothing.”
I’m with Peter – not in “doing nothing”, but in doing what was most important to him, regardless of the money. As writers, we are always free to express ourselves, with or without the million.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
fascinating topic. thanks for writing this.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Well written.
Like you write, when people strive for “a million dollars”, what they really want is the lifestyle they imagine a million dollars would allow them. Most of the time though, that lifestyle is a lot cheaper than you might think. Tim Ferriss writes a lot about this in his book “The 4-hour Work Week” and has a few cool examples on his blog – http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/03/30/how-to-live-like-a-rock-star-or-tango-star-in-buenos-aires/
October 7th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
If I had a million dollars, I’d buy a big enough ass for the whole world to kiss.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Interesting topic. For the first four seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 they always referred to Dylan Mackay as being “incredibly rich”, without naming the figure. But I just picked up the season 5 series on DVD, and it’s revealed his fortune is 8 million dollars, which got me thinking about how the writers arrived at that figure.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Great article and insights, John. Thanks.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Well, $40k is what the average American male makes in a year, so $1 million means you can retire and live your current lifestyle. Which is attractive if you hate your job. You can tell your boss to take this job and shove it (as Robert Hayes did in that long ago film based on a song).
If you’re an average American female, that $40k is an increase in wages! For doing nothing!
So to the average American, One MILLION Dollars is still a bunch of money. The people who buy the tickets on Friday night would see that million as a life changer. The people watching TV would, too.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I think Dr. Evil’s request for a million dollars (and subsequent re-request for a hundred billion dollars) really should have put that cliche to bed.
Really useful, practical advice.
Thanks a million!
October 7th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
If you don’t want to use the term “on paper,” perhaps non-liquid will do? I don’t know what the opposite of liquid is, solid?
October 7th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
@Another John:
I’m (mildly) curious whether the new 90210 will ever refer to money. $8 million is a ton of money, but is no longer “incredibly rich.” Aaron Spelling’s house is on the market for $150 million.
@Bill:
Point being, if $40K is around what an average American makes, then that’s not “rich.” And I’m agreeing with you on the premise — one million dollars seems like a lot of money, for people in most income brackets in most parts of the country. But it’s no longer automatically equivalent to “rich,” and will grow less meaningful by the year. So it’s a bad choice to use in scripts, the same way referring to prices and presidents badly dates a movie or TV show.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Desensitisation.Celebrity culture.Waste and squander.
Our whole perception of rich is distorted.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I always love to play the “but are they a millionaire?” game…
I would imagine that Sarah Michelle Gellar is but Nicholas Brendan isn’t. What about Dean Stockwell? Bruce McGill? Kevin Sorbo?
I would imagine that all the guys from Nickelback are but none of the guys from Modest Mouse. What about the guys from, I dunno, Duran Duran. Were they ever millionaires? Are they still?
(neither of these are a gripe about quality, just speculation based on levels of “bigness”. I don’t think anybody “deserves” to be a millionaire, and I’m sure the the guys in Modest Mouse are doing just fine for themselves)
Sometimes I get lazy and start assuming that all household names are millionaires, but that can’t be the case, can it?
Anyway, it’s still a very big deal. The only people who don’t think so are multi-millionaires, which is sort of the elephant in the room here.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
A bit off-topic (completely, to be frank), but I didn’t know where else to put it: The scrippets don’t look very nice in the RSS feed. I tend to read the site via Google Reader (do you mind? I really mean that as a question) and there is no way to tell where a scrippet bit starts and ends without the frame and background color. Not a horrible problem but I thought I’d mention it.
October 8th, 2008 at 3:28 am
As Brian said, the whole Dr Evil thing should have put this to bed.
Definitely worth the revisit though. Something to think about. :)
October 8th, 2008 at 6:30 am
@OJ:
Because of the way RSS works, we can’t style it the same way we do the site. (We can’t include a CSS stylesheet.) But I agree that in this post, it’s confusing to have short scrippets interspersed with normal text.
Part of the problem is the extra line introduced after character names. That’s something we might be able to tackle in Wordpress. We could also choose to put scrippet text in italics or somesuch.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:05 am
If I had a million dollars, I’d build a treefort in our yard (you could help, it wouldn’t be that hard).
Roland beat me to the “two girls at the same time” line.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:40 am
We’re still not forgiving you for Full Throttle.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am
I think the point of “if I had a million dollars” is freedom. The point is, name an amount of money that, if you had it you’d never even have to think about money again in your life. A million dollars doesn’t make that any more.
As I approach my sixth decade my net worth has just reached the one million dollar level. Am I rich? I don’t think so. I work a forty hour week doing a job for a big high-tech company. I have two twelve year-old cars we bought use and we’re wondering if we should buy some newer used cars.
But my time is not my own. If I had a billion dollars then I’d start doing what I want to do, make movies, full time. Now I’m just doing it as a hobby.
So, as John said, a billion dollars is the new million.
One Million Dollars = Confortable One Billion Dollars = Freedom
October 8th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Binary looks bigger – nuff sd.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Smart Americans would take €750,000 over $1 million US, because it won’t be long before that €750,000 is worth a lot more than $1 million US. $1 million US isn’t worth as much as it used to be at home AND abroad.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
What inspired this, John? As far as a billion goes, you’re right – one must have ambitions that extend beyond the personal. Oprah Winfrey and George Lucas are billionaires, and off the top of my mind they may be the only entertainment personalities who are… for now.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
This is an interesting topic.
I think that at some point in film and television history, the one million dollar milestone had merit. I think writers got lazy and didn’t increase that number along with inflation. The million dollar lazy writer syndrome has continued for the past 20 years or so. The first Austin Powers movie made fun of this point when Dr. Evil announces that he’s holding the world’s fate in his hands unless he’s paid $1 Million dollars. All of Dr. Evil’s sidekicks look at him in shock and he suddenly increases the number to $1 Billion dollars.
When I think of winning the lottery, I don’t think of winning in terms of $x dollars. I think of winning x opportunities. Opportunities to spend my time the way I choose…pursuing my own interests. Getting out of the trap of the mortgage and the daily grind. Opportunities to spend more time with my kids. Opportunities to help others.
I read an article about a guy who hit one of the big lotteries. He took the lump sum option and received something like $150 million dollars. Instead of buying a mansion, he hired a team of great investment professionals and challenged them. He said, I want to take my winnings and turn $150 million dollars into $1 Billion dollars. How do I do it? He paid off his mortgage and bought a new car. He also quit work. But he isn’t living large. He’s living rather frugally, all things considered. His accountant thought he’d hit the billion dollar mark around 2013. That’s what I read about a year ago. I wonder where he stands now given the market. Interesting story anyway.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I would say that at least some millionaires aspire to be, if not billionaires, then certainly higher up the money chain.
For example, the last time I saw my father’s financials, he had a net worth of right at $7 million (he’s a physician with a practice that fills a lucrative niche and who has mostly invested well over the years). He lives in a big house (though since he lives in the Texas Panhandle, the price he paid for his house is a drop in the bucket compared to what similar houses go for in places like L.A. and whatnot) and has expensive hobbies (antique car collecting, horses, etc.). He drives a nice car (Until recently, he was a Porsche guy. In his old age, he’s become an Escalade guy). He and his wife spend a good deal of money living a lifestyle that is very comfortable.
And while a whole lot of people would be over-the-moon to be able to have that kind of net worth and that kind of lifestyle, I can tell he’s a bit jealous of some of his friends and acquaintances who own things like Gulfstream jets or Las Vegas casinos.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:01 am
@Geoff who said “Money is just a symbol; but it just happens to be the symbol our times.”
It isn’t just a symbol – it’s a metric of how much resources you have to achieve your goals. Having money is the difference between being able to pay a dentist to remove an impacted molar, or the alternative to having to put up with the pain.
A mere symbol wouldn’t be able to make a difference like that.
Perhaps it’s a sign how rich we all are that we could think it is just a meaningless symbol. After all, since I have running water in my OWN HOME (not just within a short walk) and I haven’t lost any friends to starvation, then I’m wealthy by any sensible definition.
Mac
(Although if you still think money is ‘just a symbol’, I’d be happy to help the symbolism by taking it off your hands)
October 9th, 2008 at 7:00 am
And yet sometimes, $1 million is still too much. Way too much, as in the case of the Entourage episode a couple weeks ago, when a screenplay (Smoke Jumpers) by a couple out of town rookies was bid up to the tune of $1 million against $3 million. I know the appeal of Entourage is taking an already larger-than-life lifestyle and amping it up further, but c’mon.
A quick look at Wikipedia shows a pretty short list of scripts (less than 50) ever to have been sold for more than $1 million. While Wikipedia is hardly gospel, the point is that the Entourage screenwriters got lazy writing about screenwriters – or perhaps they just put their fantasies to paper and were lucky to have it acted out in front of them.
Normally, this wouldn’t bother me, but the show does a pretty good job of handling the business aspect of Hollywood (Vincent Chase stars in the highest grossing movie of all time, makes a bomb, and suddenly has to settle for Benji, the salaries seem in line with the actors’ jobs, etc.). Throwing the million dollar offer for a script out there to some no-names is the equivalent of Spielberg doing a cameo, seeing a girl in his daughter’s high school play and offering her $8 million to star in his next big movie.
Point? Sometimes a million is a lot and sometimes it’s not enough. Like Grandpa Harry and Aunt Helen, it’s all relative.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:39 am
In general, I agree that it’s best to avoid mentioning a specific figure. As a concept, money can be magical and mysterious. Once it’s put into the form of an actual number, though, it loses all the mystique.
Also, a specific amount of money doesn’t have any meaning in the context of story — unless it directly relates to another specific amount. And when that happens, I usually want to puke.
EARL
Where’n tarnation’re we gon’ git ten thouzin dollers ta bail Bobby outer jail?
He turns and sees a sign above the local bar:
TALENT COMPETITION TONIGHT! GRAND PRIZE ,000
Much better, I think, to leave amounts off the table and only refer to the functional value. For example, in Jurassic Park the novel, Hammond offers Grant and Sattler a specific amount of money to come to the park, and Grant replies that it would be enough to fund their digs for the next three years. In the movie, the dialogue was changed so that Hammond simply says he’ll fund their digs for the next three years. That’s the way to go.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Hmm, seems I had a scrippet malfunction; obviously, that was supposed to say “GRAND PRIZE $10,000″.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:12 am
On reflection, I realize that there is a fair amount of federal validation of the one million dollar figure. In the Securities Act of 1933, which is enforced to this day, a net worth of one million dollars is the point at which an investor can avail themselves of private investment opportunities (meaning those not traded on a public open market, like the stock market or the commodities market) AND which they don’t have a day-to-day working knowledge of. Folks can buy land, even though it’s not regulated, because people manage their own land, which assures an understanding of how it works. Not anyone can buy into a start-up company or an oil well, for example. Not anyone can invest in specific films. Absoloutely anyone can invest in Disney stock. One million dollars in net worth is the benchmark, there.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
This reminds me of a review I saw of Batman Begins where they pointed out that Bruce Wayne is now a billionaire instead of a millionaire, because if he was only a millionaire he couldn’t do half the things he does. Same with Tony Stark, for that matter.
The magical “Never have to work again AND do whatever the heck you want for the rest of your life, no matter the cost” number is now at least 100 million. Billion, however, sounds so much nicer. Plus, not even 100 million can buy some of the yachts the billionaires of the world own.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:15 am
“I don’t golf, so I haven’t heard this topic come up in conversation.”
Thanks for the hearty laugh!
January 4th, 2009 at 5:55 am
Of course, in Asia they’ve known for quite a while that the crore (10,000,000) is the new million:) Mmmm, one day (drools) I’ll be a crorenaire…
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore
January 9th, 2009 at 12:40 am
ok, don’t complain. It’s still more than I have.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:50 am
I’ve been practicing not using “million” in everyday usage. Every time I’m tempted, I say “Brazilian” instead. That keeps people guessing. It’s funny and means nothing really, but you still get the point across.
e.g. – “Oh my god, lets move to Hollywood and sell a script for a Brazilian buckaroos.”