from www.moviefone.co,uk, 26 February 2010
Mar. 7th, 2010 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbDetails have just been made public about Uma Thurman's contract for her new movie Eloise In Paris, following a claim from Thurman's own production company citing breach of contract.
The film, which also stars Pierce Brosnan and is based on a series of 1950s children's books, is currently suspended while the courts sort the dispute out. And, by the looks of it, they've got a lot of contract to get through.
Riding high on Thurman's list of demands (after her $4.5 million fee, which is over ten percent of the total budget) is the ability to veto director, co-stars and script, first class air travel everywhere, a "three-bedroom hotel suite", three cell phones and, not just a luxury dressing room but THE most luxurious, as in no other cast member is allowed "more favourable dressing facilities". Phew.
If that's not enough, Uma's contract has stated that she should be able to buy her wigs and costumes at a 50% reduced price (I'm sure she'll be donating them to the local Oxfam). She also will be disallowing the use of her name and likeness on promotional items, such as "tobacco, weapons, religious items, personal hygiene products, intimate apparel, porn, gambling, pet food and stomach and rectal medications". Well at least that still leaves lunchboxes.
Still, if you think Uma is high maintenance, the queen of contractual demands is probably Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct 2 who, along with the $14 million salary and the usual first class travel and accommodation, wanted $3,500 per week so her bodyguards could eat well, two assistants, three nannies, chef, a deluxe motor home with every single mod-con you can think of and, best of all, no cigar smoking on set. It was worth every penny for such a staggering cinematic masterpiece...
FPB comments: What really made me see red about this was not the self-indulgence - in which, as the author points out, Ms.Thurman is well behind some notorious Hollywood figures of the present and past. And one can understand her desire not to have her face endorsing rectal medicine or tampons (although there is much that is hypocritical about a movie star refusing to endorse porn - how many of them have not taken their clothes off on their way up?). But what makes me frothe at the mouth and look for things to break is the right of absolute veto over every aspect of the whole production. It is well known among writers that if they want the extra readers and money that comes with a movie production, they must resign themselves to losing control of their own creations and resign themselves to see them come back in horribly mutilated and desperately stupid shapes. Who the Hell is Uma Thurman that she should be able to decide the final form of a story when its creators cannot? What are her qualifications to judge of the quality of a story? The shape of her cheekbones? The length of her legs? And I should be equally enraged if I were a director. The director is responsible for the final form of a movie, but it is well known that some movies bear but the palest of resemblances to anything the director had worked for. Indeed, there is a convention where a director demands that his name be pulled from a finished production and the name "Alan Smithee" replaced. But people do that rarely; the signature "Alan Smithee" on any movie is the mark of a director so furious that he is willing to forego any further connection with the movie, which rarely happens. But why should not the man in charge, who has to put up with all the problems and surprises of production, and who is generally regarded as the author, not have the right to control his own work, when one of his hired labourers does? Is this not idiocy? Is this not a guarantee that the work will be worse than it could be and that people will be subjected to one underqualified ego? If Thurman were good enough to know when a story is good or bad, or when a movie is well made or not, she should be writing or directing. As an actress, she ought to take the direction of others, not imposing her own.
The film, which also stars Pierce Brosnan and is based on a series of 1950s children's books, is currently suspended while the courts sort the dispute out. And, by the looks of it, they've got a lot of contract to get through.
Riding high on Thurman's list of demands (after her $4.5 million fee, which is over ten percent of the total budget) is the ability to veto director, co-stars and script, first class air travel everywhere, a "three-bedroom hotel suite", three cell phones and, not just a luxury dressing room but THE most luxurious, as in no other cast member is allowed "more favourable dressing facilities". Phew.
If that's not enough, Uma's contract has stated that she should be able to buy her wigs and costumes at a 50% reduced price (I'm sure she'll be donating them to the local Oxfam). She also will be disallowing the use of her name and likeness on promotional items, such as "tobacco, weapons, religious items, personal hygiene products, intimate apparel, porn, gambling, pet food and stomach and rectal medications". Well at least that still leaves lunchboxes.
Still, if you think Uma is high maintenance, the queen of contractual demands is probably Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct 2 who, along with the $14 million salary and the usual first class travel and accommodation, wanted $3,500 per week so her bodyguards could eat well, two assistants, three nannies, chef, a deluxe motor home with every single mod-con you can think of and, best of all, no cigar smoking on set. It was worth every penny for such a staggering cinematic masterpiece...
FPB comments: What really made me see red about this was not the self-indulgence - in which, as the author points out, Ms.Thurman is well behind some notorious Hollywood figures of the present and past. And one can understand her desire not to have her face endorsing rectal medicine or tampons (although there is much that is hypocritical about a movie star refusing to endorse porn - how many of them have not taken their clothes off on their way up?). But what makes me frothe at the mouth and look for things to break is the right of absolute veto over every aspect of the whole production. It is well known among writers that if they want the extra readers and money that comes with a movie production, they must resign themselves to losing control of their own creations and resign themselves to see them come back in horribly mutilated and desperately stupid shapes. Who the Hell is Uma Thurman that she should be able to decide the final form of a story when its creators cannot? What are her qualifications to judge of the quality of a story? The shape of her cheekbones? The length of her legs? And I should be equally enraged if I were a director. The director is responsible for the final form of a movie, but it is well known that some movies bear but the palest of resemblances to anything the director had worked for. Indeed, there is a convention where a director demands that his name be pulled from a finished production and the name "Alan Smithee" replaced. But people do that rarely; the signature "Alan Smithee" on any movie is the mark of a director so furious that he is willing to forego any further connection with the movie, which rarely happens. But why should not the man in charge, who has to put up with all the problems and surprises of production, and who is generally regarded as the author, not have the right to control his own work, when one of his hired labourers does? Is this not idiocy? Is this not a guarantee that the work will be worse than it could be and that people will be subjected to one underqualified ego? If Thurman were good enough to know when a story is good or bad, or when a movie is well made or not, she should be writing or directing. As an actress, she ought to take the direction of others, not imposing her own.
