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Dear Spike Lee

juanluisgarcia.com

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Re: Dear Spike Lee

#111

Post by larrys »

"But they said that the important thing wasn’t the money it was the exposure and potential for more work. After thinking about it long and hard I had to decline. "

Because the exposure was more important than the money. Would have of course been nice if they stated this upfront but they didn't. That's water under the dam at this point.

I have regularly done work for people at no charge.

This has not only led to a great amount of paid work but I've thrown around the names that I've done work for quite liberally and use it the same way the company that sold a treadmill to the White House used to scream in their ads "only one chosen to be used by the President in the White House!!" (when in fact it is a competitive bid almost certainly). So I use those names to book more work. I've even used the names with success when cold emailing here and there. Right on the subject line.

While it is not great that he was lied to, he did agree to put in the work with no guarantee of getting anything.

Consequently the way I look at it even if he feels he was screwed he should have sucked it up and let Spike use it, even for free, and then bragged and gotten out of that what he could until the cows came home.

Instead he reacted emotionally and ends up with nothing. Understanding of course that this is upsetting.

Separately, in looking at his site he does really nice work. So perhaps he shouldn't have done the work on spec in the first place but then again he did say that "the idea of working for you and having my design represent your film blinded me."

In other words if anyone of us had approached him to do work on spec he most likely would have declined very quickly or not treated the transaction the same way.

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#112

Post by enneff »

natrius wrote: post #23
donretag wrote: post #2

So basically Spike Lee doesn't do the right thing?

This seems to be going over people's heads, so I'll leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_the_Right_Thing

I voted it down because these kind of dumb one-liner jokes are a waste of space.

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#113

Post by res0nat0r »

icebraining wrote: post #100
res0nat0r wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar. Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. > He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again? I read it, your prior post was very short. See my quote above directly from his blog post; there wasn't any contract.

Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. Actually, not where I live. But the point is that the situations are different, because I don't have an agreement with any artist. Whether that makes it illegal to use copyright works was not the issue in discussion. What was being discussed was the supposed hypocrisy of anti-copyright people. there wasn't any contract. There'…

> There's was an implied agreement.

There is also an implied agreement that when an artist asks you to pay $12 for a CD, that you pay for it. This isn't very hard to understand.

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#114

Post by dsirijus »

anigbrowl wrote: post #104
dsirijus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. And your job as a freelancer is to do the same thing. I'm sorry for you feel that way. You can opt-in in making a meaningful and fruitful business relations instead? Shame it's an opt-in, and not opt-out, though. I guess Bible's right on that one.

Producers want to pay as little as possible, for obvious economic reasons. Freelancers want to be paid as much as possible, likewise. If you're not operating under a union or guild contract of some sort (and paying part of your income in dues for the privilege of outsourcing and standardizing your rates and working conditions), then it's up to you to make the best deal you can for your services, and and part of that…

No, I don't agree with that. It's a dog-eat-dog world if you make it. But world is so far and wide that you can bypass all that crap for the most part.

I am not (well, trying not too when I'm zen enough, unlike now with all this ranting) taking up working with anyone who doesn't see our collaboration as pure win-win situation, and will provide me with more than I ask for, and I provide him with more than he bargained for.

Stress-B-Gone, and life become a real page-turner!

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#115

Post by vacri »

binarysolo wrote: post #60
gkoberger wrote: post #13

Seems weird he mentioned Spike Lee (who did nothing wrong, as far as I can tell) so many times, but didn't name the agency. Seems to hurt the wrong party's reputation. Additionally, he has no apparent way to contact him. EDIT: I really don't want to point fingers with 0 proof, but Spike Lee happens to be CEO of an ad agency named Spike DDB. https://twitter.com/SpikeDDB

Presumably his contract prevents him from discussing internal issues with any outside party. (Knowledge source: Got totally screwed by a business partner via legalese and had all my work stolen, ended up doing half a year of work uncompensated, can't legally talk about it or the partner, and loss < cost of litigation. Ah well, water under bridge.)

Probably more to do with him already taking content down to avoid their litigation - avoiding naming them looks like it follows on from that.

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#116

Post by bigiain »

rurban wrote: post #105
bigiain wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. As the open letter makes very clear - it was bad behaviour on the part of the agency, and Spike most likely didn't know it was going on (and the letter even suggests the agency was actively lying to him about it). But - Spike is ultimately the one in control of the money-tap the agency is drinking from. While he had "absolutely nothing to do with this", it was no doubt done on his behalf, and he absolutel…

Unrealistic. He has the last word on the posters being choosen. He already chose these posters, but was told that the guy asked for money. It was his decision to rip him off. He is the producer also.

Given that the only information we've got to go on is the open letter - I'll point out this bit and take it at face value: "They forwarded me an email you sent them asking for an explanation but of course they lied to you and said they didn’t know who was responsible."

I think it's 100% plausible that the agency accepted Lee's decision on which poster design to use as "last word", while not fully disclosing (and perhaps even actively deceiving him about) the payment/negotiations/contracts/copyrights with the designer.

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#117

Post by icebraining »

res0nat0r wrote: post #113
icebraining wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. Actually, not where I live. But the point is that the situations are different, because I don't have an agreement with any artist. Whether that makes it illegal to use copyright works was not the issue in discussion. What was being discussed was the supposed hypocrisy of anti-copyright people. there wasn't any contract. There'…

> There's was an implied agreement. There is also an implied agreement that when an artist asks you to pay $12 for a CD, that you pay for it. This isn't very hard to understand.

And so I ask again, when did I agree to that, in an explicit or implicit way? And you yourself answered, "you didn't if you downloaded it without paying". So no, there isn't.

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#118

Post by Shinden »

As Richard Pryor once said "don't be messing wit dem Jews if you ain't got no money".

Welcome to the world of people who give you praise and acolades but give you nothing in return. They are consumate smoke blowing up your ass thieves.

Contract in hand and no matter what you should own all intelectual property rights. The reason they chose you was because they thought you would roll over for a belly rub and instead all you got for your efforts was a kick in the head.

Ever go see a movie and see all these companies that flash accross the screen before the movie starts? You have no idea what they do? well those are the companies subcontracted out to market, advertise, invest and promote the movie and those adds are important because if you are somehow in the privy of someone who promises 20% of your investment return if you fund a movie they will mention those companies and your will say "OH! so thats who you are!" RUN QUICK!

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#119

Post by dsirijus »

bigiain wrote: post #108
dsirijus wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really. From my anecdotal experience, which does include many a project exceeding the amounts you cited, it usually goes like this (paraphrased): Agency's army of spineless sales people [1] spends a lot of time ass licking many people, one of them happens to love his anus tickled in that manner, then he dumps a bag of money to them, they spend 90% of that money pumping ads, and 10% on development of what's su…

Heh - I suspect the main difference between your description of the process and mine is that I'm in a "third cup of coffee, should be on my way to the office" timezone, and I'm guessing your in a "finished at the office, savouring the third beer" timezone, and hence we've got slightly different sates of mind and social inhibitions. But I'm sure we both know exactly what each other is describing. (Surely you have seen…

Upvote for not taking this seriously.

But no, I don't have office, don't usually drink (can't, destroyed a bunch of parts of digestive system).

occasional great non-literal-ass-licking salespeople No. To be perfectly honest, no. Not once. They're pretty disgusting to me.

genuinely great marketing agencies Sure. Rarely, but yes. They don't do FB Ads and AdWords tho.

I'm quite proud to have been told I came in second with pitches against a few agencies I'm particularly impressed by in my small space here… But I will beat them one day, Oh yes…) I'm happy for you being happy and enthusiastic. I was once too. But, I'll take the liberty to advise you - leave the space. Immediately. It's a sulphuric pit. You don't age well there.

Well, all that doesn't hold water unless you're on of them. Are you?

Re: Dear Spike Lee

#120

Post by Amadou »

res0nat0r wrote: post #109
Amadou wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: Just because I don't have any cases offhand of my friends fined for jaywalking, doesn't mean it isn't against the law. That's putting your arguments into the realm of faith. If those three citations are any indication, your faith is misplaced. All of those were for people doing distribution (e.g. uploading). None of them were for downloading. I don't think it is much to ask for you to have just one definite cas…

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fined+for+downloading

I went through the first four hits on that. All of them included uploading. Please pick a case that you are confident supports your claims and then we can examine it.

As a point of order, the surest way to admit you are wrong is to tell the other person to "google it." It isn't anyone else's job to prove you are right.

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