Forward Thinking: Breaking a Hobbit

A lazy <i>Lord of the Rings</i> extra has a nap on set. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Like potential Super City councillors, actors are a passionate bunch.

Acting after all isn't just a job, it's a calling, a vocation darling. It springs from a desire to perform, to put something artistic and truthful out into the world, to be part of the storytelling process, to hold a mirror up to the human - or if those movies ever get off the ground, the hobbit - condition.

Not everyone can be an actor. You have to have a voice or a look or a presence or some winning combo of the above. In some cases a lack or over-abundance of personal altitude and unusually hairy feet can help, too.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the argument that has blown up this week between Sir Peter Jackson and Australia's Media Entertainment Arts Alliance - which has had local union NZ Actors Equity as a chapter since 2006 - about minimum wages and conditions and residual payments on the two Hobbit films.

MEAA put out a warning notice telling members of its international affiliates not to accept Hobbit contracts because it was a non-union production and they had tried for ages to have a word with the producers.

Oh and that even Galadriel, Gandalf and Elrond supported them, being such staunch union supporters and conjuring up visions of a madly metaphysical picket line: "You shall not pass!"

The usually even-tempered Sir PJ fired back a major broadside, which got headlines for his description of the MEAA as "an Australian bully-boy", and his "threat" to take the film to Eastern Europe.

But it said quite a lot more. Read his whole near 2000-word Tolkienesque statement alongside the various missives from MEAA and NZ Actors Equity and the CTU and frankly it's hard - unless you're an eat-the-rich knee-jerker - to not be convinced by Jackson that his already troubled production has been singled out by an Oz mob doing a transtasman King Kong chest-beater and scaring the villagers.

But here's my two cents worth on something that has been forgotten in all of this. Yes acting requires passion and commitment and self-sacrifice and all that. Lots of careers in the arts do. But isn't acting something folks get into - like entertainment journalism for instance - to avoid the drudgeries of a real job? It's hardly hard work is it?

Arguing, as the likes of MEAA and NZ Actors Equity do, that actors, of whatever level, should be entitled to residual profit participation on big films like The Hobbit flicks seems intriguing if not quite odd.

Especially, considering performers' levels of personal risk (none) and creative input (next to none) would seem to make them uniquely rewarded as employees in the wider workforce - or even in the movie industry.

The folks making sure the actors know their lines, aren't going to be crushed by a lighting tower, or have their wigs on straight don't get royalties. And they work harder and longer and don't get the good seats at the premiere. Anyway, Jackson says film backers Warners are offering profit participation to all local actors on The Hobbit.

So assuming the films are popular, even lowly spear carriers will be getting a few crumbs from a cake they are merely decoration upon.

I've been on a few film sets to observe the glamour, including one or two of of Jackson's. They have never been particularly exciting experiences. But you do come away with an appreciation of the levels of labour that go into making a film. Everybody behind the camera is flat-out all the time between takes. Then they all stop and the actors do some acting, and if they've done their bit right, they go relax while the real work carries on and so it goes, with frequent stops for catered lunches.

Yes, acting in a big studio-backed production is nice work if you can get it.

But the movie-biz politics of it all, which also involves the globalisation of the industry versus local labour rules, and issues pertaining to the ad hoc nature of film production, will keep this week's argument boiling for ages.

Or at least until Galadriel, Gandalf and Elrond find themselves stuck up a mountain somewhere in the Czech Republic instead of South Canterbury, wondering how they'll spend their next residual cheques but grumbling why the extras aren't quite as friendly and the food isn't as good as last time.

-TimeOut