When I was couch-bound the last couple of weeks, I watched a lot of movies, and I thought it would be fun to do a few mini-reviews:

• The Longest Day (1962) — Before Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, this was the closest a non-combatant could get to the D-day invasion. I am a huge fan of Band of Brothers, and it was great to see one of the films in its family tree. I especially loved the performances from Robert Mitchum and John Wayne. Like Midway, all the non-English speaking characters are subtitled, which gave it a docudrama feel that I enjoyed. The title isn’t misleading, though. This film is l o n g, so get comfortable.
• Bullitt (1968) — If you think, as I did, that this is just about a great car chase, you’re missing out. Robert Vaughn turns in a fantastic performance as the guy you’re not quite sure you can trust, Steve McQueen is as cool and unflappable (without being aloof) as ever, and I have a crush on the 1968 version of Jacqueline Bissett. The DVD that I have includes a couple of cool features about the making of the movie, produced when the film was in production, that help a 2005 audience understand how ground-breaking this film was.
• California Split (1974) — Contrary to what I expected, this is not a simple gambling movie; this is a movie about two incredibly loveable losers, played to perfection by Elliot Gould and George Segal, who happen to be compulsive gamblers. The acting, story, and direction are fantastic. All the actors feel like real people, and the whole thing has such an air of authenticity, the audience could feel like it was just along for the ride with these guys, if Altman could just let the camera sit still for a second. It’s constantly pushing in or pulling out, and just when I started to feel like I was witnessing real, flawed, fascinating people . . . the damn camera would make some unnecessary move and scream, “Hey! You’re watching a movie!” I still think it’s a great film, though. I can’t say enough about the improvisation between Elliot Gould and George Segal, and Gwen Welles is outstanding. If you like character-driven movies, I think you’ll enjoy this one.
• Night of the Hunter (1955) — Also known as the Robert Mitchum “Love” and “Hate” tattoo movie. This film disturbed me the same way that “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?” did, but for entirely different reasons. Robert Mitchum plays a bad, bad man, who claims to be a preacher, but is actually a con-man and thief. When he finds out that his cell-mate Ben Johnson (played wonderfully by Peter Graves)’s family has $10,000 hidden somewhere in their possession, he tries to get the cash by marrying Johnson’s widow. Trouble is, the widow (Shelly Winters) doesn’t know where the money is — that knowledge is held in the heads of her small children, who were sworn to secrecy by their father before he was arrested. Winters is amazing as the woman who is so afraid of becoming a spinster she’ll marry Mitchum, who oozes as much malevolence as the devil himself. I won’t spoil any of the story, because it’s one of the most suspenseful things I’ve ever watched. A+++++++ Will Do Business Again!!!1
• The Cincinnati Kid 1965 — I wasn’t trying to have a Steve McQueen-a-thon, I swear. I just figured that if I couldn’t play poker, at least I could watch what is almost universally considered to be the best poker movie of them all (yes, that includes Rounders) Okay, after Bullitt, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, and The Cincinnati Kid, I totally have a not-gay crush on Steve McQueen. I wish I could be 1/8 as cool as he is . . . and those eyes! You know how “Nobody fucks with the Jesus?” Well, nobody fucks with the Steve McQueen, either, if they know what’s good for them. Karl Malden, Edward G. Robinson, and Ann Margaret give flawless performances in this film about a hot poker player (McQueen) who takes on a player so amazing, he’s simply known as “The Man” (Robinson). I have this thing for characters who are deeply flawed, yet sympathetic, and Karl Malden, as McQueen’s friend Shooter, is one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. Ann Margaret is so sexy, so sultry, and so much trouble . . . and that’s all I’ll say about that. Rip Torn and Joan Blondell round out a superb cast, and Norman Jewison, who also did . . . And Justice For All and the original, superior-to-the-remake-in-nearly-every-way The Thomas Crown Affair (and I’m not just saying that because it stars my hero Steve McQueen) knows when to be subtle, and when to really let us have it. My DVD has a very entertaining commentary from Dave Foley and Phil Gordon on the poker scenes, that even non-poker players will enjoy. Poker players, on the other hand, almost certainly wait for the day when they hit their one-outer and get to say, “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Making the wrong move at the right time?”
• Star Wars (1977) — A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas still cared about story and characters. The remastered DVD is gorgeous, and Empire of Dreams could make a weaker person forget about Episode One.

I also watched a whole bunch of WSOP 2004 and 2003 reruns on ESPN, and almost the entire second season of World Poker Tour on DVD. I know that I watched more than six movies, but they’ve blurred together into a medication-woven Gerald Scarfe / Ralph Steadman tapestry that I think is best left undisturbed.

Since I wrote about voice actors the other day, I’ve been personally attacked, called names, and vilified all over the Internets, often by people whose work I respect and admire. I’m not under the delusion that I’m going to change any minds, but this has bothered me all weekend, so I want to just clarify a couple of things:

1. I am proud of my union, and I completely support my fellow working actors. I’m not going to apologize for that. However, I’ve read several other blogs, and comments on my own blog, which suggest that I believe that actors should get paid before or instead of the other people who work on the game. I never said that, and I don’t feel that way.
2. Most actors don’t live in huge mansions, drive around in expensive cars, and live the lifestyle many people seem to think we do. I, for example, still live paycheck to paycheck. I’m not complaining, just trying to correct what I believe is a serious misconception.
3. For many of the actors who are affected by this contract, the raise they will get — the first in twelve years — could make the difference between having health coverage, or being uninsured. I think that’s pretty important.
4. I completely respect and admire the people who work so hard to create the games that we all love to play. The blog I wrote, from a working actor’s perspective, was in no way meant to demean or disrespect the people who are currently very busy attacking me, my union, and my fellow actors. Without you guys, there wouldn’t even be a game for us to perform in, much less play. I sincerely hope that you all get the recognition and compensation that you clearly deserve.

I’d also like to reprint a few things I wrote to a developer whose work I very much enjoy and admire:

I completely support developers getting seriously improved wages, including profit-sharing. As many have pointed out, without the developers, there is no game, so when a game (or the engine that drives it) really takes off, the people who created the damn thing
should absolutely share in the profits their hard work helped create.
It seems like many developers are angry with SAG because SAG stood up for its members, which is what a union is supposed to do. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that SAG is being viewed with such animosity, just for doing its job. Actors represent less than 3% of the total budget on games, so it’s incredibly unlikely that if SAG were able to make some residual gains, it would even affect developers’ pay. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that producers are going to tell developers that they can’t afford to pay them, because actors are now taking up 4.5% or 5% of the budget.
SAG doesn’t have it out for developers, and neither do I. SAG doesn’t want actors to profit at the expense of developers, and neither do I. To be honest, I bet you that the SAG negotiating committee didn’t spend any time thinking about developers — not because SAG doesn’t respect the incredibly hard work developers do, but because SAG is an actors union, and is therefore focused on actors’ interests.
I don’t understand what developers gain by spending energy attacking SAG, when SAG is just doing what its membership expects it to do. As far as I can tell, voice actors and developers have the same ultimate goal, and I just don’t get why developers are so angry with SAG for trying to reach that goal. It seems like a lot of developers and gamers are pissed at SAG because SAG has the ability to stand up to our employers and ask for better wages, and from an Art of War standpoint, that is an awfully huge waste of energy. It makes much more sense to me for developers to take that energy and those resources, point it at producers, and take the fight to them. Because, ultimately, getting angry at SAG, or me, or other working actors, isn’t going to get developers better contracts or profit-sharing. All it’s going to do is take focus away from the people who can make those things happen.

As I said, I don’t expect this to change any minds, but I hope it clarifies some things, at least a little bit. But just to belabor one point, because this is incredibly important to me: I did not intend to disrespect, discount, or demean developers, level designers, artists, programmers, or any of the people who put thousands of hours into the games they help create. I know what it feels like when someone insults and belittles the work you do, and if I caused anyone to feel that way, I sincerely apologize.

From the guess-what-I-totally-forgot-about department:

• I’ll be on the Computer America radio show tonight. Tune in at 10PM EDT. It’s a call-in show, and it’s always cool to talk with WWdN readers.

From the I’ve-got-a-new-favorite-rss-reader department:

Bloglines. It’s web-based, so I can freely move from computer to computer, the notifier for Firefox is awesome, and you can share subscriptions with like-minded people.It’s also free, and free is my favorite price for anything.

From the shuffle-up-and-deal department:

• Dr. Pauly, from Tao of Poker, is live-blogging the entire World Series of Poker. The live updates are great, but my favorite bits have been his observations on living in Las Vegas:
  

  “I also have a white trash family of 18 living in a one bedroom apartment next door to me. Every morning at 10am is “Red Neck Family Hour” in my complex, which is complete with drunken arguments, a slap fight, and several malnourished kids running rampant in front of my window. Yeah, my apartment is in a flavorful place. I have this freaky feeling that someone’s homemade meth lab in the adjacent building unit is going to blow up and all my WSOP notes will be destroyed.”

• The Poker Prof has the best WSOP photo gallery on the web.
• Phil Gordon is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. When I played in the WPT Championship, Phil gave me great advice between levels, and helped me analyze many of the hands I played. HisWSOP Podcast is fantastic. It’s very accessable, too. If you don’t play yourself, but enjoy watching poker on television, I think you’ll find it informative and entertaining.

From the it’s-about-time department:

• The Cubs will play the Red Sox this weekend . . . for the first time since 1918. ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian gives us all the history between the two teams. I can’t wait to watch these games.

From the she’s-grows-up-and-grows-up-and-grows-up department:

• Remember when I asked everyone to go fark the vote for Danica? Behold, the power of the monkey.

I’m a couple of days behind on this, but I wanted to mention that Debian Sarge has officially gone stable.
This is really exciting news, and I suggest anyone who is interested in running Linux celebrate by giving Debian a try. I built my current system using their phenomenal network-install, which is probably the easiest way to go until Ian Murdock finishes Progeny.
Congratulations, thanks, and a kettle of tasty fish to the whole Debian developer team, who have worked tirelessly to create one of the greatest free distros in the world.

There is a Reuters story in Wired News today about the settlement reached between SAG actors and video game producers.

SAN FRANCISCO — Hollywood actors unions have reached a contract deal with video game publishers, accepting higher pay instead of the profit-sharing they had demanded, the unions said Wednesday, removing the threat of a strike.
The three-and-a-half-year agreements with game companies came as the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists were preparing to announce the results of a strike vote.
Unions had sought to win profit-sharing, known as residual payments, from game publishers.

This may seem like stupid semantics on my part, but actors are so often misrepresented in the press, I feel it’s important to set the record straight here. Residual payments are not profit-sharing. Residual payments are reuse fees that producers pay to actors when they’ve re-used the actor’s performance a certain number of times.
For example, when an actor works on a TV show (commercials are a much more complicated beast, so I’ll stick with TV for this example) the initial fee that actor earns usually includes one or two re-airings by the producer. If the producer chooses to run the show again, a cycle begins, where the producer pays the actor a residual, or re-use fee, that slowly diminishes over time. The logic behind this is that if producers are re-running an old show, rather than creating a new one, actors have fewer opportunities to work. Also, if a show is re-run very often, the producer will continue to profit from advertising sales, while the actor gets over-exposed as one character, which can severely hurt that actor’s chances of being hired in different roles. I suppose one could make the argument that, in that case, it is profit-sharing, but I think that’s largely semantic as well. The point is, producers and actors have had this residual payment agreement for my entire career, and it’s not exactly a controversial issue.
Profit-sharing, on the other hand, is entirely different from residual payment. True profit-sharing, which is usually a percentage based on the amount of money a film earns, isn’t addressed by SAG contracts, which only set minimum wages and working conditions for actors. Profit-sharing has to be negotiated, and the only actors who can grab that brass ring are superstars like Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts.
As I understood the video game negotiations, SAG wasn’t asking for per-unit payments from video game producers. The proposal I read and supported asked for an additional session fee, after the game in question had sold a minimum of 50,000 copies and was profitable. Yeah, that sure seems unreasonable, doesn’t it? Especially since actors account for something like 2% of the average game’s budget.
Anyway, the gains we made are not that great, but they don’t completely suck, either:

• An immediate 25 percent increase in minimum wages from $556 to $695 for a four-hour session for up to three voices with increases in subsequent years, bringing the daily rate up to $759.
• Double time pay after six hours (previously ten hours) for three-voice performers.
• A 7.5 percent increase in contributions to the unions’ benefits plans, bringing the rate up to 14.3 percent.

I’m very happy about the increase in contributions to the benefits plans, and it’s great that 25% of the increase comes right away (usually it’s spread out over three years) but I really wish we’d gotten some sort of residual structure in place.
Before some readers freak out that I don’t think $695 for four hours is very good, let me put this into perspective: in those four hours, we usually do several hundred takes, often screaming and yelling. It’s hard work, and we deserve to be compensated for it. But the thing is, most voice actors are lucky to work three or four of these jobs a year, so when the year is up, most of us are looking at under 3,000 dollars earned from games that gross several million. That seems a little out of balance to me. Before this contract, SAG actors hadn’t had an increase in minimums in twelve years. Producers can afford to pay actors more, and they should.
And while I’m talking about things producers should do: I’m really sick and tired of employers and non-actors lecturing actors about how useless and replaceable we are. If it’s so easy to replace us with Dave from Human Resources, then go for it. Otherwise, show us just a tiny bit of respect for the craft we practice, and the value we provide to your movies, TV shows, commercials, and, yes, video games.
I recently reviewed Area 51 for The Onion AV Club, which meant that I played it for about 7000 hours in three days. The gameplay is great, and I enjoyed it . . . but the story made it more than just another shooter, and it was the reason I kept playing until the end. And guess what? If you watch the “making of” features, you’ll discover that just about everyone at the company thought it was important to hire actors who could bring “unique” voices to their characters, like Marilyn Manson, David Duchovny, and Powers Boothe. Maybe I’m wrong, but I seriously doubt that Kenny, the Hot Topic kid from the IT department, could bring the same energy and creepiness to the project as Marilyn Manson.
When I read Xeni’s story in Wired about the pending strike last week, I was really sad to discover that programmers and developers had largely taken an “us vs. them” attitude regarding the actors who bring their characters to life:

“I’ll back (the actors) when game programmers and artists get residuals first,” said Mark Long, co-CEO of independent game-development company Zombie Studios. “(They’re) nuts if they think they deserve residuals for a half-day of voice-over work,” said Long. “A development team (might) slave away for two years to produce a title.”

If a development team is “slaving away” for two years, and not getting properly compensated for it, what does that have to do with actors? It sounds to me like we’re both after the same thing: increased wages that reflect the value we bring to the title, which we all feel the most successful game producers can afford to pay. As Peter Babakitis said,

“When gamers think that actors are out of line for asking points, then you are also preventing programmers, writers, level artists and everyone else from asking for participation. When actors get points, then perhaps programmers, artists and writers might not be that far behind — and game production might suddenly become competitive internationally again.”

Again, I don’t believe we were asking for points, per se, but I appreciate and agree with the sentiment.
Developers: We’re on the same side, guys, and by playing into “Actors vs. Developers,” you’ve let the game producers divide and conquer us. If you’re getting screwed, why not organize a union? I seriously doubt they could replace programmers, designers, and developers with Becky and Don from ad sales. You’ve got to believe in yourself, and not undervalue the importance of your contribution to the final product. We should be talking about the common goals we have, and how we can reach then, rather than arguing about who is more important.