#BrendanFraser is a righteous dude. In November 2007 our paychecks stopped. I was the FX lead on #JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth for Meteor Studios in Montreal and was asked to convince my crew to stay and finish the picture with a guarantee we'd all get paid with overtime. We had a handfull of shots left. As soon as we delivered the last shot, we were escorted out. It was two weeks before Christmas and we'd soon learn there was no money. Meteor was declaring bankruptcy. They owed us 1.3 million dollars. Variety put their best reporter on it and after many artists and support staff bravely came forward, I got this short terse email: "The paper(Variety) has decided that another visual effects company going bankrupt, however sad, is really not news worthy at this time" I kept trying to get help from the Hollywood press. I realized it wasn't just Variety's decision, no one wanted to touch the story. My guess was the studio had put pressure on them to bury it. Finally, I made that rejection quote from Variety the headline of our own press release, and hired a PR company to release it. One artist, Eric Labranche, made a website for us to communcate with each other and vote, many others helped as well. Then I tried to get the attention of Brendan Fraser, the star and executive producer of the movie. I called his "people" from IMDB pro. They said they'd tell him, they did not. 24 hours after the release, I got a threatening email from Variety and a call. I hung up. I then got a call from Les Normes the labor dept in Canada. They told me not to go to the press it would ruin our case. I hung up on them to. Then the phone rang again and it was this fast talking New York City gal with a heavy brooklyn accent. She was excited that I'd called Fraser's people and had gotten no response from him. It was page six of the Post, the gossip page, but we'd take it. She said the story would be live on the website within the hour. Exactly one hour later there it was: lnkd.in/erbDVK2z My phone rang as I was reading the piece, a 212 area code, I answered to thank the girl, but a man answered and he said. "Is this Dave Rand?" I said "Yes". "This is Brendan Fraser, what the fuck is going on?" He had no idea that artists were not paid on his movie. He listened intently, asked a lot of questions and promised he would call me regularly until this was solved. First, he called the Post to tell all: lnkd.in/ewPE_w5E A vfx wave began to form. Branden kept his promise, he publically campaigned for us. The media, especially Variety, even started to cover our story. Thank you David Cohen. We finally got 80% of our money almost 2 yrs later. To quote the great Steve Hulett : "What runs the world isn't what's right, or who's the richest, it's leverage, and who has it." We'd had none, but Mr Fraser gave us wings. He's a righteous dude. These days, I'm very selective, if I've chosen to work there you can bet they're moving in the direction
More to come on this topic soon, there’s a lot more to the story.
#Oscars Update: I took a peek at the Oscars tonight, hard for me to watch. It was almost 10 years ago when #LifeOfPi was up for best #visualeffects, and won! Sadly, because of a massive trade imbalance that breaks our World Trade Agreement, the company that made the great #VFX on that great movie was bankrupt, and would be disappearing forever, laying off the entire staff of almost 700. trade.gov/trade-guide-wt… This great loss, added to the tens of thousands of #MiddleClass #jobs that left #America as we pimped out the best part of our #film culture to the highest bidders. You see, if you do your visual effects for your American movie in #Canada the #CanadianGovernment kicks back up to 60% or whatever you spend, no one can compete with that here in the USA, and it’s why we all signed the #WorldTradeAgreement. Ten years ago, I led a protest outside the Oscars over the insolvency of the company behind Life of Pi that addressed these imbalances, and massive loss of jobs. I had a plane with an illuminated banner, flying over the ceremony, and 1000 artists protesting outside. I initiated this with a tweet, right here on @X. Many came to help immediately, including the press. When our leader Bill Westenhofer was handed the Oscar and went to speak of the protest and the problem, they shut off his microphone and played the theme song to Jaws, I guess Life of Pi, being an ocean movie, they thought that was funny. youtu.be/OH5Pc8Gd1lo?si… Shortly after Ang Lee, the Director of the film, forgot to thank the 1000 visual effects artists that made his film possible, filling 90% of the screen most of the time. This infuriated even the Canadian artists, as every visual effect artist in the world changed their Facebook profile picture to a green square. If you want to read more details on this, just search VFX protests Dave Rand. Or watch the documentary Life After Pi youtu.be/9lcB9u-9mVE?si… These days @THR @Variety @DEADLINE Are no longer interested in writing about the rapid loss of the VFX industry in America, and the loss of tens of thousands of middle-class jobs. It seems they’ve come under full studio control this past decade. 95% of the VFX jobs are gone as of 2024. The unions, @IATSE and @IBEW Have no interest in helping us here either even though this country made them, they’ve turned their backs on helping us get this to trade court, while they try to unionize scraps. That leaves us with the politicians. Like the former mayor of Los Angeles, and assemblyman Gatto, who was penning Bill 1839 at the time, and who strung us along, promising to finance our fight in trade court, if we just waited, and then dropped the ball and bowed to the studios. Of course they love the free money, that’s their sole motive for the pimping out of greatest component of American filmmaking to the highest bidders, while hoping no one will notice. The cost to bring this to trade court is $1 million. That is all that’s holding this entire house of cards up. I’ve asked @POTUS and all relevant politicians. Feasibility Study: tinyurl.com/VFXSubsidiesSt… I’ve asked @elonmusk to help. I’ve asked @DonaldJTrumpJr & #DonaldTrump. No response from any of these people. No response to helping us bring tens of thousands of middle-class jobs back to America and back to our culture where it belongs. I’m so tired of seeing studios like @Disney & @Dreamworks who promised never to leave America under @POTUS44’s watch, even his personal visit where he promised this would never happen. Now Disney is doing films like Moana 2 in Vancouver, laying off VFX artist in #Hollywood that have been with them for decades!! "I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them-If I got them cups and awards, they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That's why I created the Academy Awards". Louis B Mayer: I am so tired of reading post like this on LinkedIn from Artist I’ve worked with, the best in the world!
Be sure to read Parts 2 and 3 but only if you are interested in what 30 years in the trenches has given me. I'm first to admit that I'm gilded and shell shocked, and I pray that I'm wrong, and a union will finally bring the answers. I often bring up the ideas you'll read about in meetings with the two biggest union players, the IBEW and IATSE, and usually get cut off, because it conflicts with organizers short term and shortsighted international interests, but it you're going to try the same thing over and over locally, and expect different results...well, maybe it is time to "think different" The American studios have kept us all weak on purpose, as they have other nations entertainment endeavors. The tools they have used to do this are quite genius on the surface, but crush their own bottom lines in the end. Getting other nations bending to their will has only limited creativity globally, hurting everyone. Their should be a Maplewood, a Chinawood, a Kiwiwood and OZWood, and Englishwood etc.. equally as strong as our Hollywood, but instead, there's creative slavery. I expand on these ideas a bit more in the immediate additional parts to this tweet, and will continue here on my feed. Thank you all for reading and appreciateing this voice. I never expected this kind of passion. Your comments have been heartwarming and show all that artists everywhere, still have a heart to warm.
Now, Canada is stealing our jobs …
@daverandla @tessgarcia Hi! This is lovely. The links don't seem to go anywhere though 🥲
@daverandla How come this tweet is this long???