What changes?
What changes in a person that suddenly makes one million dollars not seem like a lot of money?
Remember when you and your friends would sit around and say stupid shit like, "How much money would it take for you to eat poop?"
And you'd say something like, "Not for less than a million dollars!"
Let's be honest; we all know someone who would eat poop for far less that a million dollars.
But, and this whole fuckrant is contingent on whether or not the information contained within these articles is accurate, Terrence Howard wouldn't eat poop for a million dollars.
Nope.
You know what else he wouldn't do for a millions dollars?
Be a part of a franchise that has grossed over a billion dollars.
I understand how, relatively, one million is less than four and a half million.
I do.
It's math.
Four and a half million is three and a half million more than one million.
See?
But a million dollars to be an actor in a film is still good.
It's real good, you guys.
Here's the venomous little heart of this thing for me: actors want to be treated like normal people (for the most part), because, technically, they are normal people, in the biological sense, anyway. They still eat and sleep and poop and fuck, just like all humans*, but there is something that happens to an actor's mind (most actors, not all actors) that changes the value of things...suddenly, getting paid anything for acting in a movie, is no longer the most incredible (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word) occurrence in the world.
Something changes and makes that actor think that, because they are sharing their ability to pretend in front of a camera with the rest of the world, that receiving less than a million dollars is, somehow, unfair or wrong. Not worth their time.
I'm now a full time actor, primarily voice, but I do on screen as well. I have booked jobs where the amount of money I've received for my time seemed ridiculous; thousands of dollars for, in some cases, less than an hour of work, that "work" consisting of talking into a microphone in a quiet, comfortable room in New York City. I've also done much more than that amount of "work" for far less, sometimes for free, even.
Because being a working actor is the best job in the world and because I am so, so insanely grateful that this is where I am right now.
And, when I look at things like Howard turning down the chance to be in a movie, let alone for a million fucking dollars, I get sick.
This isn't what this is supposed to be about.
And I'm not just pointing fingers at Terrence Howard. Robert Downey Jr. was paid fifty million to be in Avengers.
Fifty million.
That's fifty times more than what Terrence Howard turned down not to be in Iron Man 2.
And that makes me sick, too.
What does RDJ (or any eight-digit-paycheck-per-film actor) need fifty million dollars for?
Transportation?
Food?
Even without eating the best food in the world and taking the fastest and most private jets in the world, one can still live well without anywhere near that much money.
And he received that amount for one movie.
I don't really know where I'm going here. I suppose this is an indictment of the entire entertainment industry?
How does one determine the value of an actor's time and skill versus that of a fireman or a teacher?
How is it that one VO job pays $500, another pays $100 and a third pays $10,000?
I am not Terrence Howard. Yes, I really do understand that. I am not a movie star. I also understand that.
But I am a professional actor, and the idea of turning down the work that makes me a professional actor seems utterly senseless to me.
I am still utterly shocked and delighted every time I book a gig and they have an unlimited supply of water for me to drink.
And snacks!
I feel like I've won some sort of prize!
And you're going to pay me to talk into this microphone?!
I've been doing this for ten years now, and I am almost just as stoked about it as I was the very first time I booked a gig and received viable currency for doing something that I love and am good at.
What the fuck else do you need, Terrence? Robert?
What do you need aside from receiving money and adulation for doing something you love and are good at**?
Anyway.
Unfocused spatter of bile concluded.
One last, two part question for Terrence, if I may: if someone had walked up to you with a million dollars when you were growing up in Chicago all those years ago, and told you it was for pretending you were Iron Man's best friend, would you have turned it down then?
What's changed in forty years, you cock?
* And I apologize for excluding those among us without digestive systems, mouths or sexual orgams, I really do.
** Robert, not Terrence. Quite frankly, I'm overjoyed they bumped him off of the Iron Man movies.
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