One might speculate that “your good options,” based on what’s important to you personally are not necessarily “good options” in the larger sense. I mean, it’s cool that you agree that it’s reprehensible to “force” the actor to continue to do nude scenes, if she’s uncomfortable with them, but if you feel like the only other reasonable course of action is, “Well, guess I got to fire her, then,” there may be a logic fail happening somewhere.
You seem to be arguing from the point of view of “Why don’t the show runners for Game of Thrones share my sensibilities?”, or am I reading that all wrong?
Interestingly, it seems as if Clarke’s renegotiation of her contract terms has allowed and even forced the showrunners to up their game. The tease in 6.03 may have been deliberate (on the writer’s part), setting up a bigger surprise for the (haven’t we done this before?) ending of 6.04.
This theory wouldn’t even have occurred to me had it not been for the creepy indignation spouted in that episode thread and this one. But perhaps the showrunners are more accustomed to that attitude of entitlement and decided to make use of it, playing with (some) viewers’ expectations.
It’s a good thing you’re not involved in movies or TV. That would be an extremely foolish thing to do. You would get an incredible amount of ill-will from fans of the show, not to mention enormous criticism from the general public, about firing an actress for such a reason (especially if using a body double is an option). Incredible as it may seen, for most fans besides teenage boys having an excellent and charismatic actress in a major role is far more important than being able to see her tits.
Because circumstances, needs, and wants change and people are pragmatic and flexible.
Because everyone comes out ahead? Because it doesn’t hurt you (much) to do so and it makes someone else happy? That’s a pretty good reason, even in business.
Loyalty cuts both ways. Sometimes the way you are loyal to someone is to give him or her something he or she wants, even if it wasn’t in the original deal.
Predictability is one thing. Finality is something else. Remember that acting contracts are contracts for services, from people, that is, human beings. In the end you can’t force someone to do something he or she doesn’t want to do, although you can make his or her life hard. But show business is about relationship, human relationships, and very often letting things slide is the best option.
So you go from a theoretical or minor change to a huge change, and one that is much more likely a real harm to the production, and its appeal. Why? Out of obstinance? A love for finality?
You realize that legally, firing her is the most you can do to force her to do nudity against her will, right? You can’t have someone hold a gun to her head and make her strip, you can’t have her thrown in prison until she strips for you. You’re not taking some noble position there - you’re just recognizing the facts. So by firing her instead of working with her you are attempting to force an actress to do nudity against her will.
I’m not arguing. I’m stating what I think they should have done. It’s just an opinion. This isn’t a debate. Lots of folks disagree with me, and some of them seem to be on the verge of their heads exploding over it. I’ve explained the logic behind my decision - there’s no logic fail here, you just happen to disagree with my prioritization of ‘honoring a deal’ over ‘appeasing fans who get upset if a role is recast.’ And that’s cool, you do you.
If I were to say “You do this or you’re fired” as an ultimatum, you would be correct. That is not the scenario being presented here. There is no coercion whatsoever in it. There’s a freely negotiated original contract, and there’s the termination of the contract when one party is no longer happy with it. There’s never a threat of termination of the contract.
If you don’t see the distinction, then that’s on you, I have other things to do today.
Same principle would apply to an actor playing a character who was a villain, and who became uncomfortable with the character’s actions; or a character who was an addict and became uncomfortable portraying the addiction; I’m not the guy making this about tits.
You would run your imaginary TV show differently. Good for you.
So if she said “Wait, no, I really need to keep this job, I retract my objections!”, you’d still fire her for daring to question the almighty contract?
The whole thread is about tits. Namely, Emilia Clarke’s tits.
Many acting contracts have a “nudity clause.” I don’t think other details of a performance are regulated in advance–they are worked out with the actor, director, writers and/or showrunners. Unless the actor is a giant star, he or she generally falls in line.
My point is that “lots of people” appear to include the people who produce Game of Thrones, and you seem to feel some kind of way about that… And I am not “disagreeing with your prioritization of ‘honoring a deal’” so much as I am questioning whether the very notion of “honoring a deal” means what you think it means?
I think I have to stand behind logic fail, though: “fire her” is neither the most logical nor the most reasonable course of action from the options available.
All I know is that I had zero knowledge of, or interest in, this actress or her tits before this thread. But now I’ve been inspired to go a-googling.
The bad news is that after years of unrelenting exposure to unholy amounts of internet porn, tits no longer do anything for me. I’m sure hers are nice, but, honestly, I can’t even tell anymore. It’s no more titillating than looking at elbows.
You were the one who chose the example of Emilia and nudity to comment on what you would do. Don’t move the goalposts. You said you would fire her, specifically, if she wouldn’t show her tits. My comments were based on the specific example you chose.
Whether an actor might be fired in the other circumstances you mention would realistically depend on how much clout they had. If they were particularly crucial to the show, it might be worthwhile working with them. There are innumerable examples of actors who have objected to something in the script, and had the script changed to accommodate them.
If you ran a TV show the way you proposed, you wouldn’t be running TV shows at all in the future. We’ve been pointing out that it’s an absurdly naive viewpoint, and the real world doesn’t work that way. You’re not only running an imaginary TV show, you’re running it in an imaginary world.
CandidGamera, are you actually saying that you think it would have been the right decision for the show - that is, it would actually have made Game of Thrones a better show than it ended up being - if the producers had fired Emilia Clarke and recast the role the moment she objected to doing a nude scene?
Or are you saying that as a producer you’d have fired her on principle, and to hell with what’s best for the show?
There is no suggestion anywhere that Emilia Clarke broke any agreement. There is no reason to invoke “penalties.”
Classical economics tells us that people will only enter a contract if they believe that it will make them better off. Every contract requires each party to give something up and to get something in return. Thus, each party will enter the contract only if they believe that what they are getting is worth more to them than what they are giving. When you buy a TV it’s because you would rather have the TV than have the money the seller demands, and the seller would rather have the money than the TV. Everybody in the contract comes out ahead. These are the benefits of trade. Ms. Clarke and the producers can also both benefit from their trade.
Your limited selection of options is a strawman. As a businesspeople, the producers have an infinite range of options because they can renegotiate a limitless range of contract terms. Neither party has to renegotiate the contract and the parties will only do so if both sides believe they are better off with the new contract. Thus, both sides win from renegotiating and from that perspective, renegotiating ought to be encouraged. This is what businesspeople do frequently; they try to make their existing deals even better for themselves. Of course, there is a cost to renegotiating, so businesspeople don’t renegotiate every contract every day.
How can both sides win in negotiation? Imagine, for example, you enter a contract to buy a beautiful lake house near your job at a fair price. The seller plans to use the money to buy a new bigger vacation house. The purchase and sale agreement says you are to close in one month. But then, the seller loses his job and he decides not to buy the bigger vacation house. In the meantime, you get an offer on a new fantastic job halfway across the country and you don’t really want to buy the lake house any more. Should you both stick with the contract just because that’s what you initially agreed to? Or does it make more sense to renegotiate and cancel the whole thing?
The producers didn’t “acquiesce” to unilateral demands from Ms. Clarke (or at least, nothing I’ve seen suggests that this is what happened). By my reckoning, the producers actively agreed to a new contract because they thought it was in their interests. Ms. Clarke must have also thought the new contract was in her interests. Each party got something they wanted – the producers got a longer contract term and Ms. Clarke got more control of her nudity. The parties all seem happy with the deal even if you aren’t.
Some people seem to think of a contract as a document that allows one side to win everything and the other to lose correspondingly. Maybe you’re thinking that the producers won everything in the initial negotiation with Ms. Clarke and thereby any deviation from that initial contract means that they lost something. I’m guessing that some people have this lopsided view of contracts because they are used to entering very one-sided consumer contracts that they have no chance to negotiate (referred to legally as “contracts of adhesion”). Contracts of adhesion often seem slanted to the drafter’s benefit, particularly when disputes arise and the consumer learns he or she has few rights of redress. The contract between Ms. Clarke and the producers (likely) wasn’t a contract of adhesion. They both had the opportunity to negotiate its terms. And then they renegotiated it so it was better for each of them.
I challenge you, specifically, to find a quote where I said any such thing. I posted in this thread about acting contractual crap with an opinion about acting contractual crap. Was there another thread on acting contractual crap I missed? Or just this one that you insist is solely about one actress’s tits?
And I’m not moving the goalposts - I don’t have any goalposts to move. Because this is not an argument. I’m not trying to sway people. I posted an opinion, people started shitting themselves, and began trying to start a debate. My responses have been solely to correct misapprehensions people seem to have inferred from the original post. I have a quirk that makes it difficult for me not to respond to false accusations. If someone calls me a sarcastic bastard, I got no problem. If they call me a Nazi bastard, I’m gonna take issue from now till doomsday. It’s a compulsion of mine.
To address a couple of other respondents in a more general sense before I’m done with this thread :
Yes, if an actor approached me for a renegotiation of an existing and unfulfilled contract, I would fire them on principle, to hell with the best interest of the show, and no, I wouldn’t suddenly change my mind if they said ‘ha ha, I was just kidding, I take it back.’
Yes, there’s room for change in a contractual relationship - either built into the existing contract or contracted alongside it, or by mutual consent of the parties while still conforming to the letter of the contract.
In this specific case, I can think of two such remedies - the producers and Ms. Clarke agreeing on fewer nude scenes, more tastefully done, as a compromise; or the built-in escape hatch in the original contract allowing the use of a body double.
As for Tired and Cranky’s continued fan-fiction about my emotional involvement with the question : TL;DR.
Y’know, you shouldn’t deny having said something when the quote is available in the same exact thread (unless you are meaning that you would want Emilia to do nudity but not show her tits). You said, specifically, that you would fire her (instead of attempt to renegotiate) if she refused to do nudity.
I’m not debating anything either. I’m stating that your opinion is about what to do is not a realistic one in the real world. Pointing that out is not debating it. It’s simply a fact.
Why should we care about an opinion about a course of action that would be so counterproductive and unrealistic? :dubious:
