Hah! Never noticed that one! Thank you.
It’s a cover of “Uncontrollable Urge” used for the show Ridiculousness which indeed is like 90% of MTV’s programming, and has been for like a decade now.
Didn’t know that before I looked it up. Good for Devo!
My understanding is that owning the film and owning the music that’s in the film are two separate things. I think (although I could be wrong) that playing a song in a movie showing is like playing a song on a radio; it’s considered a public broadcast and the song’s writer gets paid a performance royalty.
My favorite story is the MASH* theme. Johnny Mandel, a big-time Hollywood composer wrote the music. But the lyrics had to be silly, even stupid. Mandel was blocked.
[Robert] Altman quickly realized that neither he nor Mandel were immature enough to write something silly, snarky or downright dumb enough to make the satirical scene work. Where, he wondered, could he find someone in the throes of adolescence? Someone who lacked the pretensions of age. Someone who could cook up something adequately juvenile???
Fortunately, Altman didn’t have to look too far. His fourteen year old son Michael Altman fit the bill just fine. Robert gave the teenager the challenge. The younger Altman seized his opportunity and amazingly ended up taking just five minutes to write the final lyrics that became “Suicide is Painless” as we know it today.
MASH* was made on the cheap. Robert got a chintzy $70,000 for directing, Mike a nominal fee.
Then came the TV show. The theme was played on every episode and every rerun. Even though the lyrics were never heard, Mike’s name was officially on the song as co-writer, so he got half the royalties after being wiped out of existence. Sources on his bounty vary wildly, with a minimum of at least $2 million over the years.
There was at least two versions of the original TV theme: one with a full orchestra and another with a small ensemble. The second was more “jazzy.” IIRC, it changed at the start of the third season (the one with Leonard Nimoy).
I just put “If your music is used in a movie and you signed a contract to sell it to the maker of the movie with no future payments, would you not get any more money for the music?” into Google. Try that yourself. It says that, depending on the contract you signed, you may only get the initial flat fee and nothing else.
Thank you. I’m aware that some musicians might not get paid for some production.
But I’m not looking for the kind of generic information that Google AI produces. I asked about specific musicians and specific productions.
We’d have to get hold of the contract that was signed by Richard O’Brien and the owners of the film to be able to say any more about how he would be paid and when.
Not necessarily. People talk about things like this in public interviews. They’ll say things like “This mansion was paid for by that television series I did when I was a teenager” or “That blockbuster movie I was in made five hundred million dollars but I only got paid fifty thousand.”
Do you have a copy of the contract they originally signed? Do you have any videos of interviews O’Brien gave in which he talked about how much he made? Are you a lawyer specializing in American copyright law who can tell us if the contract is valid? (I’m not.) I don’t see how there’s any more for us to discuss at this point about O’Brien without any of us on the SDMB having any such information.
So when you posted this it was based off of you reading a copy of Danny Elfman’s contract?
I like the way Michael Caine described Jaws III.
(Paraphrased) I haven’t seen the film. But I have seen the house it built, and it’s glorious.
It’s Jaws 4 and I think he said he built the house for his mother.
‘I haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen the house it bought my mother, and it’s marvelous.”
Thank for the clarification.
There’s also the story about John Lennon deciding he wanted a swimming pool so he wrote a song figuring that would pay for it.
Coincidentally, I just saw a video that’s related to this subject. It’s about residuals for acting rather than songwriting but it does explain some of the process.
Frankie Muniz Reveals How Residuals Really Work in Hollywood
Indeed, the misquote has gone far. You can just watch him say the real quote here.
No, that was just a guess I made based on my estimation of what proportion of Elfman’s fortune comes from The Simpsons. But, there’s no way to be sure without looking at the contract. My stance now is that there’s no way to answer the question in the title of this thread except by having a copy of the contract and a better knowledge of American copyright law.
I’m getting old so my eyes suck, or maybe I’m just an idiot, but I can’t see where you made it clear that your statement was just a guess on your original post.