# Why are there still movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 24, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-still-movies/682137 "2014-02-24T19:12:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-still-movies/682137/61 "2014-02-28T07:59:18Z")
> [@LarkingPot](#): > > That first sentence quoted is a lie. This board is supposedly dedicated to fighting ignorance, yet here you are trying to spread it. > > Contrary to your lie film actors and actresses in Hollywood have always been paid amazingly HIGH amounts of money. Charlie Chaplin, aside from the likes of Rockefeller and Henry Ford was the highest paid person in the United States during the height of his career. Who exactly do you think lived in all of those Hollywood and Beverly Hills mansions in the 1920’s and 1930’s homeless bums? Christ, _ **of course** _ I meant amazingly low compared to a movie star today, not compared to a Depression-era ditch digger. For example, Bogart was paid around $36K for _Casablanca_. Jimmy Stewart was paid about $20K for _The Philadelphia Story_. John Wayne made $3700 for _Stagecoach_. True, they weren’t at their peaks then, but they were leading men in starring roles in major studio films. And true, $36K would buy a very nice house in 1942. But it’s still only about half a million in today’s dollars. Even the biggest star ever, in the biggest movie ever, Clark Gable in GWTW, was paid only $120K. Sure, that would be worth maybe $2 million today, but he was Clark Fucking Gable. Meanwhile, Liam Neeson gets $50 million for Taken 3. Comparing Taken to GWTW, and Neeson to Gable, I consider Gable’s salary amazingly low. And if you think I’m cherry picking with Neeson’s one big score, then fine, take Adam Sandler. According to IMDB (where all of the salary info in this post is from), he got $20 million or more for at least 7 different movies, all forgettable fluff, and [their list](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001191/bio#salary) is missing some of his movies, so it’s probably more than that. Adam Sandler’s AVERAGE salary for seven crappy movies is over ten times as much as Gable got for GWTW, in today’s dollars. That’s just wrong. But I wasn’t even thinking of household names, I was thinking of stars who were on contract before they got top billing, and were paid just a few hundred a week. There were many more of them than leading men like Bogart, and there were many more leading men like Bogart than there were HUGE stars like Clark Gable. By the way, you could not have picked a worse counterexample than Chaplin. Yes, he made tons of money at his peak, but he was not a salaried actor then. He typically, wrote, directed, and produced his films, so he got way more than a simple actor would — although he was probably one of the two or three highest paid actors even before that. But thanks for not spreading ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-still-movies/682137/62 "2014-02-28T08:09:13Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Also, when I watch a movie at home, my girlfriend wants to freaking pause the movie 3-4 times to get a snack or go to the bathroom interrupting the flow of the film - that doesn’t happen at the theater. Well, there you go. You just listed all the advantages of not going to movies. I have no problems with the “flow” of a paused movie, but I have all kinds of problems with the flow of a movie where I’ve missed some dialog. And it doesn’t have to be rude people who are talking or rustling bags of chips or whatever. If a comedy is actually funny, you almost always miss stuff when the audience is laughing out loud. And to everyone who considers my OP an attack, you can assume that every sentence in every post of mine contains an implicit “in my opinion.” ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-still-movies/682137/63 "2014-02-28T11:43:04Z")
comparing it to ancient movies aren’t very helpful. if you want, you could perhaps compare an actor’s salary as a percentage of a tv or movie’s budget and profit. you could also factor in the time commitment. how much is an actor earning per hour for tv vs movies? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-still-movies/682137.md?page=3)