Poor Warner Brothers
Here's an ad from UCLA's listserve. Apparently, Warner Brothers so blew their wad on Tom Cruise and a bunch of old Samurai swords, they couldn't even pay a handful of girls $10 or $15 an hour to promote The Last Samurai:
Casting beautiful Asian women for Warner Bros.' The Last Samurai Premiere After-party to be held in Westwood on Dec 1st.. Women will be dressed as village women from the film's wardrobe department and mingle 'in character' through the party, helping to create the ambience of ancient Japan, circa 1870's. There is no pay, but a chance to be part of this year's biggest Hollywood premiere with a guest list including Tom Cruise and the rest of The Last Samurai's fantastic cast!!If interested please forward a picture and information ASAP to:
Cheryl Rave
Entertainment Producer
Warner Bros. Special Events
(818)954-3549 phone
(818)954-3011 fax
Cheryl.Rave@Warnerbros.com
Here's the e-mail I sent Cheryl:
Dear Cheryl, I'm a middle class newspaper columnist, and I pay my assistant (because I think it's unethical to have somebody work for free). I think it's pretty terrible that Warner Bros. is trolling for people to work for free at this party. You can't pay the girls $10 an hour? Why, movie budget was too big? How icky. --Amy Alkon
Amy, I'm with you on this one. Even the extras on movies can make up to $600.00/day of work. Plus, virtually anyone can be an extra on movies, regardless of comeliness or ethnicity, but these people are hiring extras that are specific, no less: must be beautiful and must be Asian. Sounds like that's worth at least a grand to me.
Patrick at December 25, 2003 11:13 AM
Total cheapskates! Just because you CAN get something for free doesn't mean it's right to do it.
Amy Alkon at December 25, 2003 11:22 AM
There will be dozens of beautiful Asian women banging down the doors to get this gig, and it's not because they're dumb. They want to say hi to Tom Cruise, and then tell all their friends that they fucked him. That's worth a lot more than 20 or 30 bucks. You couldn't offer that kind of compensation to your assistant, Amy.
Lena at December 25, 2003 11:33 AM
Your e-mail probably didn't get to her--she was already fired over this.
Peggy C at December 25, 2003 12:05 PM
Hmm, looked it up - you're quite right, Peggy. Thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately, she wasn't fired because she tried to get people to work for free, but because of the apparently un-PC-enough nature of her request.
http://www.angryasianman.com/images/angry/lastsamurai-ew.jpg
Hmm, let's see -- you want beautiful women running around at a party who look like they belong in a Samurai movie -- maybe you should advertise for Haitiian refugees! There's no limit to PC ridiculousness.
Amy Alkon at December 25, 2003 12:48 PM
I agree that people should be paid to work. But I'm not sure that I agree that going to a party, eating and mingling with famous people really counts as 'work', either. But it was pretty stupid of her to advertise it that way. She could have not mentioned anything about pay and see how many volunteers she got--I bet there'd have been a lot of them. If she hadn't said 'beautiful' Asian women, I bet there wouldn't have been any backlash, either.
Peggy C at December 25, 2003 5:41 PM