"Welcome to Making a Movie" - The Personal Cost of Building a Spider-Verse
With great power… You know the rest.
Let's get something out of the way. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ranks amongst the finest pieces of animation ever produced. It is breathtaking, evocative, and its montage-like cascade of styles and textures produces something absolutely new. It does something that the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes have almost completely failed to do, show love for what the medium of comics actually is: narratives riding upon ebullient splashes of color on paper.
The recent allegations of several animators, initially reported by Vulture, are a disturbing stain upon the good will that the hugely successful movie has garnered, but the court of public opinion will be the only judgement levied on the production related to the charges and the public seems to, mostly, not care. What has emerged over and over, though, as the symbolic crest of this story are the comments made by producer Amy Pascal which amount to "Suck it up, Buttercup!"
I guess, ‘Welcome to making a movie.’ — Amy Pascal
These comments - even more than the allegations of eleven-hour day, seven days a week, schedules for over a year - seem to have captured the public's attention. Rather than refuting the brutal working schedule, Pascal attempted to codify it, to say that this was just the way things are. It is normal, she intimates, for someone to spend most every waking hour, for a year, doing demanding and stressful work and to have that work repeatedly thrown out to be begun again.
This is not a sustainable way to work. This is not acceptable if you are to say that you respect your artists. While the costs may be hidden by a staff who's individual careers could end with a producer getting a whiff that an artist has complained publicly, they are high.
Brainy Smurf
Let me tell you a story about little blue men.
Ten years ago I realized that I had been drinking too much and needed to stop. I sought out help in a clinical program that set me on the right path. In this program I had a Licensed Clinical Social Worker assigned to me who I will refer to as Kate.
Kate was wonderful and every year on the anniversary of my sobriety I write her and thank her for everything she did for me. Like most people who work specifically in the field of addiction, she had been an addict herself.
During our time together we fell into a discussion of animation and she explained how animation had been at the origin of her addiction.
In the early ’80s Kate was an animator on the television show Smurfs. One of a group of American animators that worked on the successful show (At one point is was estimated that 44 of every 100 televisions was tuned to the Saturday morning staple.), the demands were intense. Producing a half hour of original animation around 30 times a year was rough enough, but occasional misinterpretations from the Japanese companies who were doing some of the extraneous coloring or in-betweener work would cause last minute scrambles for the animators and would add even more chaos to the mix.
To keep up, the animators were working most of their waking hours, sometimes seven days a week, drawing the show. To keep the animators going, carts of cocaine and methamphetamine were wheeled in as if they were coffee.
And the animators kept going. Day after day, week after week, year after year. For periods the schedule would normalize, but never for long. Eventually crisis mode would set in and, because the show was so profitable, the animators would be juiced back up.
To be fair, the animators didn’t have to stay. They didn’t have to do drugs. But if you wanted to be a team player in a competitive field, you found a way to keep up.
Ultimately Kate recognized that she’d become addicted and got out — fighting that addiction for some time before she got a handle on it. Others on the staff had worse outcomes. Others on the the staff of the Lord and Miller Spider-verse production will have worse outcomes. The human mind and body can certainly do that much work, but the bill will come due eventually. A person will pay in carpel tunnel or back problems or a nervous breakdown or addiction.
The human body offers no free passes.
Amy Pascal - Producer, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
What if she’s right?
I hope that the callousness with which Amy Pascal commented on the working conditions of the staff under her purview and protection serves as something of a wakeup call to this industry. Maybe she’s right, that this is simply what making these kinds of movies is like. It’s no badge of honor, however, to have punished people, or to have suffered through this kind of punishment, to make a Spider-Man movie, or Smurfs.
An artist certainly has a right to damage his body or psyche to create his art if that’s the choice that artist makes, but holding an entire group of artists hostage under the threat of never being able to successfully do the kind of art that they love unless they damage their body or psyche doing someone else’s work is immoral.
Perhaps there’s more to the story — almost assuredly there is — but this flippant dismissive stance on the damage a production has caused to its artists is chilling.
Alcoholics Anonymous symbol
Where to find help.
Dear reader, if you have an issue with drugs or alcohol, don’t hesitate to reach out for help. The longer you wait, the harder it will be and there is help nearby, I promise. A good place to start is with your medical provider and, if that is not a possibility, try your local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is 100% free and there is nothing you can say that will shock them. Even reach out to me, if you’d like, and I’ll try and connect you with someone.
We’re in this together.
by Major Communication of Abigail’s Army
You can find us over on Facebook in the Abigail’s Army progressive Disney fans group.
Or on Mastodon at @AbigailsArmy@mastodon.social
