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Interns File Suit Against ‘Black Swan’ Producer
"If you want to get your foot in the door on a studio picture, you have to suck it up and do an unpaid internship." ERIC GLATT, 42 An accounting intern for "Black Swan." (Photo by Marcus Yam for The New York Times)
Two men who worked on the hit movie “Black Swan” have mounted an unusual challenge to the film industry’s widely accepted practice of unpaid internships by filing a lawsuit on Wednesday asserting that the production company had violated minimum wage and overtime laws by hiring dozens of such interns.
— nytimes.com
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9 Comments
If you think architecture internships suck the film industry is notorious for this; they invented this type of exploitation of unpaid labor.
Film studios routinely hire interns to work, always unpaid. The schools are required to provide the insurance and often, more often than not, the students pay the school while they work for free. Long hours, no overtime. no benefits. I think the Oscar winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler was working on a documentary about exploitation of labor in the 'industry'
And what kind of work? Making coffee, copy-machine operation, go-fer stuff. Not all all educational as required or implied. After the semester, or quarter, of ' industry experience,. the next batch gleefully replaces the previous set. On and on it goes.
Unpaid internships are bullshit. If your hired , your labor contributes then you need to get paid. no excuse.
eric chavkin
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the dont work for free
I agree with Eric, unpaid "internships" are nothing short of slavery. Lawsuits such as this one should happen in architecture. Most interns would be happy to do the same job for minimum wages; firms should be ashamed.
Actually, unpaid internships are DRASTICALLY short of slavery. Interns can choose whether or not to take one. We have, however, set up a system where it is more or less expected that the only way to get started in architecture - or film, or other professions - is through doing unpaid internships. Students really are left feeling like they have no choice. Which is why I think the change has to come at the employer level: it is illegal to benefit from the unpaid labor of another, period.
This is the phrase from the article that scare same the most "Lawyers for numerous companies say the Labor Department’s criteria (for unpaid internships) are obsolete...". So now we're just deciding that the laws we don't like are "obsolete"? What other laws will a lawyer claim they just don't feel like bothering with?
I hope this lawsuit actually leads to a bigger discussion. Given how much money the defendants have, of course, it won't.
no one else is kind of stunned that this guy is 42 and an intern? maybe its because I'm 22, an intern, and unhappy that I'm still an intern. Don't give up on the dream I guess
I mean seriously, what Fox Searchlight's lawyers are saying is "We profit greatly from not paying people, and we don't want to have to figure out how to pay people while still being (maybe slightly less) profitable, so let's just change the laws." It's fucking disgusting the attitude this country has towards people trying to climb up to enjoy the so-called "American dream". The dream seems to have become figure out how to screw over as many people as possible so you'll get more. Disgusting and greedy.
I wrote something a couple of years ago about parallels between architecture and the entertainment industry.
Zahu55 i though that the most interesting aspect of the story as well. Not sure if that is just because of the film industry or?
I havn't even seen the film yet, but I know plenty about extorting labor from students who have no other choice but to wade onward through the unknown bottom of the industry. They are cornered with student loans and debt out the a##. The way things are now, you wonder why the people trying to make the world a better place seem to be punished with unemployment, worker rights, low pay, and debt, not to mention not so ' fun' job once you get one. In my opinion, yes they have a choice to work the 'job' or not, but their investment on a career is hinging off being moreorless an endentured servant, slave whatever you want to call it.
This is all intertwined with what is happening on wallstreet in my opinion - people are fed up with getting nothing from working hard toward a dream. Hell if I'd known at the beginning of architecture school what I know now, I'd had just gone into cnc milling or fabrication specialty. This architecture bit is way too complicated these days.
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