The Ageism Thing

Last week I had breakfast with a storyboard artist of 20-plus years standing; he told me this:

"I 'finished my assignment' on a project a couple of months ago. My exit interview was quick and kind of strained. They thanked me, said they were moving in a different direction, going with 'new blood' with 'fresh ideas and enthusiasm."

"A lot of the new blood I trained. And now they're working for the people I'm not working for, for less money. Which is fine. It was time to move on, and I want to work on my own projects anyway ..."

This gent is talented, and in my biased opinion he won't have a problem going on to new work someplace else. And he shouldn't take it too personally, since being let go in favor of fresher plasma is a grand old Hollywood tradition, and seldom pretty.

For years, actors have feared and loathed it.

[Sharon Stone] admits she was looking forward to becoming a 40 something back in 1998, but ageist attitudes to Hollywood stars left her floored.

"I thought... 'I'm fantastic and sexy and amazing!' (But) it was like, 'You have leprosy.' I couldn't get a dress or a job." ...

Older writers sue over graylisting. Directors of photography die their hair and get facelifts and hope their networks of contacts doesn't dry up.

And how is it for older animation artists? For some, they float from one job after another, year after year. A golden few spend long, lucrative careers at one or two studios, working on high profile hits. But for many, the job market gets tougher and tougher as you acquire more wrinkles and body fat ... particularly in an economic downturn.

Ageism isn't something on which you can always place your index finger. In most studios I stroll through, I can usually find older artists sprinkled here and there. But often in our down-sized industry, the race goes to the young, energetic and less expensive. As an older ex-Pixar artist explained to me a while ago:

"I went up there to the bay area when Pixar was new and wanted experienced board artists who'd worked on features in L.A. But when they'd made a bunch of hits and had kids out of art school banging on their door happy to work for way less money, they told me: "Hey, it's been great, but see ya bye.'"

Hollywood ageism has been with us for decades. While I don't think discrimination against seasoned animation artists is as virulant or as conscious as it is in live action, I do think it's out there. Trying to prove it legally, however, is something else again.

There is no magic-bullet remedy for age discrimination. The best defenses I know for avoiding underemployment as you get older is working hard, staying at the top of your game, and being better than the competition ... even when there is silver in your hair.

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Ageism

London's Daily Telegraph catalogues some marketers' reactions to the oncoming Pixar feature Up:

"We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character," said Richard Greenfield of Pali Research ...

"The film doesn't sound like much of a goer," said one buyer for a leading British toy retailer, who asked not to be named ...

Alan Dadswell, managing director of Toys N Tuck, an independent chain of shops in Essex, said: "We usually get people asking things weeks in advance but I'm not aware of anyone wanting anything to do with Up" ...

You get the idea. An old guy (voiced by old union Lefty Ed Asner) is the leading man of a big budget Pixar cartoon, and the marketplace yawns.

... The reaction has prompted accusations of ageism at the heart of the multi-billion-pound promotions industry that surrounds films aimed at children ...

Ageism is hardly a new phenomenon in Movieland. Every third week there's a media piece about "the youth market" and how every Hollywood exec worth his pinstripes caters to it. So it's no huge surprise that Brit marketers are reported as saying: "Heey. There's an old guy in this movie! How the hell we gonna sell that?!"

The reaction isn't a lot different than on this side of the Atlantic, if Wall Street's sniping is any indicator (and it is.)

What's laughably ironic is, if Hollywood gets bit in the wallet by the tyranny of youth, it will give the industry a taste of what it's been dishing out to entertainment workers for years.

I've watched older artists get shouldered out of studios ... and the animation business is a bright beacon of enlightened employment practices compared to the live-action side of the business. Show me an embittered animation writer and I'll show you a middle-aged live-action writer who's had the door slammed in his face by a snotty, thirty-something sitcom exec. And as an old live-action cameraman once told me:

"Everybody who's forty-five and up runs scared. Even cinematographers with a dozen big-budget features on their resumes dye their hair and get face lifts. They know there's thirty young guys after their job" ...

Time is a voracious, implacable monster who's appetite never diminishes. One day you are twenty-seven years old and the world is your oyster; three eye-blinks later and you're fifty-seven with thinning hair and a thickening waist-line, wondering where the hell all the jobs and opportunities went.

It will be interesting to see if the monster's hungry cousin ends up chewing one of Up's legs off.

Add On: Box Office Prophets prophesizes Up's ticket totals here.

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Playing Well WIth Others

Mark Evanier has one of those blogs that I read at least once a day because there's always something good to read in it.
Here's a piece he wrote that resonated with me on several levels, especially when it comes to "auditioning" for storyboard work.

My point of view has moved slightly toward the other side of the table, at least enough so I can understand the alternative point
of view.

-- Bob Foster (TAG e-board member and Prez Emeritus)

The last paragraph of Mark's piece (but please read the whole thing):

... The world keeps turning and you have two choices: You can turn with it or you can spend your time trying to shove it back in the other direction. Since no one has ever succeeded at that yet, I don't know why people — especially people who could be as brilliant as Sid Caesar — keep trying. Besides, it's so much fun to hop on and go along for the ride, especially when the alternative is being left behind.

Mark has an interesting point-of-view on Ageism in the article above.

I get a lot of phone calls from veterans who tell me (unhappily) that they have trouble getting work. I think there's a bit of gray-listing that goes on. But I also think, as Mr. Evanier does, that sometimes it's attitude. I mean, over the years I've helped seasoned artists secure jobs; sometimes they land the gig and perform their new tasks with enthusaism and vigor. And stay for years. Other times, they get the job but are soon let go. Sometime it's because their skill sets don't meet the requirements of the job, but other times it's bad attitude. Click here to read entire post

The Ageism Thing

The Writers Guild of America has an issue.

The Writers Guild of America, West ... wants to keep the age of its members hush-hush. According to the film-town blog The Wrap, the Guild is pleading with the Internet Movie Database to stop listing birth dates on its widely consulted website. ...

There's no business like show business for sheer relentless pressure always to be securing the next gig. ... Nothing exacerbates age anxiety like a job hunt. It's bad enough to get pink-slipped. But if you're also over 40, you face the prospect of being considered a wheezy geezer ....

Fifteen years ago, at the height of the last animation boom, older artists securing and keeping jobs was not a huge issue. Newbies were flooding into the industry and finding work. Sixty and seventy-year-olds were coming out of retirement to work on the flock of animated features being made by Turner, Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera to chase after Disney's string of hand-drawn hits. (I talked to a lot of them.)

Now, I get weekly phone calls from story-boarders, designers and t.v. directors in the middle of their fifth decade who are under or unemployed. Some 0f the joblessness is due to bad timing and bad luck. Some of it happens because of our current cultural and business bias: people 18-34 are the key demographic for movie execs, so it's that age group the moguls are most eager to employ (for they hold the secret for hit t.v. shows and movies, as everyone knows.)

But there's another reason. Unlike the business of fifteen or twenty years ago, the cartoon industry isn't expanding like mad and outgrowing its talent pool, which means a strange kind of age discrimination comes into play. Creators of shows are in their thirties, and reach out to their peers to fill key jobs. They, in turn, reach out to people they know. This leaves the twenty-five and thirty-year veterans at the end of the employment line, because the movers and shakers they relied on for work -- other fifty-somethings -- aren't in the drivers' seats any longer. As a long-time board artist told me last week:

"[A forty-six year old director] called me up last month for a two-week boarding job on a movie he's doing. He just phoned one morning and asked 'Are you available for work?' and I said 'You bet I am.' He's one of the few guys in town who doesn't feel he has to use the younger crowd but goes after people he knows and has worked with before. And that he knows can do the job.

"The two weeks ended up being five weeks. Thank God there's still a few people like him around, or I wouldn't have much work in the biz at all."

The sobering part of this tale is, for animation employees the hiring situation is relatively better than it is for workers on the live-action side. That isn't particularly joyful news, but in this day and age, you take comfort and solace wherever you can find them.

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Ageism?

Someone asks about the age breakdown of working members of The Animation Guild, and I'm delighted to throw light on the subject.

Employed Active Members -- 87.1% (2,566 of 2,945)

Employed Active Members over fifty -- 29.5% (757 of 2,566)

Now, a few words about the above.

The employed percentage of active members appears quite high, but the statistic is usually higher still .... above 90%. So we look for total active membership to fall in coming months.

We have fifty more people working now than back in January. Then it was 2,506.

Going back further, in January 2008, employment was 2,271. (Click here for graphs about employment breakdown and trends in 2007-2008.)

What were the employment breakdowns five years ago? Ten years? We'll have to dig out old data, but my best estimates:

The industry has skewed young and male for a long time. If you use the handy search engine up in the left-hand corner, I'm sure you can dig up various posts that cover these subjects.

(I've harped on the maleness of the business previously; I won't bother doing it again here. But as to the youthfulness of the biz, I have several observations):

1) There's been a technological revolution in animation over the past fifteen years, and it's digital. Paper, pencils and paintbrushes don't cut it anymore. So the folks who were experts with those things are unemployable if they don't know the software programs that employers now require for animated production, and it's been tough for many to retrain.

2) Most artists and technicians who come into the business in their early twenties build a support network of fellow employees, most of whom are five to ten years older than they are. By the time these people reach their middle fifties, the long-standing support network they've relied on has retired ... and jobs (surprise!) become harder to come by.

3) Now as always, the business is ferociously competitive; younger and more energetic candidates pour into the field year after year. By the time you are in your forties ... or especially fifties ... you are competing against people who are decades younger than you are.

Animation might be youth oriented, but its a virtual haven for gray hairs compared to live-action work. In that sphere, you will find very few older workers.

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What I've Learned About the Animation Biz

And now, a brief re-recitation of the obvious.

Politics is a permanent part of studio life.

Empire building. Back-biting. Maneuvering for position. I figured out a while ago that in the workplace, the higher the perceived rewards, the more vicious the infighting. (I saw it when I worked at the studios, I see it -- though at more of a distance -- when walking around now. And I've been disabused over the years that it was different in the Good Old Days.

Joe Grant: Are studio politics different now? Not really. The people are different [than when I was at Disney in the thirties], the buildings are different, but the same stuff goes on.

Old Assistant Animator: Frank Thomas wasn't the mellow guy you knew when you were at Disney's. I was in his wing. I remember him coming back from meetings and drinking Maalox. He kept a bottle on his shelf ...

Uncompensated Overtime is Forever.

When I started this job, there were production managers pressuring artists to work free overtime.

Now, there are production managers pressuring artists to work free overtime. ("We need it Tuesday and we don't have any money in the budget for overtime.")

Most of the overtime comes from tight schedules and fear. The fast and efficient have less uncompensated o.t. (if any) because they know how to accelerate and beat the deadline; everyone else puts in extra hours on their own dime .

Some folks put in the extra hours because they have a love of craft and want to create at the highest level. For others it's more basic: a fear of $450 unemployment checks.

Nobody complains or files grievances; in this economy, nobody wants to rock the boat. But then, nobody wanted to rock the boat in the go-go nineties, either.

Unequal treatment of employees is a given.

The stars and key personnel of a studio get way more slack than the the people down in the trenches working production. They can come in late. Take long lunches. Cut out early. It's always been this way and always will. Mere mortals will just have to learn to deal with it.

Animatics are a waste of money. And considered essential.

Today a veteran teevee director told me (again):

"Animatics are there for the executives who can't read boards and don't want to learn. They've tried to get rid of exposure sheets and just go with animatics, but they always come back to exposure sheets. The thousands they spend on animatics never show up on the screen, but they'll never get rid of them. They're like management security blankets. You have to do 'inbetweens' so that the animatic keeps moving.

"They could spend the money better someplace else."

There are animation professionals who disagree with me on this, but I don't care. The things are black holes into which money is poured without a hell of a lot of results. I've seen a studio that puts animatics in color, uses music and sound effects, goes the whole nine yards making the thing as close to a produced cartoon as possible ... without it actually being a cartoon.

Ludicrous. And these clowns whine about wanting to save money. What they want is a video they can show to little kids in their always-popular focus groups.

When people begin making a lot of money, they tend to spend it.

Most animation artists have never made huge pay checks. Except in the middle 1990s. Then, through a confluence of happy events (blockbuster Disney animated features, new studios springing up like mushrooms after a spring rain to imitate Disney, and animation artists finding themselves in high demand) wages skyrocketed.

And many people made a fatal miscalculation:

Heey now. This is the way it was always supposed to be! And this is the way it will be forever!

Sadly, no.

But many animation employees began buying bigger houses and fancier cars and generally increasing the size of their lifestyles. And after a few years, when the supply of talent caught up with demand, and several of the studio closed their doors and Disney laid off staff, the big paychecks went back to being much smaller paychecks. And many were in deep financial trouble (although there were a few who rode the wave frugally and ended up financially independent).

What I learned from living through these fat times is it is always useful to live below your means. (It's why I drive a used Saturn Vue. I'm too old to dig out and start from scratch.)

When animation employees hit their mid-fifties, they also hit a wall called "less employment."

It doesn't happen to everyone, and it happens less in animation than it does in live action, but somewhere between their fifty-third and fifty-ninth birthdays, many will be enjoying way longer stretches of vacation.

I've thought about why this is. I don't believe it's simply ageism. It's also that most artists have a support network of people who are somewhat older; by the time 'toon employees reach fifty-five, the people in the network on which they relied are retired. (And yeah, there are the thirty-two-year-old animation producers who are uncomfortable with storyboard artists who remind them of their dads.)

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