...on movies in a while, so here goes... This is this week's question, and you should expect to see the past questions answered here evenutally... maybe even in one big meme!

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**Jackpot**

"Show me the money!"
~~Jerry Maguire

What do you think of the huge salaries many celebrities receive per film? Do you think they deserve/earn that much?

I think that some of the salaries of celebrities or stars (there is a difference - I wrote about it once) is outrageous - they take home part of the profits, or international distribution, or manage to get an office on some lot somewhere and call it a production company as part of a deal. And the money just keeps coming in...

Eventually you reach the point where there is too much money and not enough brains to manage it. Thus, you hear about strange and sundry exotic shopping trips for things that make you ask "what the heck would anyone need *that* for?"

So, I guess that answers the second question as well - do the stars/celebrities deserve that much money? No. I don't think that someone who does a work for 6 weeks on a picture, no matter how long the days are, deserves $20 million dollars for a film. Or even $10 million. $5 million seems more reasonable to me.

You know who deserves the high salaries? Teachers. (This is a regular peeve of mine, but I've been pretty vocal about it in the last few days and I can't figure out why.) But I digress. What the heck do these stars need that much money for? For the cachet of being the highest paid? For the staff to wait on them hand and foot? For the money to pay off whatever extortionist holds a secret over thier heads (or some nasty photos of them)? Honestly... $20 million is enough to live on for the rest of your life - not something you should earn once or twice a year. But that's not the way they see it, and that's not the way a director or producer can guarantee a box office draw (of course, a good script helps, but we're not talking about scripts, we're talking about "the talent"). And so there are actors who are in the realm where they can demand $20 million a film and points on the gross....

...but what's really gross will be when they start the $30 million club.