Hey y’all. With the Writer’s Guild of America on strike, you might be hearing a lot more about something called “residuals,” which are payments that the writers get for the studios continuing to air their work on reruns and such. Already I’m seeing people trying to frame the union trying to bargain for better residuals as greedy and unreasonable, so I just wanted to give you guys a peek into my dad’s full, 100% real residual payments for writing some of the most watched episodes of American late night television.
Yeah lol. If u hear anyone trying to frame the conversation around residuals as writers being greedy, please do me a favor and punch them straight in the face ❤️🙃🙃
The last time I saw any real money from film and TV was in 2008, when I got a substantial cheque from the WGA (who administer residuals and such) for my share as cowriter of the Beowulf DVD. And then DVDs were done and became a niche market.
These days residuals are… well, something you can take a friend to dinner with. Not something you could pay a monthly mortgage or the rent with.
(And I’m fine. My TV work over the last 5 years has been subsidised by my book and comics work.)
But I just got one even smaller than the one cent residuals…
