A gent who, as you'll see, wanted me to call him "Doc Bedlam" wrote with the following question…
Longtime reader here who has so far not bothered you with e-mails, requests for money, or an impassioned defense of cole slaw…but I have a question. It's a weird question, so feel free to ignore it, but it is a subject in which I am interested. If you choose to reprint this on your blog, call me Doc Bedlam.
Recently, I was given a gag gift: The Little Golden Book…of Dungeons and Dragons, based on the old Saturday morning cartoon show, a thing you've mentioned on your blog a few times, to say how you had little to do with it other than hammering someone else's concepts into a form and format that fit your standard Saturday morning cartoon show at the time, and filing off some rough edges here and there.
This book was written and illustrated by people who claim to not be Mark Evanier…but in the second tiniest print on the page, it says, "Based on the episode "The Night Of No Tomorrow" by Mark Evanier."
Now, experience has taught me that the writer doesn't get any more credit than he's contractually obligated for someone to give him. My question is this: Did you get some sort of residuals for the reuse of your story concept in a Little Golden Book, and was it any significant amount? I mean, I'm not asking for your financials or anything, but would the $$$ be worth the trouble of endorsing and depositing the check?
I ask this because I'm aware you've been writing for TV for more than a few minutes now, and I have this image in my head of Mr. Mark Evanier, slipping on his shoes, strolling jauntily out to whatever he drives, and heading out to the Post Office once a week or so…and walking back out with an enormous mail sack full of envelopes.
Most of them contain paper checks…for amounts ranging from a few dollars to a few cents. Because clear back in 1980, someone signed a contract with Mr. Evanier that meant he got residuals of some sort whenever a given story was used…on a downward sliding scale based on how long it's been since the contract was signed (I've heard actors talking about how the residuals run out after a given period, and how they were getting checks for 89 cents ten years after a show was cancelled, and like that; my knowledge of how the writers get paid is somewhat sketchier).
If you're feeling indulgent, could you enlighten me as to exactly how this works?
I'll show you how observant I can be at times. When I got this message the other day, I thought, "There was a Little Golden Book adapting that script I wrote?" I started to write a reply here saying how I'd never seen a copy and certainly never seen a dime from it. But then I had the vague feeling that I had…somewhere, sometime. And then the vague feeling got a little less vague…
A few months ago, I was on a panel at Comic-Con about the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show. The dais was decorated with Dungeons & Dragons merchandise and I went and looked at a YouTube video of the entire panel. Here — I'll let you have a gander at it if you're interested…
As you'll see if you gander its way, there was not only a copy of the book as part of the display, it was SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME FOR THE ENTIRE PANEL [Emphasis added to emphasize my cluelessness.] Well, at least I had that vague remembrance. But I never opened it and never looked inside and if I had, I might not have seen my name because I didn't have the electron microscope that I carry with me nearly everywhere I go. I found this image of the title page online…
If you still can't make out my name, clicking on the image will make it a wee bit larger. Or get out the electron microscope that you carry with you almost everywhere you go.
So no, no payment…yet. I may or may not be owed something but I'll have to haul out the contract to check…and with my filing system here, finding a paper from 40 years ago — and then, if any monies are due, actually collecting them — may be harder than finding one's way home from a mystic dimension based on a popular role-playing game.
The contract was with Marvel Productions, which has been sold and reorganized several times since then and I guess it's now part of Disney but not a part with any rights to the game and maybe the cartoons. It has been my experience that companies are pretty good about honoring deals that they (themselves) make. But when a company changes hands, the new hands either never receive the paperwork that delineates the contractual obligations that come with the acquisition or prefer to pretend that they didn't.
So that's part of the answer to your question, Doc. Here's a more complete answer…
From a writer's business standpoint, there are three kinds of cartoon shows — those that are covered by the Writers Guild of America contract, those that are covered by the Animation Guild contract and those that are covered by neither. The contracts for the first two are basically what we call "Minimum Basic Agreements," meaning that if the hiring entity wants your services badly enough, you or your representatives may be able to negotiate an additional contract that gives you better terms that are in the M.B.A.
So let's say that the M.B.A. specifies that for a certain-length script, you'll receive $8,000. Let's further say that your agent and/or circumstances persuade them to give you a better deal that adds in, say, $2000 more plus agreed-upon residuals or royalties or bonuses or special credits. In that case, you'd get $10,000 plus those residuals or royalties or bonuses or special credits. If you don't (or they won't) agree on an additional contract, you just get the $8,000 and whatever credit is dictated by the governing M.B.A.
If you know the story of how I came to do the Dungeons & Dragons pilot and bible — a brief version of it is in video above — you know that I had some extra clout to demand a better deal. This is what good agents are especially good at and mine got me a lot more money, a "Developed for Television By…" credit on every episode and I think there was a "series sale bonus" if/when the network bought the show plus some other rewards. I'll have to locate my copy of that contract and see if I'm owed anything more and if so, if it would be worth it to make the phone calls or turn it over to my lawyer.
It may not be. When I performed a similar service for a Disney cartoon show called The Wuzzles, they adapted my scripts into kids' books similar to Little Golden Books and also a record or two. That contract didn't promise me a cent if they did that so I didn't get money or even copies of the books or record nor was my name on them.
Marvel Productions at the time I worked on Dungeons & Dragons was a signatory to Local 839 of I.A.T.S.E., which has since changed its name to The Animation Guild. If I hadn't gotten that contract, my deal would have just been the M.B.A. of that union which, I'm pretty sure, did not allow for additional payments to the writers for anything.
And once, I worked on an ABC Weekend Special which was adapted by others into two books not unlike the Little Golden Book. My contract did not allow for this so I went to the studio's attorney and told her they should have gotten my okay and also asked me to do the adaptations. She said basically that if I made an issue of it, I would never work for the studio again. I chose not to make an issue of it but I also decided that I liked that part about never working for that studio again.
I think I've answered your basic question, Dr. Bedlam sir, but let me address your fantasy of me cruising to the post office to pick up sacks of checks. It wasn't even that way before a lot of this went to Direct Deposit. Money trickles in here and there, mostly from the two different Garfield cartoon series for which I was Producer, Writer and Voice Director…and I use the word "trickles" deliberately. There's not much there for anyone to envy.
Garfield and Friends now reruns 24/7 on some streaming services. On the streaming service called Pluto, there's literally an entire channel devoted to that show and it's on Tubi and others, as well. I worked on every episode and I've made a pact with one of the voice actors who was on every episode. At the end of this year, we're going to take all the money we've received in royalties and residuals for our work being streamed in 2023 and blow it all on one big lunch at Five Guys.
If we don't order the extra-large fries, the math may work out perfectly. This is a lot of what recent strikes in the entertainment industry have been about.
You've reminded me of one time I had lunch with the late (and loved by me) actor Howard Morris. We met at the restaurant and he hauled out a pile of residual checks he'd just received for voice work at Hanna-Barbera. I don't know (nor did he know) what period of time it covered but the stack was about an inch high, which is a lot of checks. I said, "Well, I guess lunch is on you" and he said, "Take a look at the amounts."
At the time — this was mid-nineties, I think — it was said that to process and mail each residual check cost the studios about eight bucks. There wasn't one check in that stack that was for over about three bucks. Most were well under fifty cents. After we ate, as we waited for the bill, Howie began endorsing the checks so he could deposit them at his bank on the way home. Since I could forge his signature flawlessly, I took half of them to help out.
As we reached the end of the signing process, Howie said, "This is ridiculous. When I go to an autograph show, I get twenty dollars and up for signing my name. Here, I'm signing it for —"
And he flipped over the last check he'd signed to see the amount, which was four cents. The last one I signed was for three and the whole pile added up to a little less than forty dollars. I suggested he use some of that to buy a rubber stamp for future endorsements but he feared he might lose money on the deal if he did. He said, "I'm pissed off at having to do this but if I didn't get anything at all, I'd be even more pissed."
And then the check for our lunch arrived — which he grabbed and which he insisted on paying. With tip, it was for a little less than forty dollars.
