Does a director on the level of Paul Thomas Anderson make much money at all?

October 28, 2012 4:17 PM

Does a director on the level of Paul Thomas Anderson make much money at all?

I was remembering a story I read a few years back about Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella having to ride the bus to get to a fundraiser and it got me wondering about how well-repsected but not really high-grossing directors make ends meet.
Take for instance someone like Paul Thomas Anderson. His work is widely loved and respected, but his highest grosser is There Will Be Blood with $40 million. He also tends to make maybe 3 films a decade and I dont know that directors always get cut in on profits so much, but then who knows?
So do directors like Anderson, Solondz, Korine, etc have lifestyles similar to our own or do they actually end up getting paid well in some other way?
Not that it matters, but its just something I was wondering about.

posted by Senor Cardgage to media & arts (16 answers total)

Soldnz teaches as does Spike Lee, Korine does fashion work/artwork as does Wes Anderson and John Waters, who also does speaking tours as do other critics (Tarintino) sometimes script doctoring (Elanie May for sure, possibility that Malick did), sometimes there is TV work or Commerical work (Bob Babalan, Lee again, Erroll Morris). Also, never underestimate the power of real estate.
posted by PinkMoose at 4:27 PM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's a long tradition of film directors paying the bills by making TV commercials, which is apparently pretty lucrative. Off the top of my head I know Errol Morris, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Wong Kar-wai, Baz Luhrmann, Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, Wes Anderson, and Sofia Coppola have all made TV commercials.
posted by jeb at 4:28 PM on October 28, 2012

Korine as in Harmony Korine? I seriously doubt he's making good money from his films, although he's got what looks like a more mainstream movie opening next year that might change things. But if he's making anything significant it'd be from 'some other way' (skateboarding, visual art, music video direction).
posted by mannequito at 4:30 PM on October 28, 2012

I don't have numbers but I'm confident a director on the level of PT Anderson makes over a million dollars per film at the end of the day. (There are various ways of getting paid beyond straight director's salary. Most established directors will also be credited as a producer of some sort, for example, and they will have participation in the various ways the film makes money.)

So I guess it depends on whether you consider making (very roughly) $1m per year "much money at all."
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:15 PM on October 28, 2012

The DGA dictates minimum salaries, if I'm not mistaken. So, for a film with a budget of more than $11 million, the minimum weekly rate is $16,797 with 2 weeks guaranteed prep and 10 weeks guaranteed employment. With a budget of less than $2.6 million, salary is negotiable. Between $2.6 and $3.75 million, salary is minimum $75k. From there to $11 million, the weekly salary is a percentage of the standard rate. (source, where you can also see the rates for TV and commercials) The directors you mentioned probably make much more than the minimum unless it's a passion project, everyone-sacrifies sort of thing.

Anthony Minghella left his wife an estate of £7.5 million so you would have to ask him why he had to take the bus.
posted by acidic at 5:16 PM on October 28, 2012 [6 favorites]

A quick google indicates PT Anderson's "net worth" to be $50m, but I have no clue how they arrived at that number. Also keep in mind almost everyone working as a director in Hollywood comes from money in the first place.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:17 PM on October 28, 2012 [3 favorites]

Anderson is in a very different club from Solondz or Korine. He receives a solid seven figure fee for every movie he makes and the residuals on Boogie Nights alone are well into the six figures every year - maybe seven figures. His wife is a well paid movie and TV star.
posted by MattD at 5:22 PM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just to add to my previous point, take a look at the directors for your favorite TV shows, and you'll see a lot of indie film directors on there. DGA minimum for a network 1/2 or 1 hour show is around $20 and $40k, respectively. Cable minimum is a bit less, pilot minimum is way more. So just doing one or two of those a year is enough to "pay the bills", leaving nearly the entire year free to do other work.
posted by acidic at 5:28 PM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Anderson and any director on his level absolutely makes a lot of money. Despite the fact that his films may not gross a whole lot in comparison to some of the more main stream "hollywood" directors...there's no doubt that Anderson, Spike lee, and the others are comfy millionaires if of course they take care of their money.
posted by ljs30 at 7:28 PM on October 28, 2012

Gross receipts is not an indication of either salaries paid or profitability due to so-called Hollywood accounting. It's not a proxy with which to infer directors' salaries.
posted by dfriedman at 7:54 PM on October 28, 2012

My understanding is that they do well for themselves. I don't know that many are tremendously beyond-your-wildest-dreams wealthy, but none of them have to ride the bus because they don't make enough money to own a car*.

I've been the personal assistant to a director before -- this was a very prolific TV director, not someone of PTA's stature -- and he definitely came off as a wealthy guy. I wasn't privy to his finances, but he had a nice home in a nice area, sent his kid to a great private school, his wife had full-time childcare and household help, they drove nice cars, wore nice clothes, and had all the latest gadgets and such. I guess they could have been living beyond their means, but they certainly weren't poor.

Directors get healthy residuals. People mock the tiny amounts, but it definitely adds up. Who gets residuals and who doesn't, and in what situations, is a really big deal among people on different sides of the film business.

*I'm a lowly assistant nobody in the film industry, and I make enough money to own a car.
posted by Sara C. at 8:06 PM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Residuals are important, especially when you consider that we've gone through two major format changes in the last 17 years, and now have multiple streaming licensing options. Any new work by a director will spark interest in his older work.

PTA in particular is also usually his own screenwriter, which offers another credit, but also another salary and residual opportunity. On some of his films, he is also the producer, which in this context often means bringing a load of cash to the table and basically being an investor in the finished product.

I dont know that directors always get cut in on profits so much

Note that so-called "back-end deals" are a potential way to save money on the initial production. There is also a difference between gross and net-profit points. Due to the risk, PTA may have (for example) taken a back-end share of Boogie Nights, which obviously will have paid off fairly handsomely if that were the case, while once established he can demand a higher initial salary.

Cameron famously forwent his Titanic salary, putting it back into the production to finish the picture, and took an obviously lucrative back-end deal in its place. Looks smart now, but many thought he was "going down with the ship" ... until they saw the movie.
posted by dhartung at 12:50 AM on October 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

'I had to take the bus' makes an entertaining anecdote, but I think for someone like Minghella, it's more likely to translate as 'Oops, I forgot there's no studio sending me a limo!' than 'I can't afford a car'.
posted by Azara at 5:16 AM on October 29, 2012

Directors (and screenwriters and producers) can also be paid for projects they work on, but never make it to fruition. Oftentimes if a director hasn't put out a movie in some time, it's because there are one or two others that didn't work out.

A director will also do a TV pilot and help shepherd the project to air, for which they'll receive an Executive Producer credit and be paid for every episode for as long as the show airs.

You can also own a production company. Bryan Singer's company (he's a blockbuster filmmaker now, but he started the company for The Usual Suspects) produced the TV show House, from which he'll probably be seeing profits until the end of time.

Here's indie director Lynn Shelton talking in nice depth about helming an episode of Mad Men.

So, how did you get involved? Start from the beginning.
Well, I’ve just been up in the hinterlands of Seattle making movies my own weird way. And I never really saw myself intersecting with Hollywood at all, because I'd figured out a way to self-produce my own work. And then Humpday made a little bit of a splash at Sundance in ’09, and I suddenly had fans in Hollywood. So I’m in development on some really cool projects with producers, and as those things take some time to launch, I was asking my rep, "Is there a way I can, like, make a living in meantime? Because I kind of need to pay my mortgage ... And they were like, well, you could direct TV ... Mad Men was absolutely at the top of my list.
posted by Smallpox at 7:01 AM on October 29, 2012

Re Azara - or, perhaps, I live in a really nice neighborhood with great public transit access to the studio where I have a production deal, and therefore don't have to drive myself to work if I don't want to.

It's also worth mentioning that being a film director isn't a 9-5 Monday through Friday type of job that requires a commute. Mostly, you're going to meetings and such, and if you're a big enough deal, you can probably control where those meetings happen.
posted by Sara C. at 9:31 AM on October 29, 2012

I also just read an IMDB newsblast account of the Bus Taking, and it sounds like this went down in London. Taking a bus in London isn't posh or anything, but it's a totally different thing from taking the bus in Los Angeles. There are definitely successful creative types on that level who take public transit by choice in New York City, for example.
posted by Sara C. at 9:38 AM on October 29, 2012 [1 favorite]