Fun with royalties!
If a writer is fortunate enough to write something that gets produced as a movie or TV show, beyond what they get paid as salary, they receive residual payments. The amount per check is some sort of mysterious percentage of some sort of even more mysterious revenue figure that only Gollum could possibly figure out if he managed to sneak into Sauron’s lair (i.e., the movie studio’s business affairs office). Evidently that has happened because every quarter, WGA members, myself included, receive residual checks.
Then there are these odd things known as royalties. I guess they’re distinct from residuals, but if you were to ask me how they were different, that question might be enough to cause me to lock myself in a room and actually start writing, instead of writing about writing. That’s how mysterious the whole thing is to me.
However, I do delight in royalties because they appear out of nowhere and on their own time — kinda like the Mets winning the World Series. Believe it or not, the WGA has actual employees whose job it is to track airings of movies in foreign countries. We can’t see these stalwart souls at work, we can only taste the fruit of their labor in the form of royalty checks. In fact, I received one today. And as thankful as I am for even the meager sums these checks represent, I’m much more interested about invoice details such as these:
“Foreign Copyright Royalties — K-9 — ARG-TH-2000–37.37”
What that means, I guess, is that somewhere in Argentina (ARG), some theaters or cable outfits aired K-9 in the year 2000 and because of that, I earned $37.37. Okay, not enough to retire on, but not exactly chopped strudel either. Actually, I’ve been receiving royalty checks based on K-9’s performance in Argentina for years, which perhaps lends credence to the rumors that a bunch of Germans supposedly relocated to South America before and during WWII. Note to the uninformed: the co-star of K-9 was a German Shepherd. Get it… German shep… ah, forget it.
Then there are the unusual items on my royalty check invoice:
“Foreign Copyright Royalties — ALASKA — CHE-CR-PC-ER-2006–5.99”
Okay, I can figure out the movie Alaska. And I get the $5.99. But what country/countries is/are CHE-CR-PC-ER?
Chechnya? Costa Rica? Panama Canal? Emergency Roomania?
Then there’s this item:
“Foreign Copyright Royalties — TROJAN WAR — NLD-2003–11.02”
Trojan War? Check! $11.02? Now I’m a high roller! But NLD? My mind immediately goes to the star of the movie Jennifer Love Hewitt. Could this be the key to unscrambling the code?
“Naughty Lover Damsel?”
“Netherlands Loses Desire?”
“Nachwurst Leinenkugel Dimsung?”
Has me baffled. Any suggestions?
