“We had to just sort of live off of a paycheque from three years ago,” Brady Corbet says, as The Brutalist continues its awards run.
Brady Corbet, director of The Brutalist (pictured) has made a startling admission: as the writer and director behind several unique and interesting creative big swings, he has made ‘zero dollars’ from his last two films. What’s more, the filmmaker has opened up a little bit as to just why that is, outlining a pretty bleak situation for independently-spirited filmmakers who just want to tell singular stories in an artistic way.
Speaking on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Corbet revealed that he and writing (and real-life) partner Mona Fastvold received ‘zero dollars’ for their last two films. To pay the bills, Corbet claims that he has just taken a few advertising gigs in Portugal to bring in some income, revealing ‘it’s the first time that I had made really any money in years,’ and also adding, “we had to just sort of live off of a paycheck from three years ago.”
He talked about the advertising work in the chat he had with us, in a special episode of the Film Stories Podcast..
According to Corbet, he’s far from the only celebrated filmmaker in this position. “I’ve spoken to many filmmakers that have films that are nominated this year that can’t pay their rent,” he said, not naming names but adding that the punishing nature of participating in a promotional campaign for films like The Brutalist meant it was also impossible to run a side hustle or even work on new material, all while receiving no payment in return.
Read more: The Brutalist review | Brady Corbet’s magnum opus is well worth your time
“You’re not paid to be promoting a film,” he explains, “and if you look at certain films that premiered in Cannes, that was almost a year ago. Our film premiered in September so I’ve been doing this for six months and had zero income because I don’t have any time to work.”
Perhaps it was naive of us to think that distributors might throw in some cash to pay filmmakers for their time publicising films, because that’s a long time to be working without an income, although we’d imagine that Corbet surely has some form of profit participation at the very least.
Even so though, the filmmaker’s comments indicate why so many celerated young independent filmmakers take a big studio project early in their career to solidify their financial situations. It’s a system that Marvel Studios has certainly profited from handsomely over the years, as have plenty of other studios.
Should Corbet happen to find himself on stage at this year’s Oscars clutching a golden statue, he should definitely use that platform to demand a few changes, for the sake of himself and every other artistically-minded creator out there who aims to hold on to their integrity while working for peanuts.
