One for the Money; One for the Art

"Do one for them; do one for you. If you can still do projects for yourself, you can keep your soul."

— Martin Scorsese

What happens when creators do a project for money or to fulfill a contract so that they'll have the finances and creative freedom to do their artistic dream project.

This can be done indirectly by, for example, an actor or director doing a project for money and then turning around to put the money into an indie film they wanted to do. In this instance, however, the creators still have to deal with all the problems faced by indie film directors. The paycheck is rarely that huge, they have to find a distributor, and they have to hold casting calls.

The funding can also be done directly when, as part of a multi-film contract, a creator agrees to do a commercial project for a studio while the studio, in exchange, agrees to fund the creator's artistic project. This version ends up being far more convenient for the actor/director. First, the studio is frequently willing to fork over more money for this, as they stand to take a share of the box office cut, so even if the artistic film takes a minor loss they're not out that much. Second, with the power of a major studio behind them, the actor/director now has A-list stars on speed dial, and doesn't have to worry about finding a distributor.

Compare Paying Their Dues for when an artist needs to take smaller gigs before they hit the big time. Contrast with Only in It for the Money, in which the work made for making money clearly is not for personal projects. See also Auteur License. This trope is frequently used as a justification by non-American actors to travel across the Atlantic and/or Pacific, as they use the money from Hollywood to finance their ventures in theatre, independent films, and other lower budget yet artistically appealing projects in their native countries.

This isn't necessary a good or bad thing. The "commercialized" work can still achieve immense fame and still be as artistic and quality as the passion project. Can lead to Magnum Opus Dissonance if the project done only for the money is the one that takes flight while the project done for the art never gets off the ground.

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Examples:

Advertising

• John Cleese started appearing in advertisements so he and Connie Booth could afford to work on Fawlty Towers at the pace they wanted.
• In late 2008, John Lydon appeared in an advertising campaign for Country Life butter on British television. He defended the move by stating that the main reason he accepted the offer was to raise money to reform Public Image Ltd. without a record deal.
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America licensed out Davey and Goliath for an appearance in a Mountain Dew commercial in order to acquire funding for the Christmas Special Davey and Goliath's Snowboard Christmas.

Comic Books

• Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, Matt Fraction and Warren Ellis are all writing or have written Marvel Comics titles to raise money for publishing their personal projects. The first three also use Marvel's creator-owned publishing line Icon, while Ellis publishes his personal titles through smaller companies, like Avatar Press.
• After alienating much of the comic-book industry with his embrace of Objectivism (and losing the rights to many of his most famous creations to DC Comics when they acquired Charlton Comics), Steve Ditko spent the 80s taking low-prestige jobs like drawing for coloring books in order to fund his own Objectivist-themed comics.

Film - Animated

• Ralph Bakshi has admitted he's only done some projects for the money so he could do the animated projects he really wanted to make.
• Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. and Janice Karman used the money they had made off the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise to finance The Chipmunk Adventure (because possible distributors wouldn't meet their proposed budget) - which they later admitted was a big mistake, citing that producers funding their own movies is the Hollywood equivalent of a lawyer representing himself.
• Richard Williams agreed to do Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure to get funding for his passion project, The Thief and the Cobbler.
• Disney co-directors John Musker and Ron Clements effectively had to do three films over 16 years to create their dream project, which would become Treasure Planet. During a pitch meeting following their moderate success in directing The Great Mouse Detective, they presented the ideas of "Treasure Island IN SPACE!" and an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid", with Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg much prefer the latter. Even following the monolithic, Disney Renaissance-kickstarting success of The Little Mermaid, as well as that of Aladdin which Musker and Clements were also brought in to direct, Katzenberg remained uninterested in the Treasure Island project, only greenlighting it if they made one more commercially viable film. It was only after they created Hercules (as well as Katzenberg's leaving of Disney) were they finally able to make Treasure Planet.

Film - Live Action

• Ben Affleck agreed to play Batman for the DC Extended Universe in exchange for Warner Bros. funding his directing stints.
• Sean Astin couldn't be lured into making Encino Man just by offers of money. Then he was offered a chance to direct at least one short film when he really wanted a directing career. He describes his response to that as "Sold!"
• Richard Attenborough agreed to direct A Bridge Too Far and Magic so that Gandhi could get made.
• Michael Bay originally intended to make Pain & Gain before Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The studio agreed to foot the bill for P&G if he would wait and do Transformers first.
• Luc Besson planned The Professional as filler. At the time, he had already started working on The Fifth Element, but production was delayed due to Bruce Willis' schedule. Rather than dismiss the production team and lose his creative momentum, Besson wrote The Professional. It took him only 30 days to write the script, and the shoot lasted only 90 days.
• Marlon Brando said that the only reason he continued to make movies was in order to raise the money to produce what he said would be the "definitive" film about Native Americans. The film was never made.
• Richard Burton agreed to star in Exorcist II: The Heretic so that Warner Bros. would finance Equus. John Boorman agreed to direct so that the studio would make Excalibur.
• Steve Buscemi took part in Escape from L.A. to help fund his directorial debut, Trees Lounge.
• Sean Connery agreed to do his last James Bond film for EON, Diamonds Are Forever, for a fee of £1.2 million, which he used to found the Scottish International Education Trust, an arts funding company for Scottish artists.
• Francis Ford Coppola apparently only directed The Godfather Part II in order to do The Conversation and get funding for Apocalypse Now.
• John Cusack has gone on record as stating that he'll take just about any well-paying gig he's offered because it lets him finance the small indie projects that are his true artistic love.
• Dino De Laurentiis agreed to produce Raw Deal (1986) because he needed quick cash for his long-gestating project Total Recall (1990). At that time, he owned the rights to the film. The film's failure to make adequate money (only $16 million) resulted in De Laurentiis' bankruptcy and Total Recall's sale of rights to Carolco.
• Michael Douglas' Rotten Tomatoes page is very telling. He tends to alternate several "rotten" Hollywood films (You, Me and Dupree, for example, or The Sentinel (2006)) with highly rated indie films (Solitary Man, Wonder Boys). While there are obviously exceptions on both sides, it can be assumed he takes the Hollywood parts to pay for the independent ones.
• The last Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool, came about when Warner Bros. greenlit and financed Clint Eastwood's pet project, Bird. Eastwood, returning the favor to the studio, agreed to make a film for them that would be commercial and carry box-office weight. Warner Bros. suggested another Dirty Harry movie.
• Christopher Eccleston has said in several interviews that he has no illusions about the artistic merit of any of the Hollywood movies he's been in (which include Gone in 60 Seconds, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and Thor: The Dark World), and that he only does these jobs to be able to afford to concentrate on the infrequent and not-too-generously-paid TV and theatre roles he really cares about.
• Jessica Chastain agreed to be in The Huntsman: Winter's War to get a starring role in Crimson Peak.
• Emilio Estevez used his money from the third The Mighty Ducks movie to indirectly fund The War at Home.
• John Ford made Rio Grande purely to get The Quiet Man made. Ford wanted to make the latter first, but Republic Pictures studio president Herbert Yates didn't think the script was very good and wanted Rio Grande to be released first to pay for The Quiet Man. To Yates's surprise, The Quiet Man, on its eventual release in 1952, would become Republic's number one film in terms of box office receipts.
• Leslie Howard wasn't particularly interested in playing Romantic False Lead Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, but agreed to take the role in exchange for being made Associate Producer for the film Intermezzo, which (as he had hoped) led to his producing several other films.
• Randal Kleiser agreed to direct Grease so he can afford to do a project he dreamed to make, The Blue Lagoon.
• Brie Larson says part of the reason she agreed to be Carol Danvers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was that the stable good paycheck it would bring her would allow her the financial freedom to be in smaller projects.
• As part of Ernst Lubitsch's deal for directing Ninotchka, MGM agreed to make The Shop Around the Corner for him afterwards.
• Patrick McGoohan used his salary from Ice Station Zebra to fund further episodes of The Prisoner (1967), which was in the midst of a production crisis at the time.
• Ewan McGregor has always been very upfront about the fact that he takes roles in big-budget Hollywood movies so he can afford to be in the little Scottish indie films he loves doing but wouldn't otherwise be able to afford him. That isn't to say he disliked said big-budget films, merely that money was the main factor; he has stated that being part of the Star Wars prequels was cool, as he got his own lightsaber. Not to mention that he's has done some Japandering for an energy drink.
• Adam McKay agreed to direct Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues so that Paramount would let him make The Big Short.
• Bill Murray agreed to star in Ghostbusters (1984) so that Columbia Pictures would finance The Razor's Edge.
• Christopher Nolan agreed to do The Dark Knight Rises if the studio would fund Inception.
• Edward Norton has taken roles in big-budget flicks to help bankroll projects like Spike Lee's 25th Hour.
• Sean Penn agreed to be in Carlito's Way in order to fund his second directorial effort The Crossing Guard.
• Daniel Radcliffe has taken advantage of the financial security that came from playing Harry Potter to pursue an eclectic collection of roles in risky film projects.
• Christopher Reeve only did Superman IV: The Quest for Peace so that The Cannon Group would produce Street Smart.
• John C. Reilly does screwy comedies such as Step Brothers and Talladega Nights and big-budget/mainstream works such as Kong: Skull Island and the Wreck-It Ralph duology partly because he likes doing them, and partly so they grant him the financial security to do smaller, personal projects such as The Sisters Brothers (which he produced along with his wife) and Stan & Ollie.
• John Sayles wrote genre Hollywood scripts to finance his well-received independent films.
• Liev Schreiber appears in about two movies a year so he can afford to do classical theater in NYC, like Hamlet or A View from the Bridge.
• Martin Scorsese made The Color of Money in order to finally get The Last Temptation of Christ out of Development Hell.^note He'd been planning it since The '70s, and a previous deal to make it got canceled by the studio literally weeks before it was supposed to start filming.
• Steven Seagal agreed to star in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory so that Warner Bros. would let him make On Deadly Ground.
• Peter Sellers agreed to star in three more The Pink Panther films in the 1970s in order to get Being There made.
• Both stars of Speed 2: Cruise Control - Jason Patric used his entire salary to finance his film Your Friends & Neighbors, while Sandra Bullock did the movie to get the financing for Hope Floats.
• Stellan Skarsgĺrd is blunt about his motives for starring in films. He's called several of his larger-budget Hollywood movies "utter crap" that pay well and allow him to do great films with lower budgets — during EPK interviews.
• The Wachowskis made Bound to prove they had the chops to handle The Matrix.
• After getting the boot as director of Alienł, Vincent Ward used his pay off to finance Map Of The Human Heart.
• Orson Welles spent much of his career doing this with money from projects like The Transformers: The Movie and TV commercials for Paul Masson wine used to fund directorial ventures. The only reason he made The Lady from Shanghai was to finance a stage production of Around the World in Eighty Days. Even his memorable role as Harry Lime in the classic film noir The Third Man came about so he could get the money for Othello (1951). Welles used this strategy to good and bad effects on all the films he made abroad. In his interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, he justified this on the grounds of it being a Sadistic Choice between being a director-for-hire on stories he didn't care about and acting for others in roles beneath his talent, he chose the latter as he felt he couldn't devote interest and attention on a subject he'd rather not direct, becoming in the process one of the first independent film-makers. Notably on The Black Rose, which he was doing to finance his version of Othello, he designed his costume specifically to be reused in Othello later.
• The late director Gary Winick did a number of romantic comedies (13 Going on 30, Bride Wars, Letters to Juliet) and family films (the remake of Charlotte's Web) so that he could finance smaller independent projects that made use of digital cameras. It ended up working rather well as he produced a number of critically acclaimed films through his company Indigent.
• Rob Zombie originally stated he would never do a sequel to Halloween (2007) until the studio decided to make it. Then he signed on to write and direct Halloween II (2009) because he didn't want someone to ruin his vision. He also agreed to make the film in exchange for being allowed to make The Lords of Salem.
• Lampshaded in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back:
  Ben Affleck: What've I been telling you? You gotta do the safe picture. Then you can do the art picture. But then sometimes you gotta do the payback picture because your friend says you owe him. [Aside Glance]
  • Kevin Smith himself said that he made Cop Out as an attempt to follow this sort of formula, notable for being the only film he directed but didn't write. The Troubled Production with Bruce Willis derailing his efforts as the director officially derailed that plan. Zack and Miri Make a Porno a few years earlier was a related effort to go more mainstream, and the combination of both made him dive heavier into indie films.
• For George Clooney, Each Ocean's X movie allows him to make another Syriana. Several years after Batman & Robin, he said the main reason he did it was that the salary had effectively given him lifelong financial stability, thus allowing him to pretty much do whatever films he wanted for the rest of his career. Even now he says he doesn't regret taking the role because it made him a movie star but he also keeps a picture of himself in the infamous Batsuit in his office to remind himself to never take something solely for the money ever again.
• Universal greenlit Schindler's List on the condition that Steven Spielberg did Jurassic Park (a project Spielberg liked even before the book came out) first. And Spielberg seemingly repeated this scheme by releasing both The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad in 1997, and War of the Worlds and Munich in 2005.
• Anthony Hopkins is sort of an inversion/reversal of this. Instead of doing huge moneymaker movies in order to do small artsy ones, he does smaller, artistic movies to give himself dramatic weight so that he can ask for plenty of money doing big-budget films.
• A group of Baptists financed Plan 9 from Outer Space in hopes of using the profits to produce a religious film.
• Ken Russell agreed to direct Billion Dollar Brain in exchange for United Artists making one of his art films. The result of this deal was eventually Women in Love.
• Robert Altman was busy shopping the Short Cuts script around Hollywood when he got an offer to direct The Player, and he accepted it with the express goal of showing that he could direct a profitable film so studios would be more open to Short Cuts. It worked, since The Player grossed about four times its budget.
• John Cassavetes famously took roles in blockbusters to help finance his smaller indie directorial efforts.
• Natalie Wood accepted to be in Warner Bros.' escapist blockbuster The Great Race so they would accept to fund and release Inside Daisy Clover, which was a passion project for her.
• Every American action-comedy film Jackie Chan makes allows him to make another Hong Kong drama piece.
• Gwyneth Paltrow stated that her early 2000s output was this, as art films such as Sylvia, Proof and The Royal Tenenbaums alternated with paychecks like Shallow Hal and "this terrible movie called View from the Top that Harvey Weinstein talked me into doing".

Live-Action TV

• Angela Bettis said as much about her involvement in Carrie (2002). The film was planned as a Pilot Movie for a TV series that she hoped would give her the financial security to pursue indie projects like May.
• Jeff Garlin has said he likes The Goldbergs and is very proud of the show, but that the major appeal of doing the series came from the fact that a mainstream sitcom on a major network gives him the financial security he needs to pursue riskier indie projects in his downtime.
• Werner Herzog took a role in The Mandalorian so he could use the money to fund another project he wanted to work on. Despite having no prior interest in Star Wars he has stated that he genuinely liked the script and ended up enjoying the role.
• John Mahoney's primary motivation for playing Martin on Frasier was to earn enough money to be able to afford to perform in the artistic theater productions that were his true love, even financing them from his show earnings if necessary.
• The profits earned from the merchandising for Sesame Street is distributed to Sesame Workshop and is used to fund the show and other Sesame Workshop projects.
• Lottie Tolhurst, British actress (who has only been acting since 2015, so a new-ish actor) has this approach to her roles. However, two of her roles, Becky Teller, in the two-part Silent Witness episode "Covenant", which aired in 2017, and Kitty Carter who was in ten episodes of Harlots until Kitty was killed off by Lord Fallon in Season 2. She takes roles such as this both for the paycheck and the artistic value, of which both series have, but is to a degree, open to many roles.

Music

• Famously inverted by David Bowie. After getting a raw deal on his contract, he spent the next several years producing experimental and highly-acclaimed but not very commercial material (i.e Low, Heroes, and Lodger. When his contract expired, he produced some more mainstream (but again, highly-acclaimed) work for the money (i.e. Let's Dance, Tonight, Never Let Me Down) before ultimately getting dissatisfied and making experimental-oriented music again.
• Claude Debussy began composing his Etudes for piano as a side project while editing a new edition of Fryderyk Chopin's Etudes commissioned by his publisher, Durand. Debussy's work on the Chopin Etudes included providing editorial fingerings; for his own Etudes, he wrote a preface telling performers that they should figure out their own fingerings.

Podcasts

• Blank Check is dedicated to examining director filmographies through this lense.

Video Games

• Allegedly, the reason that Aliens: Colonial Marines ended up being poorly received was that Gearbox used the money that they were paid to make the game in order to fund their own properties, including Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Duke Nukem Forever, and only started working on Colonial Marines in earnest after becoming in danger of violating their contract.
• Suda51 and his company, Grasshopper Studios, will occasionally make quick and cheap licensed games to get some extra money to fund the projects he's truly passionate about, as he knows most of his original work doesn't turn a profit.
• Treasure agreed to develop McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure for Sega only so that Sega would help them fund the development of Gunstar Heroes. Although Treasure Land Adventure finished development first, Treasure managed to complete Gunstar Heroes quickly enough to release a week ahead of the other game so they could claim Gunstar as their true debut game. It worked out for the best regardless, because both games ended up highly acclaimed titles for the Genesis and put Treasure on the map as a developer.
• This is WayForward Technologies' way of life. One particularly evident instance of this is making a game based on The Mummy in-between installments of Shantae (one of which was a fan-funded Kickstarter project, no less), which ironically ended up being more well-received than the actual film it was based on.
• The main reason SCS Software developed games such as Scania Truck Driving Simulator and Extreme Trucker 2 was to help secure funding and industry backing for Euro Truck Simulator 2.
• Yuji Horii created The Portopia Serial Murder Case to make enough money to fund what would eventually be Dragon Quest.
• Asobo Studio also follow this as their business model. One half of their studio is dedicated to contract work and kid-friendly licensed games for clients such as Pixar. Their other half is dedicated to more alienating projects such as A Plague Tale: Innocence, or experimental Tech Demo Games for procedural generation technology, as was the case for both Fuel and Microsoft Flight Simulator.
• CyberConnect2 is an extreme example. Many of their games contracted by Bandai Namco typically take a few years to develop, and when they do have freedom, they use what funding they have left over to create smaller, niche properties. This especially true for their Little Tail Bronx series, with only a few installments to show for it during decades, while still putting out artbooks that develop its setting even further. And with Fuga: Melodies of Steel being their first venture into self-publishing and cutting the need for them to pitch to someone like Bandai Namco, they now have even more opportunities to develop smaller projects. As Fuga creative director Yoann Gueritot once put it:
  Yoann: For those who wonder, the only reason we can make Fuga sequels and donate its sales to charity despite Fuga making no money is because we have no publisher with common sense to tell us we’re crazy.

Western Animation

• The Chicken from Outer Space was supposed to be John R. Dilworth's next independent project, until he heard about Hanna-Barbera's What A Cartoon! Show initiative, and submitted it to them to receive funding. The Chicken From Outer Space would serve as a pilot short for Courage the Cowardly Dog.
• Inverted with Matt Groening. Originally, he had wanted to pitch his comic strip Life in Hell as an animated series. However, he would lose the character rights to Fox if they adapted the comic. Not wanting to give up such a personal project of his, Groening drew a certain yellow-skinned family that would quickly eclipse Life In Hell in popularity.
• As a reward for years of work for and loyalty to the Fleischer brothers' studio, animator Roland 'Doc' Crandall accepted total creative control over the Betty Boop short Snow White (1933), which he completed over six months.

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