Hollywood is the glitzy, glamourous place where dreams can come true, and where our inner-most fantasies are played out on screen for us to marvel at. That said, like anything, there's a darker, less savoury side to the industry that people don't like to talk about too much. For every success story, there are countless failures, or perhaps more accurately, for every success story, there is someone who has had to pay a heinous price to get to where they wanted to go. Sex, violence and underhanded financial gains are just a few of the disturbing goings-on behind the curtain of the movie machine. Some are progressively becoming known thanks to anonymous industry whistle-blowers, whereas others will likely remain secret forever more. Nevertheless, after doing some of our own sleuthing, here are 10 disturbing truths you didn't know about the movie industry...
10. Marvel Outsources Work To Avoid Paying Royalties & Health Care
Marvel again prove themselves to be tremendous cheap-skates by taking U.S. tax credits for shooting their movies in America, yet outsourcing their musical work to Europe, where they can employ artists under non-union contracts and therefore escape paying them royalties, health benefits and pensions. The union for the American Federation of Musicians claims that their sector of work is the only one affected on Marvel productions, and that all other branches of the filmmaking process are hired from within the U.S., under union contracts. Though the union's argument gets a little bit shaky when they seem to implore that the film needs to be scored in the U.S. with a sense of nationalism, the point that Marvel are making a very particular effort to make the music for as little money as possible does seem a tad crass, particularly when The Avengers received a $30 million tax break, which would easily have covered any extra residual costs. The prevailing point is that musicians are somehow exempted from the blanket of security afforded to all other personnel working on these films.