Super-hero league of Hollywood

So an interesting video that I had to share is the following. I found it on hulu.com. Now I know at first you would think a documentary about people who dress up in superhero outfits would be incredibly boring but it is in fact really interesting. The movie profiles four 'performers' in Hollywood who are trying to make it as actors or actresses and do this gig to just fill in the gaps.



It seems weird to imagine going to Hollywood to be a super-star. You hear about the people who never make it and how there are more all the time not making it and I think it was enlightening to hear a couple of the people's stories. It seems obvious that the underlying theme of the movie is that things are not working out. Two of the people are actually (or are shown to actually be) trying to get jobs whereas the other two are shown to not be. It seems like there is a disconnect between having a real plan and not having a plan at all for these people. However irrespective of that they all think they are going to make it and get noticed (which some might). It seems to me it is like winning the lotto by standing outside a store hoping someone will give you a winning ticket. Does not happen in real life but you never know. If you instead go in and buy the ticket you can at least have a chance of winning.

I can remember actually reading and hearing about Elmo and Mr. Incredible being arrested a while so it was weird to be seeing this from a second angle. They were arrested for disturbing the peace or something. Early in the movie about minute 6 I think there is a discussion about the laws surrounding what these costumed characters can and cannot do. (They basically work for tips but they cannot ask for tips or harass the tourists.) There was an interesting scene at about 13:30 where Marilyn Monroe was complaining about not getting tipped. She was complaining that no one paid her for a service that wasn't something that they had to pay for anyway and likened it to stealing. (Besides the fact that that analogy is incredibly wrong.) She was working for free with the hope that people would tip her. It seems counter intuitive to expect pay for that. The expectation that they would make tips regardless is detrimental. I have to hand it to superman (who probably makes a lot more than Ms. Monroe) as he was cool headed about it and was like, hey they don't have to pay us. I wonder what the economics of this situation is. You would need to be able to make enough that the average tip would be reasonable. However without enforcing the tipping you could have (as Ms. Monroe said) a string of people who don't tip because those before that they saw did not tip.

It is a surprisingly interesting video. At the end I felt mostly sad for all of the characters. It seems that this was partial due to the editing of the material but also because I do not feel that if they were really trying to make it that some of their decisions were not well-founded. (That is an opinion though.) I also have a major problem with people who expect tips which probably sullied my impression of a couple of the characters anyway. However I know one person (who does not read this blog who would be really interested in all of the superman memorabilia.)