Celebrated Hollywood costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis has said the time is ripe for an overhaul of the contracts covering pay and conditions as well as Intellectual Property rights for her profession.
The costume designer, whose credits include Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Blues Brothers and Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, said people in the profession in the U.S. and Canada were routinely making a third less than production designers on the same production.
She suggested that the pay-gap for her profession, which is roughly 80% female, was symptomatic of a larger problem related to women’s pay in general.
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“Globally, women make between 25% to 30% less than men in the same job. And that’s true in the movie business as well,” she told Deadline. “Going on basic scale, costume designers make one third less than production designers.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Because if this room was empty, there would be no movie. It’s the people in the movie that count, and we help create the people in the movie, one could argue that we dress the most important real estate in the frame,” she continued.
“These old contracts are anachronistic, they’re misogynistic, they’re discriminatory. At the very least, our scale should be the same as production designers. The people who create the people, and the people who create the place should be paid the same.
The costume designer was talking to the Deadline Studio at Italy’s Taormina Film Festival, which she is attending with husband director John Landis, who is a guest of honor this year.
Nadoolman Landis was president of the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) for two terms and continues to be involved in the L.A.-based body and advocate for its members.
Nadoolman Landis said she was also looking into the question of Intellectual Property rights for costume designers.
She used her work on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Michael Jackson’s Thriller as an example.
“In a lifetime of costume design, costume designers may never have the opportunity to do this. But if they do, there should be some kind of acknowledgement or remuneration, for that contribution, not only to the film itself, but to international popular culture,” she said.
“Because we own no IP, costume designers don’t have a label, don’t have a licence, don’t have anything. We’re paid until the last day we work. And that’s not fair. So, I’m working on that with my colleagues and trying to negotiate that.”
Nadoolman suggested that the time was ripe for this sort of negotiation.
“We’re in a period of time where everyone globally is looking a your equity and women’s work and I hope that this is the time where the wind is at our backs and we can make some progress,” she said.
Asked whether the CDG would consider industrial action in the vein of the Writers’ Strike, Nadoolman Landis said that was not the cards right now due to the body’s membership of the International Alliance Of Theatrical Employees (IATSE).
“The costume designers guild is local 892 and we collectively bargain under the IATSE. So, unless the IATSE goes out, we don’t strike. But we’re making our case loud and clear.”
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