Dear Spike Lee

Seriously, what is it with &quot;Agencies&quot; lately? Who the F--k are these people?<p>I have heard&#x2F;experienced a dozen similar stories recently. I have a friend who left a huge agency to freelance–only to have another small agency work him to the bone and take advantage of him almost exactly like the story here.<p>YES I ABSOLUTELY GET THAT THE ONUS IS ON THE FREELANCER&#x2F;SUB TO GET THEIR CONTRACTS IN PLACE ...<p>But, seriously, these people are ridiculous. A bunch of salespeople in suits tossing around buzzwords so they can land a job taking advantage of a big company&#x27;s big budget. Everything is a pitch or a comp or a big lead.<p>My advice to all freelance hackers and designers: if you meet someone who says they work at an agency, (a) tell them you&#x27;re a janitor and (b) run away.

Seems weird he mentioned Spike Lee (who did nothing wrong, as far as I can tell) so many times, but didn&#x27;t name the agency. Seems to hurt the wrong party&#x27;s reputation.<p>Additionally, he has no apparent way to contact him.<p>EDIT: I <i>really</i> don&#x27;t want to point fingers with 0 proof, but Spike Lee happens to be CEO of an ad agency named Spike DDB. <a href="https://twitter.com/SpikeDDB" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;SpikeDDB</a>

An unfortunate but common sequence of events, where this:<p><i>We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements</i><p>...leads to these:<p><i>The agency told me that I could publish the work as my own for the &quot;exposure&quot;</i><p><i>I never even got paid the peanuts they owed me</i><p><i>The agency responded by threatening me with legal action and worse</i><p>Whenever a client states or implies that &quot;the exposure&quot; will be payment enough, alarm bells should be ringing.

This is why you should always have your contracts reviewed by a lawyer. See Mike Monteiro&#x27;s Fuck You, Pay Me: <a href="http://vimeo.com/22053820" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;22053820</a>

It&#x27;s actually <i>good</i> that you didn&#x27;t have a contract. If you did, you would probably be sworn to secrecy and not be able to share this story. Sure, with a contract you could take them to court, but you can do that anyway if someone stole your work.<p>I did work through an agency for a San Francisco interior designer. The agency&#x27;s Founder paid me with multiple bad checks. Meanwhile, two years later, my work continues to be used and I remain unpaid for a month of full time work.<p>I ended up launching a site exposing the guy behind the agency who has a history of writing bad checks. I&#x27;ve received many emails from others he scammed or tried to scam so I find some peace in the fact that when people google his name, a site exposing the guy come up.

So the agency played hardball but the guy didn&#x27;t budge, then tried to rip him off? Their bad faith effort seems to deserve punitive damages, I hope he takes them to court.

From the comments so far, these lessons seem relevant:<p>1) Get a contract signed up front. If possible, make sure you&#x27;re allowed to discuss your experience with the firm publicly along the way, so you&#x27;re allowed to talk about it (good or bad).<p>2) watch &quot;fuck you, pay me&quot; (<a href="http://vimeo.com/22053820" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;22053820</a>)<p>3) Spike Lee hires a firm that brings him top talent and work, but that firm treats that talent like shit. We (all the netizens!) are giving Spike Lee the benefit of the doubt, as he appears to be unaware of this practice.<p>4) These agencies need to be called out more often for unfair business practices, no matter how reputable they are. They don&#x27;t have to like their talent as people, but they must respect their talent and the skills of the community they serve.<p>As long as you&#x27;re not publicly mentioning this firm&#x27;s name, I hope you are privately notifying ALL the designers you know to never work with this agency and mention the firm by name.<p>Sorry you got shafted like this, but you&#x27;re clearly making the most of it. Your artwork is great, by the way, keep it up - I suspect this bad egg won&#x27;t poison your future livelihood ;)<p>Edit: formatting

If Mr. Garcia wants to work long hours in a stressful environment but at least get paid <i>something</i> for it.... perhaps he should apply for a job at Penny Arcade.<p>Sounds like a move up.

For anyone curious about the agency, Garcia told the Hollywood Reporter that he didn&#x27;t name them because &quot;Spike knows exactly who I am referring to.&quot;<p><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/designer-claims-oldboy-poster-designs-660599" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hollywoodreporter.com&#x2F;heat-vision&#x2F;designer-claims...</a>

Are there any reasonable escrow services out there for designers? It seems that a third party with a list of conditions for both sides could hang on to a predetermined amount of money and the digital assets until both parties agree to release.<p>There are perhaps caveats that I&#x27;ve not considered, but this idea comes to me again and again when I hear this kind of story (again).<p>Edit: Guess I also have to throw in here that I am continually amazed at the number of people who are afraid to do the dirty work of being in business (drawing up contacts, negotiating, calculating margin, saying NO, etc).

Sadly, this story is all too typical of how advertising agencies work. Having worked with a number of agencies in the past, I found that nearly all of them were more than willing to steal work, not pay, break contracts, and engage in other unsavory hardball tactics.<p>This situation certainly looks like a blatant ripoff to me. I hope Juan Luis Garcia gets a great attorney and hefty amount of money.

Whew...I thought this was going to be an indictment of the Oldboy remake. Sure, the original was great, but I was interested in how an American director would handle the material.<p>That said, this was probably not the kind of controversy Spike Lee needs attached to this project.<p>side note: Roger Ebert&#x27;s raving review of Oldboy was what got me to watch the original Oldboy and that spurred a whole new appreciation of independent foreign films for me:<p><a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rogerebert.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;oldboy-2005</a><p>Would&#x27;ve loved to see what he thought about this one, though Ebert&#x27;s successor only gave the remake 3 stars<p><a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rogerebert.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;oldboy-2013</a> <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rogerebert.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;oldboy-2013</a>

So basically Spike Lee doesn&#x27;t do the right thing?

There&#x27;s big money and fame in high-profile work, and that can be very attractive... but stories like this, and the frequency with which they occur, are important to pay attention to. You can do everything right, you can make everyone happy, you can meet every demand, and you still stand a very real chance of getting absolutely shafted.<p>I&#x27;ve experienced enough of this with much less prolific projects that I happily keep pretty much everything small time now. Chasing billboards and marquees is almost always a game for lucky people and the already-rich.

&quot;But they said that the important thing wasn’t the money it was the exposure and potential for more work. After thinking about it long and hard I had to decline. &quot;<p>Because the exposure was more important than the money. Would have of course been nice if they stated this upfront but they didn&#x27;t. That&#x27;s water under the dam at this point.<p>I have regularly done work for people at no charge.<p>This has not only led to a great amount of paid work but I&#x27;ve thrown around the names that I&#x27;ve done work for quite liberally and use it the same way the company that sold a treadmill to the White House used to scream in their ads &quot;only one chosen to be used by the President in the White House!!&quot; (when in fact it is a competitive bid almost certainly). So I use those names to book more work. I&#x27;ve even used the names with success when cold emailing here and there. Right on the subject line.<p>While it is not great that he was lied to, he did agree to put in the work with no guarantee of getting anything.<p>Consequently the way I look at it even if he feels he was screwed he should have sucked it up and let Spike use it, even for free, and then bragged and gotten out of that what he could until the cows came home.<p>Instead he reacted emotionally and ends up with nothing. Understanding of course that this is upsetting.<p>Separately, in looking at his site he does really nice work. So perhaps he shouldn&#x27;t have done the work on spec in the first place but then again he did say that &quot;the idea of working for you and having my design represent your film blinded me.&quot;<p>In other words if anyone of us had approached him to do work on spec he most likely would have declined very quickly or not treated the transaction the same way.

This type of scam permeates throughout society. In web design, media production companies. SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST WANT TO BELITTLE YOU AND MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU DON&#x27;T KNOW YOUR PRACTICE. THAT&#x27;S WHY YOU HAVE TO BE SMART WHEN YOU ARE HIRED.<p>You have to be smart and not be lead on by advertisers.

There is no content on URL. So, I attach web archive link <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20131127041019/http://juanluisgarcia.com/dear-spike-lee/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20131127041019&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;juanluisgar...</a>

Agencies are giant corporations these days.<p><a href="http://vitamintalent.com/common/img/vitabites/vitamin-t-agency-bloodline-full-size.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vitamintalent.com&#x2F;common&#x2F;img&#x2F;vitabites&#x2F;vitamin-t-agen...</a><p>They will screw you every chance they get.

You should tweet your address to him so he knows how to find you.

The real question is, who is this agency? Typical run of the mill untalented agencies that steal other peoples work (even when they pay for it).

I feel sick to my stomach as well, all about the artist&#x27;s heart here, as well as about the respect this one has for Spike Lee (which I admire a lot myself). As an advocate for righteousness, this does come across rather harsh and intimidating so I hope SL reconsiders the contract with the people responsible for this mishap... All the best though, all the best.

Well, now he&#x27;s going to get paid.

Seems to me this guy is going about it all wrong. Why not keep your mouth shut and sue. If he never got paid and never signed anything then it&#x27;s a clear case of copyright infringement since the images are being used in commerce. Lawyer up and get off the internet.

I usually have very little sympathy designer complaints around spec work, pay and &quot;borrowing&quot; but this is totally messed up.

They didn&#x27;t seem to use his comps… I&#x27;m assuming he had access to the same pool of photography that the finals used, but that doesn&#x27;t mean they ripped <i>him</i> off. The work on top of the photos seems very different to me.

Who was the agency?

Where are the internet hippies saying everything should be free?

Fight the power

shitty remake anyway

Spike, you have 5 days...

Most movies don&#x27;t make what they used to--that is before the Internet. I would sue in small claims court. I&#x27;m surprised The Cricket didn&#x27;t sub the job out to Indian graphic designer--and get away with paying a few rupees.

I always consider Spike Lee as technically worst filmmaker working today, and wondered who on earth did he get to rights for the Oldboy remake. He cannot even get the simpliest things right, and I wonder how often the DP needs to help him adjusting the shooting plan, tell him that he crossed the line and adjusted angles, and how much the editor has to fix. And we have to see the results. But with the Oldboy remake you would need a master, not an amateur with a hyper ego. Anyway, I decided to skip that desaster last year already. And now we see that he is also in other departments one of the lowest.

As Richard Pryor once said &quot;don&#x27;t be messing wit dem Jews if you ain&#x27;t got no money&quot;.<p>Welcome to the world of people who give you praise and acolades but give you nothing in return. They are consumate smoke blowing up your ass thieves.<p>Contract in hand and no matter what you should own all intelectual property rights. The reason they chose you was because they thought you would roll over for a belly rub and instead all you got for your efforts was a kick in the head.<p>Ever go see a movie and see all these companies that flash accross the screen before the movie starts? You have no idea what they do? well those are the companies subcontracted out to market, advertise, invest and promote the movie and those adds are important because if you are somehow in the privy of someone who promises 20% of your investment return if you fund a movie they will mention those companies and your will say &quot;OH! so thats who you are!&quot; RUN QUICK!