Now, I don't feel as bad about MF DOOM getting paid by them to make an album, then just ignoring their deal and not making it, basically scamming them-especially since he somehow managed to pull it off twice
Well at least we got that Danger Doom album. I think it was worth it just for the instrumental for "sofa king" alone. But that's a funny story and I'm glad you told us all, thank ya!
It's the most common form of theft in the US (not shoplifting). Corporations would like us to believe that it doesn't happen, but it's so common I even used to work for a company that would not pay me because they "lost my invoices." I was really persistent with following up with them and I was excellent at keeping "receipts," so I did eventually get my pay checks (but it was often months later). The company got sued in a class action lawsuit, but I'm sure most people rarely get to take their employers to court. The system is so corrupt. :/
I had it happen to me. I kept sending invoices to a local company I worked for as a contractor. The company was always very late paying me, and would always lose a bunch of my invoices. I had to constantly email and call them to get paid. Eventually I got into an argument and said I'm not doing anymore work until I'm paid in full. They stopped returning my calls. I'm still owed a few thousand dollars. Found out later many other people refuse to work for that local company.
@@TheBigExclusive I'm impressed that you kept doing work for free then were surprised that they continued to take advantage of you. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool you for thousands of dollars? That's hilarious.
@@tim3172 - They were paying me. Just very, very, very slowly. It was also earlier in my career, and I didn't realize how shady companies could be. They would pay me for 1 invoice but "lose" the other 2 invoices. But eventually what they owed me became too much. The whole thing was a learning experience and I never allowed another company to treat me like that again.
You only think that way after it got big. They made deals never thinking it would get big and honestly there wasn’t that much money in it to pay them handsomely anyway. Only now in 2024 can people say this with hindsight that they should have negotiated better contracts. This was a joke to them, all of it was drunken add lib, just like Rick and Morty was. No one took it seriously. Now that it’s pop culture they want to act like victims. Grow up. They missed the boat playing around too much.
@@bensheard3969 well a contract means you can sue. If these people actually had a case they would not be crying about the decisions they made in the past and simply take the company to court. They don't so they are hoping the masses step in and try to force the company to do something. I guess you can stop crying now as well.
@@NewRomancer37I read this from another comment, but they said that DOOM was paid by adult swim to make an album, but DOOM ignored the deal and scammed them
@@solo_lebeau TWICE, the guy in charge had to beg Adult Swim for a second chance just for DOOM to say F it and scrap the Project anyway. He was notorious for hustling companies who'd pay him to do basically nothing (his album VV2 is highly speculated to be one of those albums).
@@Shockguey Thanks for the suggestion, it was a great read. I wish I had read it years ago when I read "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. They would have coupled together well.
More attention needs to be brought to this. Adult Swim has had really shady practices over the years, especially when dealing with their creative teams.
@@kenrickeason Because they have very crafty lawyers write up the contracts and most people are just happy to be onboard so they dont fully understand before it's too late.
The Frylock one is more upsetting because during his homeless saga, Adult Swim and Toonami had the balls to put on a preachy ad segment about Black Lives Matter
I mean it would be nice if every employer made sure past employees had it all covered, that's not really their department. What other companies do that?
@@freshrot420we're talking about shows that are still airing and they're refusing to pay residuals. Frylock's VA having financial troubles wasn't new at the time either, fans have tried multiple times to help him and get AS attention to help , MEANWHILE they also fired Aaron who created The Boondocks but no, let's spend money on a Black Lives Matters ad
@@Arcademan09 They made those ads....and fired the black man who created The Boondocks. I don't know how popular the show was but I had thought it was decently popular.
@@PossessiveK they fired him because he didn't want them to control his show, he fought hard and the voice actors defended him too but as soon as he left the show, the quality dropped off a cliff especially since he was a writer on the show too
@@floatingkites2420 CLEARLY THATS WRONG, I AM JUST SHARING MY PAIN, ONE STATEMENT FROM AN INDIVIDUAL'S PERSPECTIVE DOES NOT NEGATE THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION NOR ELEVATE IT ABOVE THAT WHICH WAS STATED, PLEASE CALM DOWN
@@some_guy117 OH YEAH? AND WHERE WAS BROCK? PERHAPS IN STEAD OF SHOVING A MOVIE IN OUR FACES, TYING UP A MULTITUDE OF LOOSE ENDS AT ONCE - ADULT SWIM SHOULD CLEANSE THEMSELVES OF THEIR LOVE FOR SIN AND DISHONOR
I hope Michael Cusack, Zach and the rest of the Smiling Friends crew don’t get screwed over because their show only makes 23 billion dollars and not a 57 gazillion dollars.
Please tell me your being sarcastic with 23 billion. No show brings in a billion dollars let alone 23 billion. The only things that make that kind of money are pharmaceuticals, oil, and weapons and even then that's pretty high for a single product. Here is a question no one is asking, despite liking adult swim, where are the big advertisers commercials on it, it comes on on the middle of night, gets good ratings for that time of night but commercial airtime on a cable network in the middle of the night is very very cheap. Sure aquateen, space ghost and a few other shows got really popular and had dvd box sets and aquateen had a movie. I am sure cartoon network ripped a lot of these guys off, but with the exception of the most popular shows that they could sell box sets of and other products, I don't think most of these adult swim shows were ever huge money makers for the network, especially in the early days, in the 90's it was pretty common to have local commercials on it when you watched, and those bring in jack shit. I couldn't speak for now, I stopped watching adult swim in my late 20's so I have not watched since around 08 or so, but it was always low budget cheap commercials that came on during it.
I'll never forget watching Space Ghost one night at my grandparents' house and being made to turn it off because Space Ghost called some lady a harlot. I didn't even know what a harlot was.
Many years ago, I was changing careers and I wanted to become an animator. Through a connection, I got to visit one of the studios in Atlanta that was producing a popular Adult Swim show. Most of the animators in the studio were unpaid student interns and the lead animator made less money than I made as a public school teacher at that time. So, I took a different career path.
Adult Swim started as a little side project, but now that these shows and characters have endured for 20+ years, this stuff should be made right. They've been hiding behind that "we're just the little guys with no money" thing for too long, when it's a brand and it's parent company is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate.
They can't really say they're the small guys anymore when it's a dedicated programming block of cartoon network, along with now being attached to CN's Checkered Past block. Hell, even Toonami got put in Adult Swim, so they're far from the small guys.
I remember when they were a side venture, they weren't just a side venture for long. As soon as they became popular they should have renegotiated their contracts, the industry is ruthless.
What's going on behind the scenes at Adult Swim is just so painfully depressing. Their top dogs don't get fair pay, their best shows get rudely plucked from Max every once in a while, and ever since Warner merged with Discovery, Williams Street lost touch with their indie side. Even their giant mural is gone now. So much for a programming block that had a cultural impact on a generation. And to think that the cancellation of Venture Bros or trolling Metalocalypse fans were the worst things they've done.
@@BigBoi-qf6vpThat’s not possible. Once you sell a show to a company, the company officially owns the rights to that show, regardless of the creator is involved. It’s why the creators of Johnny Bravo, Brak, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and many more, are not allowed to make more of a show that they love. Adult Swim owns Smiling Friends, not Zach or Michael
@antonydrossos5719 Actually one of the big guys at Adult Swim fired Maxwell Atoms after saying straight to his face he ruined Cartoon Network, despite making one of its most successful shows, The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, I believe it was also when he presented the cancelled Revival.
Adult Swim is a ruthless horrible place to be a creative that mercilessly destroyed their entire slate of iconic shows and, now I find out, the people who made them.
I think they expected Moral Orel to be like Family Guy and that the creators didn't go for the way they thought it would be when it consists of unnecessary dark humor for the sake of being dark without a punchline, maybe that type of stuff. I haven't seen Moral Orel myself because that's still fucked up for what Adult Swim did, regardless.
I was wondering why the flow of Moral Orel took such a dark turn. I think I missed an episode, came back and the mom was a cheater and the dad was a full-blown alcoholic. Hadn't seen a change that abrupt since I missed the episode Goku went super Saiyan for the first time
@@DB8edit wouldn’t, but if these greedy ass corporations don’t get a single dime from taking advantage of talented people. Then that’s a win in my book
@@thecoolaydang8104 Exactly. Besides, lots of people pirate stuff, like it so much that they drop some bucks on those who made stuff. Which again, while not the windfall of money they deserve, is still enormously better than the NOTHING they get from the suits controlling the legal content. So, yo ho ho, me mateys, and raise the jolly rogers.
This makes me feel really bad, because Frylock and Shake were hilarious together, MC Chris is actually a really talented musician, and although I never saw Space Ghost, I remember Brak from Cartoon Planet, and he was funny too. Voice actors bring life to the characters, and by extention, the entire show. These shows would not be the same without them.
Excellent video! I can almost guarantee we won't get a "Quiet On Set" for Disney. That was a political move, pure and simple. Follow the money. Warner Bros Discovery owns HBO Max and ID (Investigation Discovery) who are responsible for putting out the "Quiet on Set" documentary about Nickelodeon. They have two real competitors in the entertainment industry. Paramount Global and Disney. Paramount Global and Warner Bros Discovery are rival companies while Disney stays its own monolith, because nothing is toppling that empire. Think of it like Xbox vs Playstation, and Nintendo is Disney (complete with shitty copyright history). Paramount Global owns Viacom, the company that owns Nickelodeon. Warner Bros Discovery owns Cartoon Network. "Quiet On Set" is not about exposing pedophilia at Nickelodeon. It's about crippling their competition.
Funny… you think Disney is immune to all the same foibles of other businesses? No, it’s quite ripe for such things… people see it as something it’s not: remember, the pandemic is n the rear view mirror and they’ve not recovered in the slightest. Disney will shutter within our lifetime. Millenials hate the company, because the Disney Adults (Gen-X, Boomers) screwed us over for roller coasters, daffy duck and cotton candy. It’s not a fixable image in our minds, it is emblematic of everything we Don’t like about American culture and all of this stems from 30 years of deeply shortsighted marketing. In the 1980’s the company was sucking wind, in the 2020s it is starting to sputter but this time there’s no falling Berlin Wall to prop it up. There is only the desert of post-covid trauma. A cultural landscape so shattered it’s products now come across as deeply alien and trite, unfit for the birth of this new modern world.
Galaxy brain. You are so woke i've never even realize this. I wish someone made a channel, podcast, videos, social media accounts, etc talking about this kind of stuff!
Monopolistic hegemonic corporations hijacking the narrative to weave a colorful but ultimately false tale..? Noooo you don’t say, some guy named Marx predicted scenarios very similar in demeanor 150y ago.
I don't doubt you but it would be real easy to make a documentary of Warner Discovery. Especially Discovery. I've heard so many horror stories about TLC alone. It's just a matter of someone making it. Also don't be so confident in Disney. They've been going downhill lately to the point that even Disney adults are starting to wake up and complain. And you know how dedicated Disney adults are. It's like Kat Williams says, this is the year to expose Hollywood and believe it or not, I actually think Disney will be next. You don't just turn on a fan base that strong and not get consequences from it.
They admitted Brian Peck was on the set of *Growing Pains.* That show was from Warner Bros. So was *Head of the Class,* the show Dan was on concurrently. ABC even tried putting both of those shows together on Wednesday night. Bob Iger was head of ABC by that time. Nobody is getting off the hook here.
The actual fuck? I'm glad I have a bunch of adult swim shows on a hard drive. I'm getting really tired of the entertainment industry being filled with cheats, sexual assault and pedos.
Wow. I used to really respect [AS] as one of the few channels willing to really take risks and experiment with their shows. I knew about the situation with Carey Means and thought it was shitty but hoped that was all there was. This is very upsetting to learn.
A cutthroat industry staffed with professional liars at all levels is not going to be honest or have too much integrity. People are trying to add integrity though.
@@Aloysius10 i had a friend who tried to become a hollywood actor back in the 90s. He's schitzo and lives in a commune in the woods now. he's one of the lucky ones.
I was an anime voice actress for several years. we were paid by contract and not given any royalties. Adult Swim literally plays shows with my voice in them and I make nothing the funny part is I've been mad about Andy and the others from SG all week and this is the first time I'm even realizing that they're fucking me over too!
Ever. Wherever you have that much money, power, & attention on the table, you better believe there’s gonna be some greed & neglect going on behind the scenes😔😔😔😔
Now i know why discovery started to pander AS everywhere from night to morning in favor of Cartoon Network slowly dying and fusing with Warner Bros animation
Being a genuinely good person in Hollywood is a liability. First off, many who gain power will abuse it, then those who want to be close to that power will learn to be permissive of it. If you want to gain entrance into the inner circle you have incriminate yourself so that no one can rat on each other. If you happen to ACTUALLY possess any scruples and deny "a good time" to many of these people, you're automatically marked as a threat and someone whose career needs to be suppressed. The entire hierarchy of hollywood at this point is absolutely corrupt. That doesn't mean everyone is doing something criminal themselves, but that those who are comfortable in their positions are definitely going to help obfuscate what is going on.
Isn't it weird how all these millennial halmark corporations... Blizzard Entertainment, Adult Swim, all seem to shine their badges while paying their talent jack squat and seemingly telling them "You should just be proud to be here, that's reward enough"? It's a shame. It's why Blizzard and AS don't make good stuff anymore, all their amazing original talent literally couldn't afford to keep going like that and took off, because they were never taken care of. So now they only hire the people dumb enough to take these wages: silly kids who don't know any better.
This makes me scared for Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, the creators of smiling friends on adult swim. I hope they are smart enough to document their exchanges...
Adult Swim was MASSIVE back in the day. They would run ads bragging about their ratings for their late night airings, if I recall correctly. DVD sales were probably very good. I know I had all the Sealab 2021 seasons and at least three seasons of Aqua Teen. This is crazy to hear, very sad. Streaming was non-existent back then. Very few people were downloading shows online except for the most hard core nerds. Broadband barely existed. This was peak TV and peak royalties. All these people should have been paid.
These are shows that defined an era! Adult Swim was EVERYTHING! Hearing that these voice actors and writers were getting screwed so bad, when they were the laughter, theirs were the tag lines we repeated, the shows we watched together, it's depressing as heck.
Now I know why Seth MacFarlane and Butch Hartman left Cartoon Network to get better deals elsewhere. They were the smart ones even if Hartman crashed and burned with that Oaxis shit.
You're right. They were there before AS got started. But Fox and Nickelodeon were making those offers and Cartoon Network was not, and as a result, they lost out on a bunch of hits.
Yeah Adult Swim is part of a bigger problem of the entertainment industry screwing over and abusing the same exact creatives who give these people money to begin with because of the lack of protection that they have.
They think they can get away with screwing the animation industry over worst of all because they perpetuate the lie that it's "just for kids," and so that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Animation is one of the things that made America great. That's the reason other countries develop their own styles and traditions. They were trying to compete with Disney and Looney Tunes and Max Fleischer and Pat Sullivan and eventually Hanna-Barbera. Animators still deserve better treatment than they are getting from Hollywood.
They should talk to Netflix about making a documentary about the predatory nature of Cartoon Network, feel like that pitch would sell itself in light of the Nickolodeon expose.
This breaks my heart but, I never watched a lot of the comedic shows on AS. I'm an otaku that was trying to watch Gundam wing uncut. I always felt there was something off about those shows. Looks like Justin Roland was the tip of the berg
this in tandem with the long documented mistreatment of CN’s creatives really makes me wonder is WB is just addicted to screwing over the people that work for them
Always read your contact people. Don't just sign anything without reading. Everything means every... Even if it takes 20 mins & the other person is mad.
Both the private and public sectors are corrupted beyond belief. Everything is ugly and hateful. Our food is poison, and our outsourced consumer goods are getting flimsier and shoddier by the day.
No company that produced television content was saints. The business practices were there from the start. By the time people my age got around to viewing the content, those practices had nearly a century of refinement.
A good union and they’d never have this issue, but most animators are virgins and ambitious young adults who signed stupid contracts and now they’re regretting their decisions.
Y’all just hearing about this? This triggered me when I found out about it. The man deserved way more than what he got, He’s a great actor. Stupid Discrimination.
This is why a lotta people are going indie these days. Apart from losing your license and having little say as to what you can do with your work, the industry is just an overall nightmare to work with.
I was an extra on 2 episodes of "Joe Pera Talks With You" and was paid decently. About 3 months after filming my scenes, I got a letter in the mail from Cartoon Network (parent company of Adult Swim) asking me to give them back the money they paid me because apparently the production company that produced the show went way over budget and didn't need as many background actors as they used. I thought it was joke until I started getting phone calls from a collection agency a couple months later demanding that I pay back the $300 I got for spending 12 hours a day on set for 3 days. I told them to fuck off and blocked their number. Now Cartoon Network went out of business in 2023. Whatever. IDGAF.
Cartoon Network is not out of business, it’s the production animation studio that was, and even technically speaking, they simply just moved under Warner Bros. Animation
This is also a huge part of why I pirate media (aside from the insane stratification of streaming platforms), I know my money isn't actually going to the people who created the things I love, so why should I give it to them? Which seems like a really shitty business strategy on their part.
@@ReeseArtReese i do, i sleep with quite a lot of extra money not wasted on now middling entertainment. Not paying more than a dollar a day on a subscription i barely have the time to use, not paying more than 4 hours of labor on a game that's only fun for two, shit, not spending an extra 10-20 bucks on food that's neither filling nor satisfying.
@@ReeseArtReese Yeah man, IT WAS STOLEN FROM THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! Or did you not watch the video you are commenting on right now? Should I feel bad stealing from Adult Swim after they took everything from the people who worked for them??
This makes me so sad, adult swim was a huge part of my life during my teens and an early adult hood, hell my mom loved aqua teen hunger force and the laughter she got from that show helped her during her greatest times of depression after my father died but hearing all this about what happened behind screen, just makes me sad
Walt wanted his studio to take a vote on whether to unionize. They forced it on him without one. This was what disillusioned him from the socialist politics he was raised with by his father Elias.
Good video man, I love this network because of the nostalgia but I never have heard of any of the things brought up in this video. I hope your video gets more attention so people can see more about this.
Look at Sam Hyde, say what you want about the dude, but they showed exactly how they treat their employees with him. Just completely unprofessional. I didnt even know half of these things... I wont be able to watch Coast to Coast or Aqua Teen the same way again man.
I f**** hate this s*** can't stop asking WHY?! How f**** hard can it be to treat employees fairly, every single company, can't comprehend this basic concept!?
Doc Hammer, Brendan Small, Dino and Sam Hyde are others who got screwed. According to Sam AS has cliques and the management is scummy. Sam had issues with some other comedians who were chummy with the higher-ups so they got him canned but asked him for his comedy ideas because they liked them. The whole place is cancer.
I wonder whether the recent gains from the 2 "Hollywood strikes" last year: a) improves anything for these folks retroactively b) prevents this kind of stuff from happening again, or at least significantly mitigates it
@@billyboleson2830He really wasn't. The edgiest thing they did was Jews Rule/Rock, maybe the boulder sketch, but they completely got cocked over by a faggy Buzzfeed journalist and a jealous Heidecker.
@@billyboleson2830Nah. It was pushing the limit but that's what the show was. There's been controversial Rick and Morty episodes with some pretty dark edgy takes. They also had episodes of the show Minoriteam which really pushed the edge on stuff as well.
A ton of people creating great art weren't getting paid or appreciated during their time due to corporate greed. Delete your Spotify. Buy comics. Subscribe to zines. Buy records and physical media. We can change this.
