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studios gained a similar advantage over stars by locking all their actors and actresses into long-term contracts in which they were paid a specified weekly salary regardless of the success of their movies. After the studio system collapsed in the late 1940s, the stars, represented by powerful talent agencies, quickly turned the tables on the studios. Now, no longer under studio contract, the stars auctioned off their services to the highest bidder from film to film. The studios still paid for their films’ publicity, but the stars now reaped the benefits of their cachet via product endorsement, licensing their images for games and toys, and a raft of other celebritized enterprises.
    Despite the lure of enormous compensation from studios, which now include perk packagesand cuts of the gross receipts that can easily exceed $30 million a film, stars find occasional satisfaction in working for coolie wages in indie productions, making a distinction between, as one top Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent put it, “commerce and art.” Some stars may find that roles in studio comic-book movies (that they share with live stuntmen and digital doubles) do not provide the acting opportunities, award possibilities, prestige, camaraderie, or even aura of coolness of indie productions. Others may want to work with a particular director, such as Woody Allen, Spike Jonze, or David Mamet, or burnish their fading image as an actor. They might also need to fill a hole in their schedule since, PR hype aside, there is not an endless cornucopia of $20 million parts in Hollywood. Also, when stars do “artistic” films practically pro bono they do not officially lower their $20 million quote.
    Whatever the star’s motives, the indie producers get, if not a free ride, a means of financing their movies through a three-step process called pre-sales. Here is how it works:
    Step One. The indie producer makes a pre-sale contract with a distributor overseas. In such an arrangement, the producer usually turns over all rights to exhibit the movie—including sellingDVDs and TV licenses—in a particular country in return for a minimum guarantee of money once the film is completed and delivered. The catch-22 here is that a foreign distributor often will not commit to a pre-sale contract if there is no American distributor or unless the film has a recognizable star (with a star the distributor has at least a chance of selling the DVD and TV rights). So indie producers must persuade or seduce a star into joining the movie—and here is where the genius comes in—for practically no money. With a star in tow, a producer can often make enough pre-sales to cover most, if not all, of the budget.
    Step Two. Since pre-sales are no more than promissory notes, the indie producer must borrow against them from banks to pay for the movie. Before he can do that, he needs to guarantee the banks that the movie, once begun, will get finished and delivered to foreign distributors. What’s needed is a completion bond, which guarantees the banks that it will pay all cost overruns necessary to finish the movie and if the production is abandoned, it will pay all the money lost on the venture, which means that one way or another the bank will get back its money. Two companies, Film Finance, Inc. and International Film Guarantors, provide almost all the completion bonds for independentproductions. (Studios that internally finance their own movies do not need completion bonds.) Before either company will sell a producer a completion bond, the producer has to meet its requisites, which include buying full insurance for the star (so if he or she is injured or quits the completion bond coverer gets all the money back from the insurer) and turning over to the completion bond company the ultimate control of the budget (including the right, if anything goes wrong, to take over the production and bring in its own director to complete it). The indie producer also has to pay the company