Voracious hunger for the trappings of wealth and privilege is usually associated with the me-me-me '80s, when Gordon Gekko proclaimed ''Greed is good'' and Van Halen demanded all brown M&M's be removed from their dressing-room candy dish. But by all accounts, Hollywood's current case of perk fever really began in the 1990s. As the film biz got caught up in an ever more Ahab-like pursuit of blockbuster glory, studios began to lavish unheard-of sums of money on the handful of actors who could theoretically guarantee a mass audience. ''When opening weekends became the big thing,'' says one studio chief, ''it tipped the balance so far in favor of the stars that it created all these crazy costs.''
With salaries for male stars topping out at a dizzying $20 million per picture, perks became, for many stars, an increasingly important way of keeping score. According to one entertainment lawyer who has negotiated perk packages, it's a matter of psychology: ''There's a lot of anger that comes from working your way up, being rejected and looked at as a piece of meat, and ultimately, perks may be some sort of sweet revenge. Sometimes the stars don't give a s--- who they piss off. They want what they want, and screw anyone else.''
Celebrities themselves would tell you, not without some justification, that their own expenses continue to balloon. Round-the-clock security to fend off the paparazzi, personal chefs to maintain their meticulously calibrated diets, stratospherically pricey real estate, $20,000-a-year private-school tuitions for the kids. And then there's the entourage. One movie star had two kitchens built, side by side, in his Beverly Hills home — one for the family, one for the posse. ''There are actors who have such incredible entourages, it's like a little moving city,'' scoffs one top studio executive. ''When they made The Godfather, do you think Al Pacino had these giant entourages?''
An A-list movie star's contract typically includes 30 to 40 ''perk points'' — in television, where perks tend to be more limited, the number is more on the order of 10. Each point involves some financial pain for the studio or network: say, $1,500 a week for an on-set nanny (one star actually asks for three for her baby), $3,000 a week for a private chef, $1,000 a week for a trainer, $10,000 a week for a personal assistant, $3,500 a week for incidental expenses, and so on down the line.
So far, so good — for the star, at least. What causes costs to truly spiral, however, are the standard ''most favored nations'' clauses that stipulate that whatever perks star A receives, stars B and C will get as well. ''There's pressure to make sure your star is as well taken care of as anybody else — or better,'' says entertainment lawyer Peter Nelson, who's negotiated perk packages for stars and directors (yes, they get them too). ''We're constantly seeking to push the edge.''
To see the effect of the perks arms race, consider the trailers actors kick back in during downtime. The whole idea of trailers was to make it possible for movie and TV productions to film on location and get from place to place quickly. Over the years, however, these mobile luxury suites have grown so enormous (see LINK HERE sidebar) that they can actually limit rather than expand the options for location shooting. When you have a single star asking for three trailers — one for himself, one for his gym equipment, one for his entourage — moving all these vehicles is like mounting a military campaign.
Then there's the matter of private jets. Once reserved for only the most elite, zipping around in a Gulfstream is now considered, for many stars, the only way to fly. ''I'm somewhat sympathetic,'' one studio exec admits. ''I mean, I can only imagine what it must be like for a really big star to walk through an airport. But it drives up the price of everything.'' Indeed, a round-trip in a private jet from New York City to Los Angeles can easily run upward of $60,000, and even if a star owns his own plane, the studio gets charged thousands of dollars a day for fuel and crew time.
