In the news we see that two of the film's child actors are living in the slums again -- both so young as to not know the complexities of the world, both still, a week later, wearing the clothing they wore while walking the red carpet at the Oscars.
I think that the producer of the film should reward these kids' families with enough money such that the kids can have far better homes. It seems the money went into trust funds for the kids, but there should have been "agent fees" or something to reward the parents so that these kids -- who got to live a western lifestyle for a while -- should not be victimized by having been shown heaven and then sent back to hell. I've been to cardboard and corrugated iron shack-towns in Indonesia, and it boggled my western sensibilities. It is one thing that these exist at all, it is one thing that 30,000 kids die each day from living in such conditions, but it is another to take a child from such and then put them back into it. It may turn out that the producers did the right thing and gave the parents some decent bucks to escape the slums, and maybe the parents are living in the slums purposely to shame the producers into giving more money and using photo ops of the kids in the slums as a way to "beg," but I doubt that. To me this is a pretty open and shut case of greedy marauding that is made all the more egregious by the fact that the film was such a financial success and yet, still, the coffers didn't overflow to these poor kids. Probably there's many others associated with the film that are equally left out of the sharing of profits. I wrote one of the most successful infomercials ever for Ed Beckley who promised me and another person that if the infomercial hit the big time "he'd take care of us." We were both working for Fairfield standard pay -- $2,000 a month. The infomercial went on to rake in over $180,000,000 in sales -- pots and pans if you can believe it. What did I get for my success-reward? Nada. Well, I'm a big guy and I learned to never work on a handshake again, but I think it's one of the worst kinds of sin when one is shown heaven (Oscars or Cookware Sales) and then the promise is simply broken by those who should be so overflowing with happiness at the wind-fall success, but it seems that the more money that comes to one, the more one feels like even more money must come before one is "safe enough" to have an overflowing of the heart. And what the hell, eh? The director, Danny Boyle?, of Slumdog Millionaire, the producers, and others must have personally made millions of dollars from this film -- and no one could pony up a few bucks for decent living conditions for the actors? WTF are they thinking -- where's their PR agents screaming at them to get these kids out of the headlines? Where's them thinking about a sequel and how the world will view it as an abuse upon children, etc.? Those kids stole the hearts of the audience, and I predict that someone is going to cough up something for them, but shame, shame, shame on those who have not yet done so and should have. Edg
