Allison Schroeder Quotes
When you start early, and you're writing for free, there's a lot of producers that will take advantage of you... It is seared in my brain forever.
Schroeder, Allison. Interview by Sam Roads. "Hidden Figures: A Math Movie That’s Basically a Sports Movie." Creative Screenwriting, 22 Dec. 2016.
At the time many workers lived in housing owned by their employer. When the Pullman company had a labor dispute, they not only locked the workers out of their jobs but evicted them from their meager housing.
This is not a common quotation from Thoreau. The great man for whom the establishment had so much respect had a very anti-capitalist streak. His view is that the employer will generally never pay his laborers a fair wage. Instead he will pay the laborer the lowest rate for which he can obtain the laborers services. If the laborer generates added value for his wage, the employer is in a zero sum game with the laborer. If part of the added value—the profit is paid to the laborer, the employer does not have it for himself (or his stockholders). In most cases, the laborer is forced to work for his and his family’s subsistence. This theory argues that they only way the laborer will get a fair wage is if there is a labor shortage (assuming no government laws or union pressure is in the picture. Many capitalists argue that a “fair” wage is what a free man is willing to work for and a free employer is willing to pay. So economics is like politics in general with respect to fairness—there is no universally accepted definition of what is fair.
Allison Schroeder is an American screenwriter. She co-wrote the film Hidden Figures with Theodore Melfi, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
