Does Lynch and his crew make any money off the film today?
4a. As a matter of fact, they do. Even though the AFI gave him a small budget, Lynch insisted that everyone who worked on the film be paid. Herb Cardwell was the only one who received a true salary. Coulson: “I had worked on other AFI films, where it was just assumed that the actors and technicians worked for free, but David took his initial money from AFI and paid everybody. I was making $25 a week, but when we ran real low on money, we cut everybodys salary in half. I put it all back into the food; we would all kind of pool our money to some extent. It really did seem like our film, even though it was Davids film. There was a sense of collaboration.” During the second year of production, when there wasnt enough money to pay the crew, Lynch re-wrote the contracts so that they would received a percentage of profit of the film.
