Unpaid Black Swan interns now trying to spark an intern revolution

By Sean O'Neal | August 14, 2012 | 3:14pm

Aux Features Film

The campaign by a pair of former Black Swan interns to get Fox Entertainment to acknowledge them without calling them "Gary" (THAT IS NOT THEIR NAME) continues, as the disgruntled duo is now considering a much larger class-action lawsuit designed to rally all of Fox's unpaid labor force, marching two-by-two into the halls of justice while the coffee orders just pile up. The Hollywood Reporter says that, though Fox had attempted to sidestep any legal obligation to address the lawsuit by passing the blame to director Darren Aronofsky's production company, and by saying to come by their office sometime after 5 to talk about it—knowing full well that it would be gone by then—attorneys for the plaintiffs have taken steps to "render that issue moot," broadening the suit's scope to include both production interns and corporate interns working for Fox.

To that end, they've recruited some new aggrieved people who were chewed up and spit out by the gears of the Hollywood dream factory, more lost souls for the City of Angels [jazz trumpet solo]: Corporate intern Eden Antalik, who learned nothing from her time at the studio she could not have learned by watching the Kevin Spacey movie Swimming With Sharks, and (500) Days Of Summer production intern Kanene Gratts, who spent untold weeks fetching Zooey Deschanel tomato soup, one bowl at a time, while repeatedly, politely informing her that no one delivers fucking tomato soup. The lawsuit's future will be decided on Aug. 24, after which it's possible that the entire practice of unpaid Hollywood internships could be changed forever. "We did it!" the plaintiffs will exclaim, before returning to never working in the film industry again.