That's kind of you. Thank you.
I was just going to tell you that the value gap, which I'm sure is a term you've been hearing, is very real, and it's something that I am staring right down the barrel of. There is no question about it.
I think one of the reasons the Screen Composers Guild asked me in particular to be here is that I am right in the middle of my career. I'll be 48 years old this year. I have three young kids. I have a mortgage. I take a vacation or two a year, if we can afford it. I do not live an extravagant or luxurious lifestyle by any stretch. However, the only way I've been able to get this far is because of the value of my intellectual property, which are the scores I have composed. Those are what have allowed me to sustain and nurture a career and a family.
If I had to operate just based on the front-end fees that I get paid for the work I do, it would be impossible to sustain and nurture a career. That downstream revenue is so important to someone like me. Here I am working on Anne with an E, which is by far the most popular thing I've ever worked on, and I'm seeing less money than anything I've ever worked on before.
I feel like there is something in the ecosystem that is unbalanced, and I feel that it's copyright. If government can intervene with copyright to make it stronger and bring it up to speed with the times and the rest of the world, we have a chance of bringing back some fairness and balance into that ecosystem.
Thank you for letting me say that.