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Paying Their Dues
- 90 statements
- 14 feature instances
- 5 referencing feature instances
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A term used in show business to describe the minor roles and drudge work one usually needs to do before hitting it big. Also called "Gopher" (Go-for) jobs, as your main task is going and getting stuff for others who are busy with more important aspects of the project. The name comes from paying dues to a union one belongs to, but even big successes need to pay dues if they are part of a union. Naturally applies as much, if not more so, to Real Life as well as fiction. Compare Money, Dear Boy, because even big stars have to pay their bills. If this work is exceedingly terrible and the artist does make it big, these often become their Old Shame, often with the excuse, "I Was Young and Needed the Money." Fuel for the eventual Retroactive Recognition reaction. See also Waiting for a Break and Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job. Can also be necessary to achieve Career Resurrection if fame/high profile work was earned and then lost beforehand. |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_12101994 | type |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_12101994 | comment |
Shayna Baszler willingly worked as a jobber on the independent circuit, notably putting over Cheerleader Melissa, Nicole Matthews and the Oedo~tai stable as then lead by Act Yasukawa. Ring of Honor put her over big simply for giving professional wrestling the time of day, going so far as to making her The Man Behind the Man for Tag Team Champions reDRagon. SHIMMER booked her for a match and started counting down to it after she announced she was going to become a professional wrestler herself. Then Baszler started racking up losses in Mixed Martial Arts, and chinks in the armor of MMA's other Four Horsewomen were found, so she decided to start her in-ring career the humble way. SHIMMER still put Baszler over by the time of her first match with them (though she was the clear number 3 behind Mercedes Martinez and Nicole Savoy), and after that, she started racking up title belts across the independent circuit. These days, Baszler, now a WWE wrestler, after rampaging through the female ranks on NXT, became a featured wrestler of both Raw and Smackdown. | |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_1429eb78 | type |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_1429eb78 | comment |
Japanese promotions such as All Japan Pro Wrestling have a Young Boy to Young Lion to "respected wrestler" system where "young boys" are forced to do the laundry and dishes of the respected wrestlers while doing thousands of pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups or such for wrestler complaints and are forced to sleep on floor mats. Young Lions get to wrestle on television but can only use a small selection of moves and are usually only allowed to beat other Young Lions. Once a Young Lion goes on a learning excursion, preferably to a foreign country where Japanese is not spoken (some like Kenta Kobayashi of Pro Wrestling NOAH luck out and end up in Brazil or something), they will generally be treated like respected wrestlers. Mitsuharu Misawa is AJPW's most famous case, as even after going through all that he was booked into an excessively long losing streak to see if he would "never say die". After making it through all of that though he was then booked as an Invincible Hero and The Ace of All Japan. |
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"Doin' This" by Luke Combs explains that if he wasn't a big-time performer he'd still be paying his dues playing in bars trying to make it big— and that he'd be all right with that, because the most important part for him has always been playing music with his friends and connecting with the crowd. | |
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Shounen Hollywood is all about this trope. The group is just small-time and localized to one theater venue, so in order to spread the word, they have to do meet and greets, advertise themselves on small-time television, pass out fliers, and other similar activities. The same was true of the group's predecessors before a few of them hit the big time. | |
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Gail Kim describes her initial masked villain "Queen OF Cats" La Felina gimmick as a due paying experience she'd rather forget about. | |
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Doonesbury's character Jimmy Thudpucker (Trudeau's go-to character for lampooning the music industry) once refused to do a "paid my dues" song as being pointlessly whiny, pointing out he was an overnight success at age nineteen. His agent retorts "It's in your contract." A Take That! against rock music groups with such songs. | |
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Referred to in one of the vaudeville Garfield strips. Garfield gives this as the reason why he's doing an act that universally gets shoes thrown at him. | |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_5ae0bec6 | type |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_5ae0bec6 | comment |
It's practically accepted tradition that no matter how you got there, once you make it to the WWE, you're going to spend at least a year going through constant hazing, both in and out of the ring, until the veterans are satisfied you have the "mental fortitude" to make it in the business. Not as much a problem now as in the past, as WWE has moved away from hiring career jobbers and wrestlers off the street over the past twenty years. As they are the undisputed premier wrestling promotion, all other "competition" can serve as farm leagues to funnel the best talent to the top, so that even "rookies" can expect to have years of experience and polish. | |
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In the commentary on one of the Red Dwarf DVDs, the actors talk about David Ross, the original actor for Kryten. He asked if they were "legit", meaning if they had gone to a proper acting school and paid their dues in small parts on stage before being on TV. The answer for all of them was No± Chris Barrie was an actor, but not classically trained, and was better known as an impressionist, so hadn't paid his dues; Craig Charles was a poet; Danny John-Jules was a dancer; Norman Lovett was a stand-up comedian, which resulted in the actor treating them with mild disdain. | |
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Maren Morris's song "Circles Around This Town" is about her experience trying to make it in Nashville, writing a couple hundred songs to get two hits and finding that even then it doesn't get easy. | |
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Montel Vontavious Porter's extended jobber run in WWE was this, to make sure he was "loyal" enough to be pushed by the company after Brock Lesnar burned out and left to play football and then Bobby Lashley also burned out in addition to a conflict with part of the creative staff, before leaving for the independent circuit and Mixed Martial Arts. While MVP did eventually stop getting put on the losing end of squash matches and be allowed to win the United States Title belt, basically a mid-card title belt in WWE's structure, it became clear the company was years away from every letting him work at a high level so he left, paid his dues all over again in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and became the first holder of the IWGP Intercontinental Championship belt(which can and has been main event material in NJPW's structure). | |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_d2179b4b | comment |
Mitsuharu Misawa is AJPW's most famous case, as even after going through all that he was booked into an excessively long losing streak to see if he would "never say die". After making it through all of that though he was then booked as an Invincible Hero and The Ace of All Japan. | |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_d619ad8 | comment |
It's commonly reported that after seeing promise in Toryumon Mexico graduate Kazuchika Okada that New Japan Pro-Wrestling sent him in TNA fully aware that they would squander their soon to be IWGP Heavyweight Champion and heir apparent of CHAOS. This being so he would appreciate getting a push from a big company after being denied such. If true, this worked a bit too well, as NJPW ended up being disappointed by his "Okato" role as Samoa Joe's Side Kick and Okada himself has little good to say about TNA, going so far as to start a parody angle of its feast or fired briefcases that had to be approved by New Japan bookers Gedo and Jado, despite the fact he made many friends among the wrestlers contracted to TNA. | |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_f84e9cf5 | type |
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| Paying Their Dues / int_f84e9cf5 | comment |
John Morrison was one of WWE's odder cases, as he was made to pay his dues right when he was on the cusp of stardom in WWE, because his girlfriend pissed a lot of people off, and he pissed more people off by trying to show his loyalty to her. WWE would eventually stop playing games and get rid of him, where he would pay his dues again in AAA and rise to the top of the company, in spite of more drama over management's disputes with a different girlfriend of his. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
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Show Business | |
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Trivia | |
| Shounen Hollywood / int_82f3a7da | type |
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| CarlaGugino | seeAlso |
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| New Game! (Manga) / int_82f3a7da | type |
Paying Their Dues |
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Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.