Pagebits

Dan Murrell does a highly detailed breakdown of the actors vs producers negotiations. One of the details was interesting to a metrology freak:

Murrell says 5-4/8 is not a typo; all paychecks and contracts divide up scripts into eighths with no reduced fractions. 1/4 is 2/8, 1/2 is 4/8, and 3/4 is 6/8.

Eighths have a long tradition in monetary units. Bits of dollars and reales of pesos were eighths. When we decimalized the dollar (formerly peso) we kept the two bits and four bits coins but skipped the one bit coin.

This website explains that the standard script page is 8 inches high, meant to produce one minute of acting. The eighths correspond to inches.