Zero budget film: What about the actors?

I always wondered about this watching zero budget movies that hit it big. Did Robert Rodriguez go back and pay the people who appeared in El Mariachi for free? Even less successful films like this one I just watched, American Taboo---did the filmmaker go back and pay the people who acted in it when he got a distribution deal?

Variety is reporting on the poor devils who starred in The Blair Witch Project, who operated the cameras, sound equipment, improvised their roles and came up with an explanation for why they kept filming while they were being murdered by the Blair Witch, and were then paid nothing. 

“I’m embarrassed that I let this happen to me,” Williams says via Zoom from his kitchen in Westchester County, N.Y., as Leonard and Donahue listen from their respective homes in New York’s Hudson Valley and rural Maine. In a flash, his face flushes and his eyes fill with tears. “You’ve got to put that stuff away, because you’re a fucking loser if you can’t,” Williams says. “Because everybody’s wondering what happened, and your wife is in the grocery line and she can’t pay because a check bounced. You’re in the most successful independent movie of all time, and you can’t take care of your loved ones.”

One thing from the article:

As the film’s lead and its sole woman, Donahue also had to endure the brunt of the often misogynist backlash. “Heather’s portrayal of a fierce and relentless artist who would not stop filming wasn’t an acceptable archetype at the time,” Leonard says. “She was fair game to be hated on, and they were using her real name.”

I do remember a witty writer at the time said that the message of the film was to never put a woman in charge of a film crew. This was a left-wing critic so I took it as ironic sexism.

Ten or fifteen years ago, a couple of co-workers were talking about The Blair Witch Project, They were talking about how people thought it was real. I butted into their conversation and said that the real give-away that it was fake was that there's no such thing as witches. They both gave me a blank stare which made me realize that they thought they themselves were witches. One of them later told me that his girlfriend was a Wiccan. He said that they can never use their powers of witchcraft for their own benefit.

I always thought Darrin Stephens was an idiot, but it turns out he was a Wiccan. Seems like a stupid religion where the only people who can't benefit from it are the ones who practice it.

But my point is that, to maintain the illusion that it was a true story, the studio, Artisan, insisted that the actors not appear in anything else so people would think they were dead.