I wasn’t going to write about the strike. I really wanted to write about anything else. So much so that I had scribbled a list of a half-dozen perfectly good topics (and another dozen decent ones, perhaps three rockstar great ones too) and convinced myself that I would — that I could — write about anything other than the strike this week.
But when it came right down to it, I had to face the fact that I couldn’t not write about the strike this week. Hell, it’s been the better part of my blogging for the week. It’s certainly been the focus of nearly every conversation I’ve had since Halloween. And reading about, discussing, viewing, participating in, and crying about the strike has become such a way of life this month that I guess I need to expect that spillover into my column was an inevitability.
I think the final nudge came in the form of an email I received this weekend, thanking me for my personal, emotional blog posts about the strike. I had already been receiving comments at both the “real” and MySpace version of my blog that were encouraging, then the Google Alerts started up, letting me know I was getting linked quite a bit lately. But the email thanking me for spelling out how very conflicted a hyphenate like me feels at a time like this caused me to realize that maybe this is a good column topic after all. Certainly, my wonderful readers must be feeling somewhat conflicted too, right?
Before I venture too far down the road of personal issues and complex feelings, here, let me share a few points of fact about the strike (along with resource links for your further reading, viewing, or discussing pleasure) so that we’re all on the same — forgive the writer’s pun — page.
Members of the Writers Guild of America have been on strike since midnight on November 5, 2007. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ceased negotiations with the WGA even after the WGA pulled what the AMPTP was calling a major sticking point (DVD residuals) off the table. WGA made it clear at that point that they didn’t want to strike — so much so that they would make this all about new media. Just pay us for downloads, the WGA said. No, said AMPTP. The Internet is too new. And these are promotions, not re-airings of your work. (Note: the DVD residuals issue was removed from the negotiations by the WGA until the AMPTP walked out of negotiations, thereby resetting all issues back to the starting point, for whenever they reconvene.)
(Steve Bodow said it best: “I checked this out — I’m nothing if not a fair-minded word-packet maker — and it was true! I watched last week’s episode of The Office over at NBC.com and it was promotional. It was promoting BlackBerrys and Fidelity Investments and Clorox bleach. Nice of NBC to give those ads away for free.”)
Now, the producers’ position, at first glance, doesn’t seem so out of line. I mean, there really was a time they didn’t know where “new media” was going, and the support of all involved was necessary in order to launch and launch well. The problem is with the promise the AMPTP made when this was at issue in 1988: We need you to take a smaller percentage than you want so we can get this off the ground. We will revisit this issue once we have a foothold and you will be compensated more fairly.
Right. In the ’80s, the WGA went for the lower-end residual formula for VHS and DVD sales, as the AMPTP insisted that (what was then called) “new media” needed the help of the WGA to get off the ground. With no idea what would become of these formats (y’know, that the producers would rake in billions of dollars more on DVD sales than they ever clear at the box office), this agreement seemed less crappy than it certainly turned out to be. Well, so here we are with a whole new “new media” to negotiate. Guess what. The AMPTP insists it needs the help of the WGA to get off the ground. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Now, there may still be families who gather around the television with their TV trays and TV dinners to watch their favorite shows on the glowing box as scheduled on one of the big three networks, but I certainly don’t know any of those people. People I know are watching episodes online, on their phones, on time-shifted TiVo, on iTunes. On-demand is the new “appointment television.” And for creatives in 2007 to be paid as though we’re providing a one-time airing of a fan’s “stories” ala the 1950s is both anachronistic and insulting.
Lacey Rose recently reported that “Americans spend nearly 27 hours a month online. Internet ads registered a 17.7% increase in the first half of 2007, to $5.5 billion, while the broadcast networks saw ad spending slip 3.6%, to $11.8 billion, during the same period.” Yup. That’s too new, AMPTP. You’d better study that (for about three years) and get back to the writers on whether their residuals are deserved, there.
Need more? Watch this video called “Why We Fight.” Read “What Are We Striking For?” Read “Why Striking Writers Are Right.” Bookmark and then constantly reload Deadline Hollywood Daily.
So, why is the writers’ strike important to actors?
Well, you see, there’s another contract with AMPTP that’s set to expire here before too long. It’s yours, dear SAG members. (Oh, and then there’s the DGA contract as well.) And if the AMPTP steamrolls over WGA members about residuals and fair pay, what do you think they’ll be able to do to you?
Writers spend most of their lives just like actors do: putting together their work for free, getting it in front of the buyers, and hoping to have the opportunity to be paid for doing what they love — knowing full well that when this gig is over, they’ll be back to hustling for that next job again. Staffed writers are like series regulars, folks. There aren’t a ton of ’em out there. They are really lucky. Most of their peers don’t get that same shot. (See below about the skewed media coverage for more on this issue.)
Why are so many actors standing alongside their WGA colleagues on the picket lines? In the oft-repeated, oft-adapted words of Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists,
but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,
but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews,
but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
All of us on the creative side of this dispute have an opportunity right now to take a stand for how we are paid for our work in this industry. It’s a little bit like voting, really. If you don’t take a stand right now, you’d better not complain about how it all shakes down for you — and future generations of creatives — later.
Yeah, as a casting director, I get paid way before a film, play, or pilot even shoots. I’ve had a couple of contracts that included back-end deals (when I cast for below-quote up-front money), but unlike writers and actors, I’m not counting on those payouts. I negotiate enough up-front money to make it worth my while to cast the project. Period. Frankly, even if something I cast today becomes wildly popular and makes oodles of money for all parties other than me, I’m covered, because I can use that momentum to negotiate a better rate for my salary on the next project, and the next.
Can’t writers do the same? Um, yeah. That’s kind of what they’re doing, now. They’re setting minimums that will help all writers in the future. They’re making sure they’re covered for media that hasn’t even been developed yet. And they deserve that right.
(Even those in unions with “no strike” provisions in your contracts can show your support by visiting the picket lines, displaying the virtual picket line avatar, voicing your opinion to the networks that air your favorite shows by letting them know that you want them to get back to the bargaining table so we can get back to business as usual in this town.)
While I am also a writer, I am not a member of the WGA. I’ve not done any work that qualifies me to start collecting credits in that direction (yet — but it’s certainly in the works, as regular readers know). And as Neal Pollack said in a recent article, “None of my work is available for streaming, free or not, because not a word I’ve written has ever been filmed. It feels like I’ve been taken out of class on the first week of high school and forced to march with the teachers’ union. The fact that half the teachers are younger than I am makes it even stranger.” Neal’s description of “the middle zone between unemployment and unimaginable success” is fantastic (as is the story about the monkey’s rights and protections vs. those of the writers on a certain reality show — having started my casting career on a handful of reality shows for Fox and E!, I especially appreciate the comparison).
I’m also not a member of the CSA. And that’s not for lack of trying. When I applied in 2005, I was rejected because I hadn’t cast “enough” (let’s ignore the fact that I had absolutely met the minimum requirements spelled out on their website, and then some) and because, as a hyphenate, my contributions to the casting community were uncertain. (Oh yes, I really enjoyed being named a Top TV/Film CD the following year by the readers of Backstage.) But like everyone in this town, I’d rather work than not work, so who cares whether the micro-budget indies I cast are within the coverage map of the casting union? Producers are hiring me to cast actors to say words written by writers, as directed by directors, and dammit, that’s good enough for me!
Bottom line: I’m a non-union worker from a union family (ask me about my grandfather’s federal imprisonment for blowing up powerlines in protest of union busting activity in the copper mines of Tennessee someday — yes, I’m a descendant of a member of The Ducktown 8) and most of my friends in casting — most of them, Teamsters — have had to move away from their regular offices so that actors can come audition without crossing picket lines. I, of course, am married to a SAG member and I earn a good living as… a writer.
How conflicted can ya get, right?
But I’m not conflicted. I support this strike.
Most folks in Hollywood are hyphenates!
Last week, I was a judge at the Tisch Arts West Monologue Slam. It, as usual, was a blast, and the pre-show hot topic of conversation among the judges was, of course, the strike. Jerry O’Connell said to the rest of us, “I did something today I never thought I would do.” “What’s that?” I asked, “Write a scab script?” I laughed, because I was making a joke. I know Jerry works on a highly improvised sitcom with one of my favorite people (Fred Goss). “Well, uh,” he stammered, “Yeah. I crossed a picket line. That’s something I never thought I would do.”
Each of us on the judges’ panel mentioned that it’s a complicated issue. Actors who are also show producers have to honor their contracts in two ways, but if they work on an existing script to punch up the dialogue at all (which happens during taping of everything, basically), they’re screwing their union brothers and sisters in another way. I feel worst for my friends on shows like MadTV. They all write their own stuff. And they’ve been working for years on developing this material, to get this shot. And now… what?
Well, my friend Asterios Kokkonos “pulled a Carell” and really shook things up last week. He didn’t have to do it. But, then again, he did. Y’know? I guess the point is: We all do what our conscience tells us to do. And I end up crying every night. I feel like effin’ Holly Hunter in Broadcast News. It’s just all too much.
And then there’s the issue of skewed reporting.
On which side of this issue would you suppose the owners of the media outlets fall? Yup. A gathering of thousands of protesters in West Los Angeles Friday was not the lead story on the local news. It was a 30-second montage of clips at the very end of the newscast, with very little “story” added to the coverage. Thank goodness for the blogosphere! Of course, we all see the irony here, right? We’re fighting for compensation for our work on new media, explaining that it’s not about TV or even DVD anymore. The AMPTP declares the Internet is just too dang new for us to know what kind of impact it will have on how the world consumes its entertainment, its news. And where is the world getting proper coverage of this strike? Online. (In fact, for those who are interested in showing your online support — displaying for the producers the true impact of the Internet — there is a virtual picket line going on right now. See below on how you can join us.)
I know it’s tough, outside of Hollywood, to get a sense for how this town operates (hell, it’s tough for folks inside of Hollywood to wrap their minds around this industry sometimes), but the entertainment news shows don’t help matters. See, it’s the famous, the celebs, the paparazzi bait, the series regulars whose names we know that make up 95% of coverage on these shows every day. Yet those celebs represent fewer than 1% of the actors out there working or pursuing work in this industry every day. Apply that formula to the writers you’re aware of, too. So that would mean, when the media wants to say that David E. Kelley is a kabillionaire, they’re omitting the Average Joe staff writer or spec writer or script doctor out there barely earning enough — by the grace of these residuals — to qualify for “the good insurance” each year.
Yeah, it looks like a bunch of glamorous people who are earning good money doing things that most Americans gave up as “playing make-believe” as children are whining while the rest of the country struggles to find affordable healthcare, working multiple jobs to make meager ends meet, but the truth is: the same crises the rest of the country faces exist here in Hollywood too. We have trouble paying our bills. We don’t have good healthcare. We are going from job to job, hoping the next one is “the big one” that pays off. And we’re not terribly interesting people to cover on the celeb-hungry entertainment news shows.
Besides, why would the media want its nonunion writers to cover its (and their) opposition in this strike? Its position is bolstered by making us look greedy. Y’know, like it’s our fault that you’re gonna be subjected to reruns and new reality shows. Ya think we want that? Ask Shawn Ryan how it feels to be off the set of his own show during filming of its series finale. Ask those whose dreams have just come true how it feels to stop short. (I’d say “Ask Ellen” too, but her actions speak louder than her words. As Greg Fitzsimmons so brilliantly quipped, she spent more time wailing about that damn dog than she spent striking in support of her writers.)
Think about the concept that the producers don’t want to negotiate anything right now because they’re absolutely thrilled with the idea of letting the writers be the bad guys who shut down Hollywood, knowing that if the strike continues for months as it’s predicted it will, they’ll then come right up against DGA and SAG contract ends and, welp, let’s let them strike too and make everyone living outside of Hollywood believe that creatives are a bunch of spoiled brats who don’t care if you — the viewer — is subjected to an overdose of reruns and reality TV. It just hurts my heart.
Damon Lindelof said, “If money is made off my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. My show, Lost, has been streamed hundreds of millions of times since it was made available on ABC’s website. The downloads require the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99 each). Again, we get nothing.”
And then there’s the collateral damage.
Writers aren’t the only ones affected by the strike. As Dale Alexander shared last week, “I’ve been watching the news since the WGA strike was announced and I have yet to see any coverage dedicated to the effect that this strike will have on the below-the-line employees.”
He mentions the impact of the shutdown of his show (The Office) on all sorts of people, including writers, showrunners, exec producers, co-exec producers, supervising producers, associate producers, writers’ assistants, stand-ins, grips, gaffers, electricians, riggers, camera operators, makeup artists, hairstylists, location managers, costumers, casting directors, accountants, production assistants, sound designers, directors, assistant directors, background artists, audience coordinators, audience warm-up comics, network pages, facilities managers, drivers, security officers, caterers, art department members, stage managers, props-keepers, script supervisors, editors, set designers, set dressers, unit managers, construction workers, medics.
In battle, this type of impact is called “collateral damage.” And it’s everyone’s responsibility to limit this damage to as little as possible! The longer this strike goes on, the more jobs are lost. So, while I’ve heard some folks complaining about writers targeting location shoots, I say this: Disrupting shoots shuts Hollywood down FAST and hopefully that gets the strike resolved sooner than if the writers stayed only on the sidewalk at the studios’ admin offices and politely, quietly walked in circles.
The only hit the AMPTP will feel is a financial one, and since it’s unlikely that the AMPTP will suffer from loss of viewership (and therefore ad revenue) by choosing to program new reality shows and reruns of scripted shows they already own outright, the writers have to get taping to stop. Our choice to cause a fast disruption is actually far more civil than behaving in such a way as to allow the strike to drag on for months.
So, is this all about degrees of greed?
I was in grad school at the Grady College of Journalism when the FCC dropped the Fin-Syn rules (suddenly, owners of networks could now be owners of shows, meaning they were gonna earn money no matter where those suckers aired. No longer would they have to necessarily pay licensing fees to the production companies that generated the programming, much less bid and negotiate syndication terms). I remember this being a huge part of our discussions in classes. “This,” my major professor — the late Barry Sherman, who then headed the prestigious Peabody Awards — said, “will be the end of checks and balances in the production of entertainment programming in Hollywood.”
Damn straight. Watch all of those “credit cards” that flash up at the end of your favorite shows (y’know, the stuff that ISN’T squished over to a fraction of the screen while promotions for other programming is displayed). How many of those companies have similar financial holdings of those on whose networks you’re viewing the programming? Yup. More than a few.
And what about owning the online “channels” on which these programs are re-broadcast? (I know, “broadcast” isn’t the right term, and that’s exactly the point. Things have changed in the way entertainment is delivered and consumed.) What about ownership of companies that sell or rent the DVDs? The rich get richer. And how! Concessions have already been made by the WGA for DVD (forget existing money; we want the future). So — looking at the Internet — clicks and downloads are all trackable, but the producers don’t want us to know what the numbers are. Why would that be? Hmm.
(Further interesting: How the FCC deregulations of the mid-’90s allowed someone like Rupert Murdoch to become primary shareholder in several different types of media at once. “Don’t worry,” they said, “The public won’t stand for biased monopoly of its communication channels. It’s a self-correcting situation! Deregulation is a good thing!” Yeah. Uh-huh. You betcha. That’s working just great today.)
Look. Writers don’t write for fame. Very few writers ever actually even get name recognition (and that’s writers of all kind: book authors, poets, songwriters columnists, screenwriters, script doctors, writers staffed at sitcoms), as their material is almost always a creation for another to interpret. And that actor, that director, that singer, that “delivery system” (whatever it may be) is what gets the attention for a job well done. No one is looking for more credit, here. Fair pay for trackable use. That’s it.
I guess I just like to focus on the purpose of art, when it comes to issues of “big business” like this. (And maybe this helps with the whole perception of writers and greed, outside of Hollywood.) This writing thing is an important service we provide. No, we’re not curing cancer. But without storytellers, what do you have? From the dawn of time, the storytellers have provided an essential service to those who have the crappier jobs and need a break from reality, need an escape from the drudgery, need a sense of community that only comes from the “I am not alone” awareness that our storytellers generate.
Perhaps “everyone else” can do the very jobs that they do every day because they are given some sense of community, some sense of escape, some sense of peace due to the entertainment they consume.
Now… isn’t that worth four cents?
So… now what?
Sign the petition. Watch the video footage at the WGA You Tube channel. Read the strike captains’ posts at United Hollywood. Read the least corporate coverage at Deadline Hollywood Daily. Join the Virtual Picket Line. Join the actual picket lines listed at WGA.org if you’re local. Contact the networks and let them know how you feel about what they’re airing instead. Contact your local news affiliates and let them know how you feel about their strike coverage. Blog about your feelings and thoughts. BECOME A WRITER TODAY.
Despite the fact that I have earned a living as a writer for nearly a decade now, I have only this year started referring to myself as a writer. Don’t you wait so long to call yourself a writer. Post a blog entry, write a letter, send an email… and poof! You’re a writer now too. We’re all in this together.
And create. Yes, we’re on strike. No, we’re not providing content for these production companies, studios, and networks. But our creative energy continues to flow and we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that for once and for all, the studio system may really be dying. If we produced our own content, became our own delivery systems, “fought the man” in every sense of the word, we really could revolutionize the entertainment industry and come up with a way to be paid per click for the original content we provide. Look at it like a group of jazz musicians getting together to jam. Yeah, they do it for the joy of discovery and expression, but eventually an audience comes around and tosses money into a hat to thank the artists for sharing their gifts. While we’re fighting this enormous, corporate machine that wants to monetize our gifts, perhaps the key to winning it comes right down to the core reason we have ever created anything: We can’t not create.
I don’t know about you, but I feel so ready to kick ass that I wish I had more feet.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Gillespie
WRITER
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000792.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.