Got a bunch of emails on last week’s Merger Advice. Almost all of the email came from SAG-eligible actors. Here’s two of those emails with the same basic question, and then my response.
Hi Bonnie,
I enjoyed your latest Actors Voice article about now being the time to join AFTRA. It brought to mind a question I have been mulling over. As someone who is SAG-e but has been holding out on joining until necessary, I’ve been wondering if I should join SAG before the merger just in case requirements to get in changed. Or might it be more advisable to join AFTRA?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Best,
Ellen
Super quick on that, if you’re a member of either union when the merger goes through, you’ll be in the Mega Union, so don’t stress about “requirements to join” changing. If you join neither union before the merger, yes, the concern is that there may be a time limit to your current eligibility, which I mentioned last week (hence the advice to join AFTRA, stat).
Second email:
Hi Bonnie!
How are you? How’s Keith? LA? It’s so cool to see all the amazing things you’re doing. It’s always so inspiring.
Things are good here in Tel Aviv. I’ve been living with my boyfriend for the past year and a half, working on some interesting projects and enjoying all the cool things this city has to offer. I am, however, starting to consider the move back to the USofA (two years away is starting to feel like 10!!) and I just read your article on Actors Access about the merger.
For the same reasons you noted in your article, do you still recommend joining now if you are SAG-e? I was thinking of joining from Israel (if it’s possible) because I don’t want to have to fork over an extra thousand bucks or so. I’m also a little apprehensive about possibly having problems in the future because of my eligibility before the merger (though as far as I understand, I’ll still be eligible). I worked hard to become eligible and I don’t want to even run the risk of losing it. 🙂
Based on the article you wrote, I’m assuming that the same reasoning applies to SAG-e people, but I wanted to check in and see what you thought.
Hope all is well and sending you lots of love. 🙂
Jackie
Hello Jackie, and, now a lengthier hello to you, Ellen! Jackie — since you asked — all is ridiculously well, as you’ve surmised. Couldn’t be happier. 🙂 And you are very missed, so I’m thrilled to hear you may be headed back to LA soon. I actually don’t know what your joining options are from Tel Aviv, but I’m positive, if you post at Hollywood Happy Hour about this, you’ll get help from people who are on the board of SAG, as they are actively participating in discussions about the merger in this crucial decision-making time. Certainly, some folks are joining in minor markets to pay lower initiation fees and planning to deal with any “Hollywood upgrade” later. But as for international joining? Not sure.
As for the question both you fine ladies basically have — one that actually hit my inbox quite a few times last week — it is totally up to you whether you take this pre-merger chance to join AFTRA or SAG, since you’re already SAG-eligible (and everyone is born AFTRA-eligible, of course). One of my students was struggling with this during our consulting session last week, because he really wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be perceived as one of those actors who “bought his way into the new union,” once the merger goes through.
Oy.
Let’s talk about this bizarre “us vs. them” thing that ACTORS want to have with one another. Wait. SOME ACTORS. Not all. Not most, in fact. But, sure, there’s this very vocal few actors who think, unless you walked uphill both ways in snow to and from school every day, your education is worth nothing.
Bullshit.
Actors coming together and being the gigantic force that The Mega Union will make them is going to be a fantastic thing, where creating more union work (and without undercutting between unions, for the most producer-friendly contract) and better union contracts is concerned. Is the merger going to be perfect? Will it come off without a hitch? Will it solve all the industry’s ills? Of course not. But will putting on-camera actors under one union prevent the undercutting that is already a major problem, and that will become INSANE, should the merger NOT go through this time? You betcha.
Any actor who wants to tell another actor that their membership isn’t as valuable because they didn’t get in the same way that they did needs to sit on the porch and shake a cane at the kid with the frisbee that dropped into their yard.
Look, when the commercial strike of 2000 happened, nonunion actors could gain union membership by walking the picket lines alongside union members. Did their membership not “count” as much? Maybe for the first few months (and only in the minds of those above-mentioned porch-sitting cane-shakers, mind you; producers hiring union actors don’t give a flyin’ fig how union actors became union actors).
Do three-voucher background artists face ridicule for having gotten into SAG without having done principal work? No. Because no one is running around like a bully demanding to know, “How did you get your SAG membership? How did you qualify? Are you as good as I am or are you a lesser actor?” (Any jackass who is running around demanding to know such things needs to get a hobby. Hey, maybe try ACTING instead of bullying your fellow actors!)
Do actors who got in by self-producing SAG New Media projects have to sit in the back row at the SAG events they attend, because they are somehow less valuable to the membership than those who got in by something that THEY perceive as more legitimate means?
Of course not.
And there are thousands upon thousands of actors who got their SAG membership by joining AFTRA, working a principal contract, and then joining SAG a year later. Do they get “used screeners” or “damaged seconds” of the Actor magazine? Are their SAG cards made of poop instead of gold? Nope.
Seriously, the idea that anyone WHO MATTERS actually cares how any particular actor earned his or her union membership is ludicrous. But it lives in our brains somewhere, if we somehow undervalue our “way in,” and we worry we’ll be called out for it.
So, if that’s you (not saying either of you gals feels this way — but, remember, I said I got a lot of email on this topic, so I just chose your emails as representative samples of the whole, and I know this is an issue for others who reached out), and you’re SAG-eligible, then go join SAG (spending hundreds of dollars more to do so than it would cost to join AFTRA today), so you can be happy saying, “pre-merger, I was a SAG member.” And if the money is actually more valuable than that statement of feeling “better than” other actors (or another version of yourself) in your mind, join AFTRA. It’s cheaper, and post-merger, it won’t matter at all.
Well… except to those porch-sitting, cane-shaking folks who love to see themselves as better than actors who joined “their union” using extra work or an Internet contract or anything other than whatever way THEY got in. Boy oh boy, do producers love THOSE actors! Because those actors come from a place of lack. They believe there’s a “watering down of talent” when folks can just buy into the union, rather than seeing that more union actors means more union PROJECTS, because there will be fewer talented nonunion actors out there making a nonunion production an attractive idea, to producers.
So, if you’re SAG-eligible and prefer the prestige of saying “I joined SAG before the merger” to the hundreds of dollars in your bank account, do that. 🙂 Whatever you choose, just promise me you won’t join the ranks of those “actor-hating actors” out there. They’re sad. They empower producers in a way that is really bad for other actors. Most of all, they never give us our frisbee back, when it lands in their yard!
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/001463.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.