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I dunno. I’ll look into it today. But everyone I’ve talked to thinks this will be a long and hard strike that will still be going on well past the big-deal 80th Academy Awards. Use the monitored comments here for an Industry-only discussion about that or anything else strike-related. After all, Hollywood is about to shut down. How long will this walkout last? ( I keep hearing this is a 6-month strike.) Who among Hollywood insiders should step in to solve it? Which contract compromises should be considered? What will writers miss most while they’re not at work? How do producers plan to cope? 
(I just heard an apocalyptic memory from a TV exec about spending strike days playing ping pong in his Warner Bros office. Sheesh.) I’d enjoy hearing more tales from the 1988 walkout and its professional and personal impact. Let’s keep this thread going all weekend. Please remember to be pithy. Over on my pal Sasha Stone’s Awards Daily blog, a commenter recalls that, in 1980, the Emmycast was “turned on its head” by striking SAG and AFTRA actors. “All three scheduled emcees canceled at the last minute, and Steve Allen and Dick Clark stepped in as cohosts. Only one Emmy winner in all the acting categories showed up to accept — Powers Boothe (Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones). All of the TV clip footage originally scheduled for use during the telecast had to be pulled because AFTRA refused to grant permission clearances.” Oscar host Jon Stewart will have lots to talk about in his opening monologue. But who will write his strike-related jokes?
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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This would also bring up the question of how the strike would affect the entire “season” of pre, mostly Below the Line award shows, as well: Costumers, editors, VFX, DPs, etc., etc.
None of those IA guilds/disciplines are on strike, of course…but it’s their shows that occupy the caterers and hotels between the Globes and the Oscars…
If nothing else, all the acceptance speeches this year oughtta be interesting!
I can go six months on my savings, six months off the Strike Fund, then six months on credit cards, and I’m ready to.
Does this mean I won’t be able to use my WGA card to get into see the Oscar hopeful movies for free?
Here’s a compromise on new media residuals I think should be considered: a discounted online residual rate for scripted shows in their first season.
First-season shows really do run enormous production deficits, and eighty or ninety percent don’t come close to recouping. And when the AMPTP talks about the need to consider the internet primarily as a marketing tool, they are correct in that it can be a huge boon for launching shows. Several of the shows that have recently launched successfully offered their pilots for free on iTunes or elsewhere. Their success means more WGA jobs.
Obviously, this would be a serious concession on the part of the Guild, since at any given point, a lot of the shows on the air are first-season shows. (Maybe forty percent?) But I think it would be a smart move. If the choice is between negotiating down from 2.5% to a lower overall percentage x, or from 2.5% to a percentage higher-than-x but with a discounted rate for a chunk of programming, I’d take the latter. And it would have the ancillary advantages of 1) actually encouraging new media promotional experimentation which just might create more WGA jobs, and 2) giving Companies a break on shows which do in fact lose a lot of money, without relying on their specious accounting. (Maybe the residuals could be retroactively collected if the show makes it to Season Two.)
Let’s be clear about what this strike is about and the dramatic structure used by the writers. Imagine it as a well crafted Shakespearean tragedy.
The writers with clout in this town are the hyphenate exec producers on sitcoms and TV dramas. Bowman and and his group are like princes of a rebel kingdom demanding a share of the taxes. The kings, the producers, are denying that they have found a new tax revenue on the peons. The writers, by forcing a clause in the contract that establishes that this new income stream exists, can they leverage their deals to get a piece. Without the clause the kings can deny that they have found another way to bleed the peons and more easily dismiss the princes claim to a share.
Now the princes are wealthy, those execs all have development deals etc, but they have been frozen out of their formerly lucrative independent production company status, best exemplified by Norman Lear, the retired Prince of TV. Since vertical integration the Princes have lost a lot of ducats. So the are using the image of the common union man to present themselves as righteous, humble and deserving. No one really believes that, but they still present that image to the public. The real threat is that they will put the whole town out of work: actors, IATSE, Teamsters, all the real laborers and by proxy they are using the hardship threat on the whole town to fight for their share of the king’s ransom. It’s a nasty subplot, but it will work, because we cannot have the whole town out of work for long. The writers have found a way of striking by proxy. When the execs-producers strike, think Aspen, when the town is out of work think Dicken’s London with the cry “Please sir more gruel” ringing out from every cameraman, craft service person and extra.
Seriously, with the town about to shut down, is our chief concern the Oscars???
I’m fairly new to the industry, and from an agency stand point, this has fascinating to watch. I work in accounting and pay writers, so my job is greatly affected as well. Of course I’ve been promised that nothing will happen in accounting, but if this goes on long enough, they might downsize the department and then make new hires when it’s time to start paying people again. It’s one of those “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens” situations that no one really seems to have a plan for.
Seeing first hand what some of the writers are paid, I am in full support of them and really wish them the best in getting what they need and deserve.
If the studios moved at all on new media — just a little budge — there would not be a strike. It’s insane.
Dear god, what of the Emmys?!?!
Mike S. –
Stop talking sense. That is obviously not welcome in this negotiation.
I think a real forward-thinking proposal would be to scrap the residual model entirely in favor of increased upfront script minimums. With product distribution fragmenting to online, cell phones, screens in airports, etc., let them worry about where they sell it. Just pay us more to write it.
Maybe I live in La-La-Land, but wouldn’t it be great if all the unions stepped up like the teamsters and honored WGA picket lines? SAG, DGA, IATSE to the rescue! I definitely live in La-La-Land. Seems unlikely, but that could make a difference, and cause some real pain for producers. SAG and DGA are going to deal with this in June anyways, so why not deal with it now. Get the WGA a good deal and use that deal as the blueprint for the SAG and DGA contracts. The WGA setting a precedent worries the producers anyways, so why not make their fears a reality. IATSE members, you’re going to be hurt the most by the strike, and it’s happening whether you like it or not. Better to back the WGA and get it over with than complain about something you can’t control. If not, see you in June y’all, when people will be so tired of the 8-month-old writers’ strike that’ll give a flyin’ f*#$ about an actors’ strike, and “My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honor Student” will be the newest hit on all-reality-all-the-time network TV.
Here’s another idea that would provide for the future and keep the status quo for the present. The WGA should give up raising DVD residuals, and defer the increased residuals to online and downloads. Ten years from now DVDs are going to be as obsolete as VHS tapes. Give up the short term to provide for the long term.
Finally, since you’re striking, there better be some BIG picket lines out there. Show the rest of us that you mean it, don’t hide out in Malibu and work on your spec. If there’s no line, there’s nothing to cross, and the whole thing falls apart.
- Your friendly neighborhood Production Manager/Supervisor/wannabe-writer-director
PS Nikki, where would anyone be without your column?! Thanks for your humor, accuracy, and no-BS coverage. I’ll be able to live without some TV shows, but I couldn’t make it without DHD.
Mike S.’s suggestion about a discounted online residual rate for first season shows is the kind of thinking that needs to be explored. there are going to have to be creative solutions to this impasse. but the amptp seems resistant to even considering engaging in this kind of bargaining.
Oh, that’s nothing — on 9/11, when we finally had to stop crying at the television and go out for supplies, there was a guy at the supermarket freaking out into his cellphone about how if the Emmys were cancelled, it would “ruin everything.”
Priorities, people.
As a writer, I’ll suggest jokes to Jon Stewart’s writing staff, but I’ll do it when we’re all picketing outside the Oscars. Should be a blast.
We’ll be laughing at how this town runs on writers’ creativity, and when you remove that from the equation, TV evaporates, movies die stillborn and Jon Stewart sounds like Joe Average. This strike was way overdue.
Not to be the craven, ladder-climbing careerist during what’s clearly going to be some very nasty downtime for all of us, but would any of you writers care to collaborate on an indie project while we’re all out of work?
Mid-management non-creative staffer on a major network TV show here, moonlighting as an independent director and looking for brilliant short scripts to turn into mindblowing short films for the festival circuit.
Let’s use the time off to flex our creative muscle!
I seriously think it’s going to take a writer-friendly mogul like Spielberg to sort this one out. Clearly, the WGA and the AMPTP are incapable of doing so (arguing about chairs etc) so they need someone who both is a mogul and also respectful of writers to sort this out. Though the fact that he hasn’t yet makes me curious.
I’m not in the WGA at the moment because I’ve only optioned my first script (to a non WGA sig) but I do have an agent. However she’s useless while this strike is going on because nobody’s buying and so all my scripts are being sat on for God knows how long.
The only thing I can do is option or sell more of my low budget stuff to non WGA sigs and try to ride this out.
6 month strike? Please. No self-important Westside wife will let her credit card financier take that much time off.
Mike S, I wish a compromise like yours were even on the table, but Nick Counter has made it clear that the internet is and ever shall remain simply another form of home video release, and will never be subject to residual payments, period. The AMPTP clearly has the extreme position here. I know we all like to think in life that both sides of an argument have a point, but it’s really different here, it really is.
Dan Rhys is incorrect, though his analogy looks good on the surface. The people who will suffer most FROM THE LOSSES THAT WOULD COME THROUGH ACCEPTING THE AMPTP CONTRACT ON THE TABLE are regular, middle-class writers — the “peons,” as he says, though I think that designation is thoughtless at best and offensive at worst — let’s settle on “offensive”. Most writers work not under term deals, but periodically. A mid-level drama or comedy writer can make six figures in the course of a season, and then be out of work for a season or two or three or forever — you never know. What keeps people going, or at least helps, is residuals. Since everything will soon be delivered through the internet (and don’t fool yourself, that’s where we are going), there will be no way to survive as a freelance or staff writer at all if there are no residuals coming from new media sources. If that happens, it will drive people from the business, lower the living standard of people who try to stay, and discourage the development of new talent. How much clearer can this be? Refusing to discuss residuals for new media will make everyone a “peon.” And do us all a favor — stop insulting John Bowman and the other guild members who are putting their own careers on the line to fight this fight. They can be force majeured out of those lucrative contracts you so casually assume they are “playing” us to keep. They also expect to be sued after the dust clears. Let’s pay attention to the issues, and let’s also realize that instead of fighting with each other, all of the unions, including IATSE, should stick together. If the writers go down, AMPTP and the corporations won’t bother negotiating with them, either. This is a big, real, terrifying fight that can hurt everyone who isn’t a corporate executive.
From,
WORKING WRITER WITH NO OVERALL DEAL
The Guilds and unions stick together? I’ve walked two IA picket lines in the past and the only union that wouldn’t cross were the ever faithful Teamsters. Actors sailed through it without batting an eye as did the directors. I would be happy to support a WGA strike and not cross a line if I thought for one minute that they would do the same for me. The IA, by the way, has been told by Tom Short that we are obligated to cross a line due to our “no strike” clause
As someone who literally JUST entered the TV field this year and was lucky enough to begin my career with a great network, I definitely struggle with the questions of “why now?! why no other time in twenty years?!”
That being said, no one my age even watches TV at a set time anymore. We only watch TiVo or buy shows on-line. The idea that the companies would share none of that with us is ludicrous. Without us, they’d have nothing to sell.
And when you hear NBC bragging to investors how much money they’re going to make once everything is available online, it REALLY seems ludicrous they wouldn’t share that with the content creators.
So I’ll go back to my college term-time job as I wait this thing out. I feel bad for the writers who have families and homes though. The AMPTP is being unreasonable at many people’s expense.
But the fact remains. Digital is the future AND the present. And one day, it’s all there will be.
Nikki, I think you should be the one to step in and solve this.
The DGA will get a good deal. The producers respect directors more than writers and the DGA negotiates off a business, and not a “moral” template. It’s been that way for the my 25 years in the DGA.
On the writers front, get more upfront, rather than gambling on some phantom future revenue stream.
dollygrip is right. Writers and actors have shown with past action they will skate right through the lines.
We don’t have them behind us, because we have treated them like they are below us.
One thing that’s not obvious is that most writers are used to feast and famine. I’ve worked pretty much continuously for the last 10 years but I’ve always kept at least 12 months of savings on hand in case of a dry spell. Well, guess what? That means I can strike for a year without really hurting. And in the meantime I’ll be writing my novels and specs, directing a foreign feature, making a documentary…
In other words, during the strike *I* get to create value but the studios don’t. Now tell me who’s hurting?