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Writer/director C. Jay Cox and Michael Medico (who heads up the blog Hot in Hollywood) are hosting “Gay Gate” at the main gate of Raleigh Studios Hollywood at 5300 Melrose Avenue today from 10 AM until 2 PM Los Angeles Times . Invited are gay and lesbian writers and actors to join at a central location for one day. They said they decided on Raleigh since the gayest show on television, Ugly Betty, is filmed there. As the invitation reads, “Let’s picket because we’re right. Let’s picket together because we’re fabulous!”
On Monday, assistants are organizing a central picket between 12 Noon until 2 PM at the Main Gate (Pico & Motor) of the Fox lot. Invited are assistants and other “below-the-line” employees (“particularly those who have been laid-off by the media conglomerates”) who support the WGA and would like to picket in unity with the writers. “For writers, this is a chance for us to celebrate the assistants and “below-the-line” employees, and to recognize them for the sacrifices they’re being forced to make as we fight for a fair deal.”
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Why not bring the gay protest to Raleigh Manhattan Beach tomorrow? As a gay writer who works in the South Bay, I can tell you that walking the picket line on Rosecrans ina skirt is hard work, and I could sure use some moral support.
What about the gay assistants?
Themed strikes? WGA-Only happy hour? Bring-A-Celebrity-To-Strike Day? Strike dancing (Paramount entrance)? Strike-Happy dogs and babies? It starts to give the impression that maybe not everyone is taking this as seriously is they ought to be.
If I were the the AMPTP, this sort of stuff would only embolden me – I’m willing to bet a lot of writers will begin to lose their resolve when the strike stops being a fun get-together and wacky shenanigans and actually becomes a serious labor movement.
Like most everyone, I am fully supporting the writers ideology, but it worries me when their strategy to win hearts and minds include signs that read ‘Nick Counter Eats Farts.’
to a straight guy who has supported the gay and lesbian community and yes…has friends who are gay and lesbain, i find ‘gay gate’ to be offensive.
why don’t we organize ‘jew walk’ and ‘midget mayhem’ next week? we are in this together…
Gays, dogs, assistants, TV stars…what’s next, the mexican immigrants who pick the lettuce 69 miles from the studio?
I’ll give them a B- for effort. If they get A-list movie stars with hugh participation deals out there, I’ll give them an A.
do you know how awful and embarrassing this all sounds?
This is not a disco.
Re: WGA / Assistants Picket Line
My question is (as an assistant): Would the WGA pay the assistants rent? In ‘recognition’ of their sacrifice (i.e.: the fact some have been laid off)?
Now THAT would mean something.
I don’t know about any other assistants, but I’d rather be “recognized for my sacrifice” with a check for my rent. Or my car insurance. Or groceries.
… you have to be “invited” to picket on Monday? This is becoming a bit unseemly and as others have posted elswhere on DHD, it is beginning to have a “playful” tone. The Strike is becoming a bit like a WGA amusement park – Star World, Gay World, Dog World, Assistant World…
This is a serious, seminal moment for the WGA, for all writers. We must fight, and fight hard against a formidable opponent. Mabye it’s because I feel I am a more militant member of the union, but I’d like to see stronger efforts made to force the AMPTP back to the bargaining table and get this strike over with. Enough with the play dates!!!
yeesh…I’m sorry. If the story from IATSE is even half true that the WGA was pretty much predetermined to strike more than a year ago is true, I don’t see how ANY assistant could go out to show support.
Someone please, PLEASE argue that the average Hollywood assistant isn’t living/working near/below the poverty line. I need a good laugh.
They are essentially smiling and laughing with one of their 2 executioners.
Perhaps all the monetary support actors and others have been talking about throwing towards writers can go towards their criminally underpaid slaves, er, assistants who perform the hardest and most thankless job in Hollywood.
I think that, in about a week, everybody that can end this strike is going on vacation until January. Anybody care to caravan to Aspen and Telluride and picket there? When they have to answer their kids’ questions about the out-of-work people on the sidewalks, they might be more inclined to talk.
Moving this post…
Are there any other writers out there who are absolutely disgusted by “Kids’ Day” and “Celebrity Day” and “Gay Day”?
Is this a strike or a social event?
How can we possibly be taken seriously as a union when our leadership is orchestrating these ridiculous side shows?
Do strikers in other industries have “Kids Days” or “Celebrity Days” or “Gay Days”?
I’m struggling to pay a mortgage and support my family and every other day I get some new mass e-mail from the WGA about what “fun”, themed strike event is coming up. It’s a fuckin’ insult.
We look exactly like the spoiled, over-paid, prima donnas that Nick Counter portrays us as.
If we want to be taken seriously, we need to take this seriously.
We deserve better than “Kids Day” from our leadership.
I am suddenly dissapointed………………. Is this the best you can do.
I’m looking forward to Variety and the New York Times’ coverage of the assistants picket: WRITERS GET ASSISTANTS TO DO THEIR PICKETING FOR THEM
I feel bad for the assistants, as I’m one of them.
And how exactly are the assistants striking Monday being recognized and celebrated by the WGA? I do not consider assistants picketing with the writers as real recognition for the first wave of people who have been let go because of the strike.
Me thinks the young blond young with the T-shirt wearing dog needs her own day at a studio gate.
But the crowd won’t be anywhere near as stylish.
And they might not be gay, but they would be happy.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
pb
Are you kidding? Below the line IATSE members are invited to picket with the WGA ? We are invited to picket with the people who put us out of work. I don’t think so!
I don’t know how many below-the-line victims of this mess are anxious to be “celebrated” by the WGA. While I know it’s well meaning, the arrogance of such an idea is absolutely astounding. My co-workers and I didn’t ask for this and now while the writers on our show are collecting residuals for the repeats that are airing 5 nights a week, we’re about to be unemployed, uninsured and SOL. Innocent people will lose their homes and more because of this. What part of this is a “fair deal” for us?
It’ll be good when we get past this phase, celebs on the line, fabulosity and frivolity, reaching out to assistants for support. “Please like us!” (“Forgive us?”) I’m a writer with a half-dozen feature credits, a house in Studio City, a couple of kids in college, a WGA member since ’77. What’s missing in the discussion so far (though Nikki has been great) is the basic acknowledgment that writers are not laborers, that the prime issue is not our labor but our intellectual property, the ideas we alone create and upon which all the rest of this is founded.
Maybe it’s our mistake as a Guild. I’ve thought since the ’88 strike that it was wrong to put so much emphasis on picketing, walking the line. Picketing makes sense when you are trying to show the world exactly what you’re withholding from management: the coalminer’s thick arms, the autoworker’s strong back and nimble fingers, the electrician and carpenter’s physical skills. If I was in charge, fat chance, I’d put a single writer at a card table in front of each gate — better yet, an empty card table, maybe with a closed laptop, though then you’d have to position someone nearby to keep it from getting swiped. Let management get the real message: we’re keeping our ideas to ourselves for now, maybe even sitting on the beach, maybe even recharging our brains, travelling, getting some new ideas. (During the ’88 strike, I laid saltillo tile on my patio; it’s still there, providing a residual pleasure every time I walk out the door.)
Want to know where the real picket line is? A Variety piece mentioned an agent or executive whose phone log went from four hundred calls a day pre-strike to “less than a dozen” one day last week. Tell me that doesn’t scare the other side. What isn’t happening this week that was happening four hundred times a day before the strike? No one is saying, “What about a series about a NBA star who starts coaching a high school team? A sort of ‘Friday Night Lights’ in, say, Chicago?”
What we have is the power of ideas, the value of ideas. I hate to see the below-the-line people upset, scared for the future. They’re my neighbors. (Most of them make more money than I do now.) But the business in which they work is here because of people like me. That some of us are puffed-up asshats is beside the point. That a good number of the ideas that studios, networks and their stock-holders and advertisers find useful aren’t my taste or yours is beside the point. A cheap movie that fails horribly at the box office still attracts an audience of millions.
Why do writers get paid so much and deserve more? There’s a line, either novelist B. Traven’s or screenwriter John Huston’s, about the value of gold. Bogart or Tim Holt says, “It (gold right out of the ground) sure don’t look like much.” The old man, Walter Huston’s character, says, “Gold is worth what it’s worth because it represents the labor of all the fellas who looked for it and DIDN’T find it.” Ideas are rare, whether it’s the plot of “24″ or Apu’s lines in “Simpson’s (I know, I know; we’re working on union recognition for all animation writers) or “You’re so money!” in “Swingers.” Or your favorite character in your favorite story speaking your favorite lines.
And, sorry, IATSE, I’ll grant that “Mad Men” wouldn’t be as wonderful as it is without your members’ costuming and set design and decoration and lighting, but build and dress all those sets, costume those actors and light them beautifully without a story, a situation, a plot, lines of dialogue, without, in short, Matt Weiner, and see what the financiers and advertisers offer you. If you’re working at your craft instead of having it for a hobby, thank a writer.
If you want to know why we’re out, I’ll show you a VHS and DVD royalties check for about nine dollars, all I made for a movie whose name you would recognize I wrote for Universal six years ago. We settled too soon in ’88.
How about bring a writer to work day.
Old Writer’s line that “the business in which they (IATSE members) work is because of people like me” is the kind of arogance that’s going to split this strike into the “haves” and the “have-nots.” I get where he’s coming from — and his rheotoric is more even-handed than most — but it’s still pretty galling.
And the notion of assistants joining the picket lines outside of Fox is really appalling. Why not just call it “You Little People” day? I’m not an assistant, but when it was suggested to me that I join the pickets as a show of support, I nearly choked on my own tongue. Or maybe it was just the bad taste I’ve had in my mouth from the writers’ condescension over the past two weeks.
‘Kid’s day’ was more than a gimmick to many of us as many schools and day cares were closed for Vteran’s day. Hate on it all you want, but it kept those of us who can’t afford nannies on the picket line rather than at home.
Tomorrow, 100 shows will have been shut down. Figure that there’s at least 100 people working on each of those shows.
Now surely I’m not the only one sickened by the fact that the writers are turning this strike into a socializing event. I know writers don’t get out much (as evident by the lame scripts they churn out that have nothing to do with reality) but all this talk about cheap drinks and being fabulous etc just turns people off.
It’s a bit hard to feel sorry for people who are basically acting like social butterflies instead of… oh… negotiating!
I think I walked the picket lines my last day today. When I returned and found this post, I lost all respect for what we’re doing. From now on, I’ll just do my picketing where I do my socializing…on myspace.
I can’t hold that sign up any more while the two parties aren’t negotiating. Those are my terms. I will go back on strike when they get in a room together and start talking. Unti then, I’m on strike from the strike.