Petition Drive Leaders Have Met With SAG

COMMENTS (65)

• I’m glad the list of names was FINALLY posted.

  As I have been saying, the inequity when it comes to available jobs for each SAG member in an industry where someone can specify gender, age, ethnicity, height, weight, hair and eye color, and general attractiveness means that the qualifications for determining if you are elligible to vote are highly discriminatory. If this is put through, I will PERSONALLY organize a protest of minority actors in front of the SAG building to ask why SAG doesn’t want it’s members of color or women to have an equal say in contract voting.

  Is it a problem for our industry that casting is so looks driven and that sometimes less-talented people are cast based on that? Absolutely. Other countries have more varied looks in their film and TV and that opens the door for more talented actors with varying looks. Wonder if valuing talent has anything to do with the fact that foreign actors now serve as leads on many TV shows and swept the acting awards at the Oscars. But that is a philosophy change Hollywood will need to look at.

  In the meantime, take a look at this SAG report on the the percentage of roles by ethnicity and age:
  http://www.sag.org/files/documents/CastingDataReport.pdf

  It must be nice to be young and white in America….
  Hey, anyone know how many minority actors signed that list?

  For the rest of us, I guess we’ll have to make our peace by going fi-core to give ourselves any kind of a voice. (As disgusting as that idea is to me.)

  Comment by SAG Member — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 3:24pm PST  Reply to this post

• Allen Hooper – if you don’t feel voting applies to you – then…DON’T VOTE! There, that was simple. (I’m not saying that to be snarky, I’m pointing out a real solution.)

  When I vote for SAG Awards I only vote in categories in which I’ve seen a reasonable number of the performances (I leave teh miniseries categories alone). Just as the majority of SAG members don’t vote either because they don’t care to, or like you feel they are unqualified on an issue. You can simply leave the choice up to people who do care and do feel they have a reason to vote – like those who are actively pursuing work, even though they may not be getting those principal roles at the moment. Votes are counted from among those cast – not from among the total of possible voters – so you don’t need to reduce the number of voters by force. Voters will self select if its important to them. And you don’t need 80% out of all possible voters, or whatever, to pass something, you need 80% of all votes cast (that 80% is an example).

  Also, the test isn’t EVEN that you’ve worked “A” job under SAG as principal or background in the past 6 years, its that you’ve worked an average of a certain number of jobs for each year.

  And if someone says, well you could have Extra work as well as principal work, I would say – show me the line where I can go everyday to get that work. I’m serious, ’cause I would take that. Maybe actors who are willing to work can line the streets outside Central Casting every morning and night like at a Home Depot, and wait for grip trucks to drive by and 2nd ADs to lean out and shout “I need 5 downscale men, and 10 upscale women – any ethnicity for the day!” Its not that easy – extras are cast too – and again, that is based on physical description – not something the actor can control.

  Comment by SAG Member — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 3:54pm PST  Reply to this post

• As a fan of a top ten show I was already embarrased by the lack of support the actors for that show showed to the writers while they were on strike. Reading this list and seeing their names on it makes me think that maybe I will go back to reading books, as I did during the strike, and turn my television off again. I suddenly find myself much less interested in supporting their work.

  Thanks for posting the list Nikki!

  Comment by CMF — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 5:38pm PST  Reply to this post

• To Allen Hooper,

  You are now making your living as a casting associate. When you become a casting director, you will be able to join the Teamster #399 union. The Teamsters at the request of the casting directors went to battle with the studios to organize them. They felt the studios were “shitting all over them”. They pay their dues, and have the RIGHT AS MEMBERS TO VOTE. The only way you don’t have the right, is if you’re not current or you’re fi-core. My point is… if you don’t want to vote on a SAG contract… then don’t, but if a member is in good standing with their union…they have the right to vote. Also, you may not want to join the Teamsters, we feel every member has the right to heard and the right to vote, but then we usually laugh in the face of elitism.

  Comment by btl teamster — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 6:10pm PST  Reply to this post

• These are questions that I hope someone can provide an answer to. I understand the reasoning behind this drive, but it seems a tad unfair. Not every actor on screen gets a line. Why was the Screen Extras Guild absorbed into the Screen Actors Guild? If it was done to make the SAG more powerful, how can they then turn around and say the people they actively courted no longer have a say? Does this coalition believe that having extras voting somehow weakens its negotiating power with the AMPTP? Thank you.

  Comment by M_Adams — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 6:43pm PST  Reply to this post

• Allan Hooper, you’re correct when you say, “A working (one who has no other source of income) actor has more to loose during a strike. They have a mortgage, car payments, children to feed, etc.” However, most of the recognizable names on this list are NOT in that position, and many of them are producers as well. If anyone shouldn’t be allowed to vote, it’s someone who has a separate deal, nothing to lose from a horrible contract and who, as a producer, actually gains the less money the other actors make.

  If they’re looking for a title for their ‘movement’ I’d suggest the ‘we got ours, jack’ coalition.

  Comment by fi-core — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 6:53pm PST  Reply to this post

• Meryl Streep signed? That reminds me of a funny story from one of the many days Meryl and I were walking the WGA picket lines as SAG members in support of their union and indeed all unions– In support of the American idea that the minority of those who are rich do not necessarily get to make all the decisions.

  Of course I’m joking people! I walked many days on the WGA lines as a SAG member and I only saw ANY of the 900 people who allegedly signed this petition on ONE day—and then only a few. You remember the day where they talked to the news cameras outside Universal Studios? Great photo op. I did miss a few of the big WGA rally days at Fox, so most likely the other 900 of you petition signers were there showing your support for 1 day in a 100 day UNION strike. But where were you the other days? I know you didn’t have to work. Please tell me you did support the WGA, your support team, before you decided you as the top-earners in SAG you are the only ones worthy of a vote.

  Look, I love you Meryl, but you don’t get to take my vote. You can look down on me for only booking 2 commercials in 2 years. You can look down on me for only booking one day on prime time series last year. You can look down on me for in my 15 years as a SAG member I have only won health insurance for two. Wait, maybe three–So adjust your gaze up here a bit. Wait till you see my car if you really wanna laugh. Yours I’m sure is much nicer.

  I love celebrities. But, c’mon petition signers, most of you have someone who picks up your dry cleaning. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it does preclude you from knowing the strains, struggles, and needs of the rank and file actors. It just does, you’ll have to trust me.

  Also this arrogant idea that you could take the VOTE away from anyone—let alone the majority of the Union’s members—and we (the majority) would wait attentively like the fans in the bleachers at a movie premier to see what you would strip us of next is, well, it’s befitting a person who has succumbed to the narcissism of fame. If you’ve ever gotten a bag of swag–FREE stuff, really good free stuff—then you’re not the guy or gal I’m willing to relinquish my voting rights to. I’m not willing to give you the right to decide what I get paid and what I do and don’t need, because you are out of touch with what the union’s rank and file need. That is easily evidenced in your vigor to strip us of out voting rights. You see we need them, Meryl. A union is about ALL it’s members, not just the prettiest.

  Some years we work, some years we don’t. It’s the nature of the business. For some of us it’s lean. Some months I rely on a $75 check from a long callback session the Union has negotiated for me to make ends meet. And for those lucky enough to be on top, I salute you. I salute you while I’m auditioning for a role you are already in contract negotiations for. I salute you when I am a mere bargaining tool for the studio who says to your agent “Well, we’re actually auditioning other actors for the role right now.” “Other actors,” that’s us. making the rounds. I know I won’t book against you because you are on top (and something of a ball hogger. But I salute ball hogs—why not)?

  But by the power vested in US by the great Screen Actors Guild, we, the majority, will draw the line on your benefits as a celebrity at our RIGHTS as MEMBERS of UNION. We are not rabble Old Man Potter, we are human beings! And we are proud to be members of this great Union– a little embarrassed that some of our more prominent members are looking to sell us out–but proud just the same.

  This divisive petition is so clearly an attempt to keep those of us who have to rely on the UNION to negotiate our sporadic deals from voting FOR a strike if we feel it’s needed so that you—the richens who have a team of agents, managers, and lawyers, to negotiate YOUR deals—don’t have to miss even a day of your way over-scale work. We get it top earners. You don’t want to miss a paycheck. Neither do we. Trust me, neither do we. So let’s work TOGETHER to make sure that doesn’t have to happen.

  Comment by Zackery — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 6:57pm PST  Reply to this post

• I walked the lines quite a bit, I signed the petition, I am not a name. I am worried about making a living and I want the people who have a stake in the game as an actor to be the ones who vote and to have my vote count. I don’t want to take it away from anyone who is an actor. If I didn’t qualify for that amount then I would understand about losing my vote one year. We only vote on things every three years so even that is unlikely. We have lost votes when people who don’t follow the issues just read whatever the board wants them to vote and do so. This can end up hurting working actors, not STARS, working actors. We should have merged, we should have a deal with the ATA where we are protected by SAG contracts when we sign or change agents. We don’t have these things. If we had had affected voting we would have. The WORKING ACTOR would be better off.

  I appreciate the fan liason on here and their enormous support during the writers strike, but this is a very different issue. You are reacting but don’t really understand the policy’s that we have lost and how important it is that the votes of the working/struggling/or middle class actor, who’s work you may enjoy on those shows, has a say in their future and contracts and not people who have had sag cards for years but don’t work the contracts.

  Comment by Sagmember — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 7:32pm PST  Reply to this post

• Allen Hooper, you’re missing the point. They don’t want YOUR name on the petition. You’ll have to join the A-list, then get in the pocket of producers, and you’ll be ASKED to sign. (Although I have my doubts that all these 1000 people “signed” anything. I got an email from Ned asking me to email my name back in support of his petition. Will that kind of “signing” hold up to any scrutiny?)Oh, and Allen, Can I send you my reel?

  Comment by Zackery — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 7:40pm PST  Reply to this post

• Zachary, word. I’d really like to meet the person who decided the best way to dispel the idea that this is just a bunch of wealthy out of touch celebrities on a self-serving, elitist crusade against the rank-and-file would be to release this list of names.

  It’s weird, but among the scores of famous people in there I seem to see some people who clearly make their primary living in some other field, like, for example, music, and apparently do pretty darn well at it. Good to know they’re more deserving of a voice than members who pursue acting full time.

  Comment by Muronao — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 8:24pm PST  Reply to this post

• Unlike most unions where all members are of equal rank, these hollywood unions are quite different! The A-listers are the power in these unions. If the A-listers defect, don’t think for one minute that the studios will give two cents about the remaining 100,000 or so members! So, whether you think it is fair or not, what they want counts a helluva lot more than the rest of the members. The strike leverage that the union holds is witholding the A-listers services

  Comment by Intrigued — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 8:42pm PST  Reply to this post

• Zackery said:

  “They don’t want YOUR name on the petition. You’ll have to join the A-list …”

  What A-list are you talking about? I read through that list and out of ~1000 I can recognize by name 36 (Ned Vaughn not included since I’ve never heard of him or seen him on screen.) All 36 of them I consider very good actors, but 35 out of 36 I would qualify as only marginally known. Meryl Streep is the only one actor on that list I consider an A-lister, everybody else I know I call a working actor with solid respectable skills. I watch a lot of TV and movies and read entertainment news and I bother to learn names of the actors whose work I watch, but I haven’t heard about vast majority of them, so all this A-list talk sounds funny to me.

  Comment by Samantha — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 8:56pm PST  Reply to this post

• Thanks Intrigued, we weren’t aware that the studios fawn over the A-listers and don’t care about anyone else. You’ve cleared up a great mystery, cat’s outta the bag now.

  Comment by fi-core — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 9:27pm PST  Reply to this post

• Samantha, because I’m a nerd I counted and I’d estimate that, conservatively, at least 250 of the signers on the petition would be familiar to the average person by sight, because they’ve had prominent and/or lead roles in major films and series and/or work fairly steadily. They’re not all Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks A-list, but they’re not the average working actor, either, I’d consider them “famous” or “celebrities”. It’s a far cry from someone who’s working 5 days a year and really needs the contract. And I’m not going back to count again, but there are several who are houshold names besides Streep.

  Comment by Muronao — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 10:25pm PST  Reply to this post

• Some brutal facts in the form of a QUIZ:

  QUESTION – The AMPTP cares if…

  a) I belong to a special guild that has a special history.
  b) My guild is democratic because everyone votes on anything.
  c) I could get my big break soon.
  d) I’m a talented actor.
  e) The actors they want to hire are out on strike.

  ANSWER:
  If you chose e), then you understand Affected Member Voting as it relates to the upcoming negotiation.

  At the negotiating table, it is not only important who WE want to vote, it is also important who they THINK is voting. Nothing would please the studios more than to know that the working stiffs were put on the picket line by members who didn’t have a stake in the outcome. That’s when performers are most susceptible to division and defection.

  And conversely, nothing would please the studios more than to know the opportunity to shut this town down over some crappy offer was negated by the grips, hairstylists, writer/producers, exec’s, and car salesmen who still have their SAG cards and are anti-strike.

  The more we respond to the soaring rhetoric about including every last hopeful, the more the studios rub their hands and grin, “Perfect. Perfect”.

  We, as SAG members, care about the novices and the long-timers, and the rough-patchers, we want everyone to have solid protection under the best deal possible; but don’t think for a second that the studios care a jot if they want to strike or not. Would that affect them? No. But would knowing that a vast majority of working actors are willing to go out on strike right after the WGA strike? Now we’re talking solidarity.

  –Todd Waring

  Comment by Todd Waring — Thursday February 28, 2008 @ 11:29pm PST  Reply to this post

• You people had better straighten up. There are 1000 names on that list now. Not 900. That’s 0.83% up from 0.75%.

  Mark my word, that list will hit the one percent mark by April! That’s the big 1.0% We’re talking single whole digits now boys and girls. 1000 out of 120,000 dues paying members.

  You other 119,000 nobodies better fall in line with the majority, ah… I mean the elite few who pull their weight while you guys are trudging around on your pitiful waitress jobs booking a student film for every hundred auditions you do.

  What did you think, this was a democracy?

  You probably think a democrat is going to be president, don’t you? ROTFLMAO!!

  Comment by Jon Raymond — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 12:53am PST  Reply to this post

• Todd, in a strike ALL members are out. That’s sort of a given. Now, if you were a studio exec, what you be rubbing your hands over

  a) a proposal by actors who are better off than most arguing that a large percentage of fellow SAG members, including an awful lot of people of color and women, should have their voting rights stripped right before negotiations begin

  or

  b) no such communication, suggesting instead that SAG is united?

  I’d be happy about a) because that would let me know that the actors I want to hire at least appear to be potentially to throw everyone else under the bus and couldn’t care less about what we have planned to gut the contract if it doesnt affect them directly. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference who’s voting, let’s say there’s a 90% strike vote under affected member voting, yet prominent members are making it clear that they’re not on board. Those prominent members still have the same amount of leverage to undercut the strike, and you’ve also shot yourself in the foot by dividing the rest of the membership.

  Ask the WGA, we had near unanimity on the authorization to strike, yet we constantly had to worry about the showrunners defecting, and it’s not as if the AMPTP took us seriously because we’re working members who had a stake in the outcome. As long as you have working stiffs and members who can write their own tickets, there’s just as much potential to play divide and conquer. It’s not so much willingness to GO on strike, it’s willingness to STAY on strike that they care about. And it really seems unlikely that they’re not looking at things like this and thinking, yeah, we can break this thing wide open pretty quick.

  Comment by Anon — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 1:22am PST  Reply to this post

• M_Adams wrote:
  Why was the Screen Extras Guild absorbed into the Screen Actors Guild? If it was done to make the SAG more powerful, how can they then turn around and say the people they actively courted no longer have a say? Does this coalition believe that having extras voting somehow weakens its negotiating power with the AMPTP? Thank you.

  Here’s a possible answer/educated guess to your first question: the absorption was around the time that SAG was getting ready to move from its then-small building on Hollywood Boulevard to its current high-rise on Wilshire Boulevard. Background dues likely helped to pay some expenses re the move;as for wages, the Screen Extras Guild top rate (I believe it was $86/8 hours) was cut to $65/8–(later increased) to, as someone then on the SAG board put it, “get the jurisdiction” over extras.

  Comment by Terry McCarty — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 1:33am PST  Reply to this post

• So disappointing to see David Duchovny in this list. Makes me so sad.

  Comment by Ron — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 5:16am PST  Reply to this post

• The point of a union isn’t to protect the interests of the big-name actors. Their audience appeal means producers will negotiate a deal with them that’s always going to be better than the union minimum wage. The point of a union is to protect the interests of people who might otherwise get nothing at all for showing up; they’re the people who are really affected by the terms of any contract, not the people who can ask for their own contract and get it because they’re marketing points.

  Restricting the vote to people who don’t need the protection of a union is backwards. If anything, the vote should exclude anyone who has been paid more than the union minimum.

  Comment by Steve S — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 5:38am PST  Reply to this post

• Sagmember @ February 28, 2008 @ 7:32 pm wrote

  “I appreciate the fan liason on here and their enormous support during the writers strike, but this is a very different issue. You are reacting but don’t really understand the policies that we have lost and how important it is that the votes of the working/struggling/or middle class actor, whose work you may enjoy on those shows, has a say in their future and contracts and not people who have had SAG cards for years but don’t work the contracts.”

  I can only assume that this comment is directed to me because I went to some length to identify myself (but thanks to the WGA strike and my habit of reading certain DHD posts I recognize that other fans and WGA supporters have also posted comments) so forgive me if you think I’m butting in here Sagmember (and no I won’t ask for your real name because it’s not necessary to my understanding this situation although it’s a bit confusing that more than one poster here is using a variant of the pseudonym ‘SAG member’).

  I put to you a simple five word request Sagmember: Please explain it to me.

  If you can explain to me why qualified voting is a good idea, then I can get past my possibly incomplete and incorrect understanding of the situation and moreover explain to a whole bunch of fans whom I have come to know and work with why some of their favorite actors and actresses look like they are moving to disenfranchise the majority of their union when that isn’t the case and why a lot of other actors haven’t signed onto this ‘good idea’.

  First I do not understand what looks to me to be an irrational fear of “people who have had SAG cards for years but don’t work the contracts”. Do you know how to identify these people? Please explain this to me because I couldn’t possibly know how to tell the difference(s) between these people and whatever it is the people signing the petition mean by ‘working actors’ (and I am pretty sure that if you polled all of the signers, you would not get a consistent workable definition of ‘working actor’ which further clouds this issue) I think it is safe to say that neither do the millions of us around the world in the audience understand your terminology when you make these distinctions.

  Do you know how many of these people whom you might call ‘non-working actors’ are actually members otherwise in good standing in SAG (or AFTRA for that matter) and not only whether their numbers comprise the majority of your union but what percentages of them vote relative to the percentage of ‘working actors’ who regularly (if not religiously) vote on SAG’s minimum basic agreements? Because if you don’t have a handle on these numbers, then how do you know that you really are being screwed over by people whom the rest of us who are not actors (much less guild members) see as actors?

  Let me point out more of your comment that I don’t understand:

  “We have lost votes when people who don’t follow the issues just read whatever the board wants them to vote and do so.”

  Which SAG board(s) and/or board member(s) is it whose judgment you don’t trust? The current board, or just certain specific members? Or is it one or more previous boards and/or their members? Or all of the above

  Correct me if I am wrong but when you say “We should have merged [and I presume by this you mean merged with AFTRA to form one big acting union when it was put to a vote back in 2003 and not the 1999 vote to merge with AFTRA although as I understand it there were also proposals to get SAG AFTRA and Equity into one *really* big actors union floating around in 2003] or “we should have a deal with the ATA where we are protected by SAG contracts when we sign or change agents” [and once again I am presuming that you are referring to the expiration in January 2002 of a franchise agreement between the Association of Talent Agents & SAG and no subsequent success in creating a replacement] you are referring to measures that were under the jurisdiction of previous boards and previous members. Is it possible that you are holding grudges against people who are no longer in charge of your union and that you might be mentally fighting the last union battles over again?

  Now let me get to this:
  “We don’t have these things. If we had had affected voting we would have. The WORKING ACTOR would be better off.”

  If you think that qualified or ‘affected’ voting would have been a good idea and prevented the absence of a merged SAG & AFTRA (or a merged SAG & AFTRA and Equity) and an ATA-SAG franchise agreement then why weren’t such petitions to adopt affected or qualified floating around in 1999? Or is my decidedly limited understanding and knowledge of SAG history incorrect and were there moves to adopt qualified voting prior to now but for some inexplicable reason they were defeated?

  And here’s another thing I don’t understand…why don’t those of you behind the petition support your *own* opinions on matters that to most of us appear to concern every member of your union (i.e. residual rates, health insurance elligibility and pension elligibility to name but three). Are the ‘name’ actors who will not ever have to live with a minimum basic agreement really the best judges of your situation, especially given how fickle your industry is and how rapidly your situation could change…i.e. how fast you could go from a ‘working actor’ to a ‘non-working actor’? I admire the acting ability of a lot of the actors who have signed onto this list but if I were an actor there is no way would I want them to determine for me such important matters without some clear understanding on my part that they truly are better informed than myself, well organized and have a clearly workable solution. From what I have read of this proposal and of the petition backers’s posts here, I don’t see that this is the case. In fact I believe that many of the board members really do have a better understanding of the situation that the petition supporters do. But I would like for you to prove me wrong.

  One more thing…the sooner you do this the better. Because the sooner I can share what I have learned here the sooner I can alleviate the disapointment that so many fans felt when they first saw this list and the sooner you all can get past another kind of intra-guild dispute and focus on what matters: the upcoming negotiations with the moguls and their time wasting ‘trade association’ front the AMPTP.

  Thanks in advance for your input

  -S.E. Olson
  Resolved Rumpus Room Member (we’re a group of fans & viewers who normally participate in the chat interface of the United Hollywood NowLive.com multi casts and we have a Google group which anyone can join at
  http://groups.google.com/group/rumpus?hl=en)
  Moderator & Law & Order Criminal Intent Fan Liason
  Fans For The WGA
  http://community.livejournal.com/wga_supporters/

  Comment by VDOVault — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 6:23am PST  Reply to this post

• fi-core,

  the point i’m trying to make is that if you recognize the A-listers are the only ones the studios care about, then you accept the fact that the A-listers CONTROL the union and their wants/desires outwiegh the rest of the union. The posts on here are complaining because the A-listers are flexing their muscle and disinfranchising lesser-members, but the reality is the lesser-members are just allong for the ride. Every gain the rank-file has achieved over the years is because of the influence of the A-listers, so how the hell can people crow now that the A-listers are selfish? The A-listers don’t need the protection of union, so the fact that they even participant is for the benefit of the rank and file!

  Comment by Intrigued — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 7:09am PST  Reply to this post

• “soaring last hopeful?” You mean “SAG member” right? Let’s apply this “litmus test” you “working actors” are demanding to, oh, say, the American public, in the upcoming election. “Hey Mr. West Virginia guy, living in a holler, I don’t think you should be allowed to vote – leave it to US, we promise to get you the best deal.” Hmm… doesn’t quite scan, does it? What exactly is different here? Yes, the American public “elected” George Bush twice, but you know what? THAT’S DEMOCRACY. There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE when it comes to stating the obvious: lay off Rosenberg and Allen, let them do the job they were ELECTED to do, and, when SAG takes a vote on whether or not to strike or whether or not to approve the upcoming contract – EVERYBODY GETS TO VOTE. It is their RIGHT. How dare you try to take that away? Again, it amazes me how “liberal Hollywood” will go right to the most Darwinian, anti-democratic approach when the POWER BASE is threatened. Solidarity DOESN’T mean SOME, it means ALL. Period.
  (I am a “working actor,” who has been on a top 10 TV show with a bunch of mainstream movies and various other TV and film appearances, and I say LET ‘EM VOTE)

  Comment by Cookie Rojas — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 8:45am PST  Reply to this post

• Dear Octavio Victor Rojas Rivas,

  You wrote, “again, it amazes me how “liberal hollywood” will go right to
  the most Darwinian, anti-democratic approach when the POWER BASE is threatened.”

  Don’t you know that the elite, liberal hollywood types are the most closed minded people in this town. Their idea of a perfect dinner party, is to sit around and tell each other how brilliant they are….to hire people who kiss their asses, and tell them how brilliant they are, and sometimes they even allow the little people to bask in their glow of delusional self- importance.

  I’ve worked and I’m currently working with many of the actors who signed this petition. I really have to laugh, maybe they don’t remember their early days of being unknown or feeling blessed to have 3 sentences to speak…..now they are the Sages, they will speak for all.

  I must say, I’m happy, certain down-to-earth actors, who are a great joy to work with, HAVEN”T signed… they probably NEVER forgot their roots.

  Comment by btl teamster — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 2:58pm PST  Reply to this post

• Intrigued, you’re way off base. Judging from their apparent level of involvement, I’d guess that A-listers could, by and large, not care less, so I can’t see how it follows that “all of the gains” SAG has made has been due to them. Nonsense. A-listers don’t even pay their own dues, for god’s sake (and I don’t see the 900 volunteering to step up and pay all the dues for everyone they want to disenfranchise), they have separate deals, the SAG contract means nothing to them. Well, except if they’re producers, then rollbacks put additional money in their pockets. They mostly DON’T seem to participate, except when it starts to affect them, and then that input isn’t so helpful. Any gains to the rank and file are due to the majority of the membership, the negotiating committees, and the people who started all of these unions and fought to create a union town. The reason SAG exists is to protect the average working actor since the studios won’t and the A-listers, who I would agree have tremendous influence and could help tremendously if they chose, apparently can’t be bothered. If you’ve got examples of A-listers getting involved or doing anything significant to help the rank and file in recent years, share with the class, because suggesting that every selfish action that benefits them at others’ expense is a clear demonstration that they’re looking out for the rank and file is somewhat counterintuitive.

  Comment by fi-core — Friday February 29, 2008 @ 3:19pm PST  Reply to this post