UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ On Track For $27M … 
‘Mike & Molly’ Creator Mark Roberts To … 
Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts Set For … 
Hammond On Cannes: Weinstein Brings Out Stars For 2013 … 
Cannes: Fake Gunshots Interrupt Canal Plus Live Broadcast … 
‘The Great Gatsby’ Starts With $5.4M … 
Cannes: Music Box Acquires Competition’s … 
Cannes: Bruno Wu & Pierre-Ange Le Pogam Kick Up Angel … 
UPDATE: Amazon Studios Begins Pilot Pickups; … 
Bruce Rosenblum Bids Classy Goodbye 
RATINGS RAT RACE UPDATE: ‘American Idol’ Hits … 
UPDATE: ‘Iron Man 3′ Box Office Crosses $1B … 
John Lesher’s Le Grisbi Teams With DCM Productions … 
Upfront Market: Will Auto Makers Subsidize TV … 
Cannes: Thief Makes Off With $1M+ In Chopard Jewelry Meant … 
Cannes: Cyrus Nowrasteh To Helm Film On Soviet Dissident … 
‘Scandal’ Finale On Small Screen And Onstage At … 
Cannes: Cassian Elwes, Robert Ogden Barnum Launch e2b … 
SPOILER ALERT! NBC’s ‘The Office’ Finale 
‘Modern Family’ Gets Cable Makeover For Launch … 
2ND UPDATE: New SAG-AMPTP post coming with all new information…
Just now, the Big Media cartel’s negotiating clique, the AMPTP, issued this statement about SAG’s decision to seek a strike authorization vote from its members now that all talks have broken down and federal mediation has been adjourned. (It’s interesting that the AMPTP has yet to comment on the WGA’s news that the infotainment conglomerates aren’t paying residuals for writers’ work that is reused on New Media. That was the key issue during the 100-day strike and now the WGA has filed for arbitration):
“Let’s review the facts: SAG is the only major Hollywood guild that has failed to negotiate a labor deal in 2008. Now, SAG is bizarrely asking its members to bail out the failed negotiating strategy with a strike vote – at a time of historic economic crisis. The tone deafness of SAG is stunning.”
- SAG-AMPTP Talks Break Down; SAG Will Now Seek Strike Authorization
- SCANDAL! WGA Goes After Big Media For Reneging On New Media Payments
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Ah yes, here comes the panic-spin by the AMPTP…
I sense a certain … alarm in that language. Don’t you? When that kind of passion creeps in, you know you’re getting their attention. Otherwise, it would be boilerplate: “The AMPTP regrets the decision of the representatives of SAG to blah, blah, blah…”
The “tone deafness is stunning?”
And, boy, is it ever interesting that, as noted, there’s NO response to the arbitration claim filed by the WGA?
To all those who are freaking the fuck out that SAG might actually find its balls and give the negotiators the power to tell these shitbirds where to go, consider this: if YOU’RE right, and the AMPTP should be accommodated, and SAG should sign the offer and feel lucky to get it, because the AMPTP is telling the truth and they really need the “flexibility” to “experiment” with new media by putting a nonunion army of actors into SAG’s own contract, and YOU’RE right in standing by that “sunset clause” in AFTRA’s contract, telling all us knucklehead rabble-rousers that “of COURSE the producers aren’t trying to cut residuals for actors by up to 50% – if they do, the town will be outraged and EVERY union will strike!’
Well, then – wouldn’t you think the AMPTP would be interested in a clean record on the contract they HAVE as a model, with the WGA, that they’re currently trying to ram down SAG’s throat?
Think about that invertebrates. They’re not paying the writers under the terms of the SHIT Deal – let alone the FAIR deal SAG wants.
So, we should trust them? We should “take the deal!”
Day after day, all the “don’t authorize a strike even as a negotiating tool” gelatinous hermaphrodites are seeing the results of such defiant, ignorant, willful and dangerous naivete’.
This is why the WGA should have waited for SAG.
The ship has sailed, SAG. Your fellow militants screwed the pooch, and you’re going to have to eat their deal now, whether you like it or not.
From SAG to it’s members:
“We remain committed to avoiding a strike but now more than ever we cannot allow our employers to experiment with our careers. The WGA has already learned that the new media terms they agreed to with the AMPTP are not being honored. We cannot allow our employers to undermine the futures of SAG members and their families.
No timeline has been set for the mailing or return of the strike authorization ballots.”
Read it how you will, but they have not sent out, nor announced they will send out ballots. I know I’m in the minority, but I don’t think any one should be pushed under the bus just so I can keep going to work. Sadly, most people are going to be bitter and angry now matter how this turns out.
So the WGA went on strike because the studios refused to cover the internet, and then the studios finally said after three months of pickets “Okay, we’ll cover the internet,” except they really had no intention of ever paying that money?
Uh, don’t the studios know that the Democrats are coming to power on January 20th? that the president is going to be a big union guy aka the most liberal member of the Senate?
Do the studios really think the WGA’s only tool to fight their illegal collusion is to file for arbitration? Ha! The studios are risking treble damages plus criminal charges, and their head honchos better check with their labor lawyers to make sure the chiefs aren’t PERSONALLY on the hook for a crime here.
This could get good, really good. The studios had such an anti-union white house for so many years they forgot how things can turn on a dime. Well, actually, their stock prices keep reminding them of THAT — especially since many of their stock prices are getting close to a dime — right Les? LOL!!!!!
“Studios will avoid a strike that get them nothing but another chance to look macho. And after they got their asses handed to them by the writers, I doubt these studio chiefs want to take the chance of being embarrassed again.”
WTH? My sympathy lies with the guilds, but that’s a ridiculous set of statements.
AMPTP said they were ending residuals. Didn’t happen. AMPTP refused to include Internet in this deal. They wound up including it. AMPTP said they’d made a last and final offer. It wasn’t.
“The WGA should have waited for SAG?” Are you kidding?
The WGA so clearly picked the right time to strike that SAG has dragged things out to get to exactly the same place on the calendar for THEIR strike.
Don’t you get it? The emasculation of the Golden Globes and looming shutdown of the Oscars is what caused the studio chiefs to buckle. Not only was there money and promotion of their movies at stake, but those big nights out are what make these 5-foot-2 small-penised Napoleans forget for a day how they were laughed at and beat up for their lunch money in grammar school.
Again, we should remain level headed and do what is right for SAG and its actors. That means we strike. If we stay focused on what is fair, then how can we lose?
There is another spin on this. In these economic times, the moguls (literally) and their companies continue to make millions and millions of dollars while they refuse to pay on their contracts or even negotiate new contracts that are fair. This smells of Big Corporate Fall — all someone has to do is drag these companies into court and put these moguls on trial, watch how hard they fall when they become just like any other big company fall since Enron. So, really, it’s not SAG or any other union who is going to cause economic unrest, rather it all started with the moguls and their top-tier management and spin-master accountants. Let’s open their books and see who really is right about all of this. Let’s drag them into the courts. That’ll put their sorry asses into distress.
Here’s the skinny: the AMPTP was STONE in the “negotiations.”
STONE.
The neg com had “moderate” voices heavily involved. The neg com went WAY down the road of compromise. WAY DOWN THE ROAD.
Kapish? BIG concessions.
And the response? STONE. To EVERY SINGLE SUGGESTION.
AND? The “strike authorization vote” To send it out?
WAS VERY,VERY, VERY STRONG. Not just from the “MF crazies.” Also from the people asking the AMPTP to be reasonable in a way the heavy anti-MF-ers on this blog and others would find EXTREMELY reassuring.
THOSE people you’d be cheering on? The “moderates” you want to rule?
THEY VOTED TO SEND OUT THE AUTHORIZATION ALSO
WHY? Because – there was nothing in response. To ANY suggested compromise. And they – even THEY – were PISSED at the AMPTP.
It’s that bad.
They want it all, and they want it now. Their stance is: Go F*** YOURSELF.
So, people? What do we do with that?
TRANSLATION: “Let’s review the facts: SAG is the only major Hollywood guild [that has cojones] that has failed to negotiate a labor deal [i.e., bend over and take it up the arse] in 2008. Now, SAG is bizarrely [bravely] asking its members to bail out [empower] the failed [unflinching] negotiating strategy with a strike vote – at a time of historic economic crisis [brought on by our parent multinationals' over-leveraged acquisitions and consolodations]. The tone deafness of SAG is stunning [i.e., starting to reach even Washington, DC].”
SAG actors are needed and will always be needed and this is a time for all talent to stand together, because if SAG members do not support their leaders on this, they will be bullied and taken advantage of from this day forward. This is about much more than just the issues now. It’s about SAG members staying together and supporting their elected leaders. Don’t undermine your union guys. Stick by them. Even if you disagree and want to make the deal on the table, you need to look at the bigger picture which is the value you place on being part of a union. If you do not vote to authorize, you are voting to take away from your own union’s power and purpose. To me, this is the bottom line that SAG members need to consider.
- An American.
I just can’t believe the negative thinking in this blog of Nikki’s. How many times must I ram down your throats that there is no negotiating with the AMPTP at all no matter what happens.
HERE IS WHAT I AM RAMMING DOWN YOUR THROATS, (and it is all true). Back in early July, it was the AMPTP that gave a “crummy final offer” to SAG with very little or no negotiating. The next contact was made with SAG contacting the AMPTP on August 17th in an effort to restart negotiations. Since then, the next set of meetings were this week (if you call two meetings a set). I am guessing that the mediator told SAG leadership to pursue a strike vote since there is evidence that the AMPTP isn’t living up to its end of the WGA contract and last I checked, when a partner doesn’t live up to its half of the contract, it is null and voided. What this means is that the writers strike never ended, the NLRB will be forced to void the current WGA/AMPTP contract will be voided, and so will be the vote that ended the strike.
For those of you that attack the UAW, leave them out of it. The UAW isn’t to blame for the automakers woes, it is upper management at Ford, GM, and Chrysler. The only difference between the AMPTP and GM is that GM admits that something is wrong. The AMPTP does everything in its power to undermine the guilds. If the AMPTP truly wanted to negotiate fair contracts, then I am pretty sure that new contracts with every guild/union would have been wrapped by now with the Teamsters next. Frankly, I wonder if Nick Counter and his ilk love coal because that is all they deserve in their stockings this Christmas.
Godspeed to Henry Waxman in his new chairmenship and I hope that he sorts this all out, and that someone is put into prison for life on all sorts of fraud.
Strike Winner is wrong. I am starting to believe that the networks and studios (the AMPTP in extension), never caved. They just agreed to a settlement so they can enjoy The Oscars. If that is actually true, I hope that the likes of Peter Chernin, Les Moonves, and Bob Iger choke on their turkey this Thanksgiving.
Take the WGA deal, SAG. It was hard fought and while it isn’t perfect, it establishes an important beachead in new media. If you think whatever minimal improvements the studios might cough up will be worth the devastation of a strike, you are sadly mistaken. As a writer who spent every day for weeks on the picket lines, I ask you to let cooler heads prevail during this harsh economic climate. Don’t put Hollywood out of work for gains that will be less significant than the ones the writers achieved over the DGA.
If the studios would deal directly with the Guilds instead of hiring that bunch of thugs known as the AMPTP to negotiate for them, we all might have a lot more respect for one another in this town.
Actors have nothing left to lose. Management wants to shove that crappy contract the other Guilds accepted down their throats, meanwhile they won’t even pay the money they already owe on past contracts. Who is going to trust them now? They’ve almost guaranteed the strike authorization will pass.
What a royal mess all around.
>> When “talent” can just be “discovered” on the street and an A-list replete with talentless hacks… why would any studio continue to pay millions to any singular actor for just one production much less residuals to actors that are virtually interchangeable for any “talent” that can be “discovered?”>>
Yeah, that’s right. The SAG Basic Agreement is all about what A-list stars get paid.
Or maybe, you know, not so much. It’s much more about what scale is, and the basic everyday stuff for working actors who aren’t negotiated with individually for beaucoup bucks. As such, making sure residuals, and suchlike concerns, get paid to non-stars is the point.
They’re not negotiating Mel Gibson’s next deal. But the next people to appear in no-star vehicles like TWILIGHT? Yes, them.
Do NOT strike!
We’ve been backed into a corner. Start swinging.
Strike. Strike when it hurts, during the award shows. Strike where it hurts, their dwindling change purses. They need us.
The reason Unions were created was because companies around this time 100 years ago felt that they could work people long hard hours without food, breaks, or humanity. They felt that the people were so bad off because of the weak economy of the time that they could pay people an unfair wage and expect the world.
They still think they can do that.
We worked our asses off to become card carrying members to earn a fair wage. To have a voice in this very process and make a decent living.
Let that voice ring out. Strike. And Strike when and where it hurts. Unite for Strike.
My feeling is “go right ahead.” Because of the IA’s hard line on low budget filming in LA (ORGANIZE AT ALL COSTS!!!) and SAG’s refusal to extend the LBA to low budget non-theatricals (such as TV movies for SciFi and Lifetime, which has been the only business lately), I haven’t shot anything in LA in YEARS. I’ve worked more in Vancouver and Romania. So I called my casting director friend in London and told her to tell all the agents to get their clients to start practicing their Standard American accents. I’ll just go to Romania and use British actors and, as a Romanian company, screw Global Rule One. I used to employ lots of American actors. Then, only the few I was allowed to bring overseas. Now, it will be none. Way to go, SAG.
The studios just don’t pay and you fools are ready to bend over. Pathetic. The Studios are creating enemies out of the people they can’t make movies without. Anyone who has gotten notes from a marketing douchebag knows that it always sinks the show.
The kind of hatred being created towards the studios will be their undoing.
Break out the side deals, baby!
The vast majority of the SAG Board knows that something stinks in the State of Hollywood; and it’s not the AMPTP. It is the self-righteous, self-aggrandizing Membership First component of the Hollywood Division of the Board. It’s clear why the SAG National Board left it up to the Negotiating Committee (still primarily comprised of MFers from the soon-to-be lame duck Rosenberg Administration) to ask for a strike authorization from membership. It would allow the vast majority of SAG members nationwide to once and for all repudiate the ill-fated leadership that has been running this sideshow called a Guild for the last 3 1/2 years by voting the authorization down. It’s inevitable that this will happen. The last SAG National Election is an early indicator of that.
While it is true that an “authorization” doesn’t necessarily mean a strike is at hand, it would be ill-conceived to think otherwise in this particular circumstance. For far too long, membership has been brought to its knees by an ideologically-primitive group of inbred individuals who, while truly motivated in some sick way to do what is best for membership, see fire-breathing dragons and phantoms where they don’t exist.
Let’s be clear. The AMPTP is not in the least comprised of wide-eyed altruistic types hell bent on devising means of a more equitable distribution of the spoils. They would gladly beat back decades’ worth of gains to enhance their bottom lines. And keeping that in mind, it’s important to have negotiators who are stalwart. But be real people. While there is no question that producers are reaping a tremendous amount of profits, what do they amount to in real dollars when facing an increasingly turbulent economic situation? The world’s present-day woes makes folly of the mere notion of SAG’s calling a strike.
Rather than risk embarrassment, it might have been far more prescient of SAG to have negotiated a deal with minimal blips above and beyond what AFTRA, the DGA, and the WGA got in order to save a little face, legally commit the AMPTP to come up with the contractually mandated $60 million in force majeure payments the Guild is owed (money the Guild and its Membership REALLY NEED RIGHT NOW) and get on with it.
SAG’s negotiators should take a tip from their brethren at the UAW who are now walking practically in lockstep with their management counterparts in order to save an industry. For too long, the posturing on both sides has been disheartening. Enough is enough of SAG’s ideology and the AMPTP’s intransigence. The stakes for all involved are far to great for this to continue the 4-6 weeks longer it will take to bring this vote to membership and tally the results. Folks, let’s “Git ‘er done…”
Who will fall harder in 2009? The BIG THREE CEO’s in Detroit or those of the BIG MEDIA cartel?
The people (workers) and soon the Gov’t will be swinging their 50 oz. Louisvilles.
These fatcats just don’t get it. Same game; different rules now. Take that to the bank, Jack.
LineProducer is correct:
First the work goes elsewhere. Then, it starts to originate elsewhere. This business has always been the same. The less you work, the less you work. No one will fly you to Romania for a walk-on.
I just finished a very low budget film (under 100k) where one of the producers was also a SAG actor who shepherded the project. SAG’s restrictions forced the actor to reduce their own onscreen role so as to be able to afford the SAG imposed costs. SAG claimed to want the actor to succeed, all while standing in the way of that actor’s success.
So now SAG is in the business of greenlighting low-budget films based on paperwork performance and the ability to possess deep pockets? We all know that money and creativity are directly proportional, right? That should make every actor enraged, because an unknown’s best shot at getting noticed, and a known actor’s best shot at landing a role that they’ve developed rests in the world of low and ultra low budget. SAG, please, stop helping.
You want to stick it to the AMPTP? Good luck, because your only hope is the ability for creatives to bypass the established system and force competition – and SAG stands squarely in the way of that occurring. You want transparency? Good luck, sucker, because SAG isn’t interested in that any more than the AMPTP.
Yeah, the AMPTP are pricks – get used to it. They’re running a business, and don’t care about the creative, unless it makes more money. The people who do care about the creative are getting squashed out of the system by both sides – which is bad, because the entertainment business needs to be entertaining. Do you want to stand around with signs or do you want to get to work undermining their control of the product? Good acting takes talent, but anybody can be a producer.
The commenters here are incredibly short sighted. They claim that SAG should strike because signing would be worthless due to AMPTP not honoring agreements.
Hello? Then what are you hoping to achieve with a strike? An agreement? That the AMPTP will then not honor? After you’ve damaged the actors financially by striking, thereby strengthening the bargaining power of the AMPTP?
Are you, pro-strikers, in fact, working for the AMPTP? Because this course of action is exactly what they want.
What they don’t want, however, is competition, and despite the best efforts of SAG, they’re getting it at levels never before seen through new media. And it has them very worried – which is why the tough talk. Strike, and they keep you from working, and simultaneously figure out how to control the coming new business model. Great strategy, SAG.
You stick with the Dinosaurs, you die with them.
I wish labor never had to strike to get the pay and benefits they deserve. But when things have gotten so out of whack and the workers subsist on the scraps they are thrown by the leaders, it is the only possible choice. Or should we go back to the days of 80-hour work weeks and unregulated child labor?
I wish SAG every success in their push for fair pay and fair treatment. When all content is delivered over the Internet, they will be happy they stuck their necks out for new media pay.
“the AMPTP was STONE in the ‘negotiations.’
The neg com had ‘moderate’ voices heavily involved. The neg com went WAY down the road of compromise. WAY DOWN THE ROAD.
Kapish? BIG concessions.
And the response? STONE. To EVERY SINGLE SUGGESTION.”
You write that as if it is a reason to strike. If what you wrote is true, it is actually a reason not to.
Because what it says is that your negotiators are not any more competent than the WGA’s. It says that your negotiating committee didn’t learn from any of the WGA’s mistakes. It says that your negotiating committee will give up demands in exchange for nothing. It says that a SAG strike will result in the same meager B.S. that the WGA strike did. It says that AMPTP knows what a negotiation is and SAG doesn’t.
A negotiation isn’t about holding hands and singing “Kumbaya.” It’s a zero-sum game. Get a frickin’ clue.
The only thing that bothers me about SAG is that most of its members are meagerly employed, if employed at all. It loses nothing by striking every three years. The majority of its membership risks nothing on a strike. They’ll still be pouring coffee on the first day of the strike just like they were the day before it.
Oh, well. I hope SAG gets its strike going before the Globes. I’ll love hearing HFPA b!tch and moan about their Globes being killed two years in a row. My pleasure from that isn’t worth the other misery that SAG will cause everyone (who are working, of course) from striking, but at least it’s something.