"Pay is often at the center of work stoppages, and that is the case here. But the rise of streaming and the challenges created by the pandemic have stressed the studios, many of which are facing financial challenges, as well as actors and writers, who are seeking better pay and new protections in a rapidly changing workplace.
Both actors and screenwriters have demanded increased residual payments (a type of royalty) from streaming services. Streaming series typically have far fewer episodes than television series typically did. And it used to be that if a television series was a hit, actors and writers could count on a long stream of regular residual checks; streaming has changed the system in a way that they say has hurt them...."
Management is hurting too, of course: "As moviegoers have been slow to return to cinemas and home viewers have moved from cable and network television to streaming entertainment, many studios have watched their share prices plummet and their profit margins shrink. Some companies have resorted to layoffs or pulled the plug on projects."
Do you feel invested in this dispute? We pay a lot of attention to actors. They're glamorous and often talented. But when they present themselves as motivated by money, like any ordinary person with a job, do we care? They're depending on our hunger for more new things to watch, but there are so many old things — we have an endless supply of great stuff to watch and (my favorite) rewatch. If they withhold, we (some of us) will turn more resolutely to the great archive of old film and television.
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I've posted here a couple of times about the WGA strike since it began. I've very invested, and I'm thrilled the true clout, SAG-AFTRA, has joined. I'm not in the guild but I know what goes into writing for the screen. AMPTA has not come to the table with a serious offer.
Before the pandemic my son made his living working background and is in the union. Now AMPTA wants to pay him for one day, scan his image, and use it without residual in perpetuity. SAG sports the juicy big names, but people like my son are the bulk of the union. Bring it.
All y’all shot yourselves in the foot with the political propaganda. Many of us aren’t coming back. Disney keeps trying to give me their content for free so they can say I’m a subscriber but no thanks…
Of course this isn’t a fight between actors and the studios. They sit on the same side of the table. It’s crowded over there since their friends in DC sit in their laps. This will be solved with a gift from the US Treasury.
Acting!
we have an endless supply of great stuff to watch and (my favorite) rewatch. If they withhold, we (some of us) will turn more resolutely to the great archive of old film and television.
For how long? One of the downsides of streaming is that you don't actually own anything. Studios and distributors can and do pull shows and movies off their services all the time. Heck, that awful Grease prequel is apparently being pulled entirely from distribution, which means that everyone who would have received at least some small residual will get nothing.
Network TV produced 2 seasons a year of 13 episodes each (so each season played twice in a 52-week year). Streaming series are generally much higher quality, but you get 1 season of 6-10 episodes per year (as an aside, I find this a real problem with shows about young people because the actor grows up faster than the story unfolds, often forcing awkward jumps in time so the character can catch up with the actor).
Given they produce fewer episodes of higher quality entertainment, I'm fine with them earning more per episode, but, ultimately, the problem is lead actor salaries are too high. They get paid absurd amounts of money, straining the budgets of even simple productions. If there's no money left over for the writers and whoever else thinks they deserve more, the solution is sanity in actor salaries. They're not that special.
Do you feel invested in this dispute?
Nope. Since the end of the pandemic the wife and I have seen “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Ghostbusters:Afterlife,” and a small film made in England. If you don’t care for the premise of the “Mission Impossible” series, and we don’t, then there’s nothing else but trash coming out of Hollywood. Wife and I haven’t seen the latest Indiana Jones, and have no intention of wasting our money. Somewhere along the line Hollywood decided it didn’t have to entertain us. Hollywood management can’t manage, few of the actors can act, and the writers can’t write. One of the better cinematographers was shot to death. Not much left in the Hollywood Hills worth salvaging.
No investment. There are multitudes of things to watch that are just waiting to be discovered or re-watched. I’m realizing the majority of series that I watch are either from another country or are some older show I never noticed. The movies out of Hollywood tend to be dreck, other than the occasional ones of interest. Yes, I have tickets to see Mission Impossible this weekend. I like that series. They’re fun, well-produced and less Tom Cruise vehicles than ensemble flicks. And I’ll see Oppenheimer. Nothing else on the horizon until Stop Making Sense is re-released. Got myself subscriptions to Brit Box and Acorn for Prime Day, so for at least the next two months during this cheap intro period, I’ll be there. So…Hollywood, for now at least, is irrelevant.
Pedowood is going to be shut down for a while?
No.
Not that.
Anything but that.
NYT goes Vox?
Why, pray tell us why they are striking. What is the inner meaning?
Who could possibly care about this?
These folks have marginalized themselves so far out of the mainstream they are invisible. Well, thank heaven for small favors.
Do people have favorite shows anymore? I’ve given up on episode TV. My wife still clings- HDTV and a third run through shows from the 90s. Reminds me- forgot to tell her Family Ties is available now…
I'm wondering if this absence of....'talent'...is going to force a re-valuation of the industry. What would happen if they came off strike and nobody noticed? I saw the movie 'Sound of Freedom' yesterday, which I thought was pretty good, even better that it was grounded pretty firmly in a true story. But in order to see it, I also had to sit through 20 minutes of 'Coming Attractions' trailers. There wasn't one of these that I could muster more than a flicker of interest in. It seems to me that movies have become a vehicle, almost a catalog, of shallow plot devices and special effects, in particular, computer-driven special effects. The visual and audio effects are immersive, almost oppressively, but this seems to be in order to distract from story-telling that isn't up to par. It's become cheaper to distract people with short attention-span tricks, than it is to tell a good story that holds the interest. I can't imagine ponying up to see any of these movies - they just look boring as hell, unsatisfying as story-telling.
So I am hoping that this strike will be enough in aggregate to force the industry to accept that their product sucks, and they will have to do something better in order to survive. Maybe even move away from the Woke storylines, the brave feminist, the super-hero Woke kid saving the planet from the dreaded environmental 'whatevah'. Will heads roll? Now, that would be entertainment.
If the studios are scrambling for money, this seems like a BAD time to strike for higher wages, no?
Also, I suspect that the broadcasters have done some Hollywood (aka, creative aka fraudulent) accounting to make streaming look better than it is for Wall Street and short term advantage, and that the writers and actors may NOT want the answer to how much streaming is REALLY bringing in. And that is particularly for Disney, NBC/Discovery that is 'selling' content to themselves.
The courts permanently screwed up the internet long ago by ruling that actors in radio commercials had to be paid by the number of viewers in the whole internet if a radio station streamed commercials along with program. So radio stations stopped streaming their programs.
Services sprang up to edit out commercials but the momentum was lost.
A lot of the new Amazon and Netflix movies and series suck. Peaky Blinders is awesome.
Hollywood doesn't put out the "you've gotta see it" movies anymore. Oppenheimer looks interesting. This fall's release of Napoleon with Juaquin Phoenix looks good.
But "Barbie"? Remakes of older great movies with all female casts. Wokeness has killed the comedy genre. Indiana Jones went woke.
Feels like these writers can't come up with anything original or universal. Script writes itself.
The last decade has seen the founding of many, many streaming services. They all thought that the way to break into the market was to have lots of new content. The established players thought they had to do the same to stay ahead. So Hollywood over-expanded. Now they have to contract. The strikes are part of a struggle how to divide the pain.
Breaking free of television and movies was one of the hardest yet most worthwhile things I have ever done. I have not watched a feature film in the theater or at home nor any television programming of any type in 15 years. The sad part is that you can never really break free completely though. You still have to hear or read news about these sodomites if you're even the slightest bit still plugged in.
It's like the matrix. "Most of these people are not yet ready to be unplugged". Until everyone stops paying attention, a small proportion of your bandwidth must still receive occasional news about the most repulsive personalities on the planet.
Given the backward looking nature of popular entertainment these days its hard for me to see a downside to a long term (dare one wish for permanent?) shut down of Show Biz. How, oh how will we survive as a culture without another re (hash/boot/imagining) of franchises that were cheap bubble gum entertainment half a century ago?
Answer to my rhetorical question: Just fine thanks.
T
As a striking writer, I get multiple emails a day from the WGA. And all of them amount, essentially, to a plea for writers to be immune from the vicissitudes of changing business models that have, since the Industrial Revolution, eliminated or vastly altered countless professions. Indeed, that's going on now with multiple lines of work, some of which the typical WGA writer is only too happy to advocate for (pipeline workers and coal miners, e.g.).
Among the guild's demands are that writers not be replaced by AI. The problem with that, at least from a public-relations perspective, is that much of the product turned out by guild writers the last 15-20 years reads like an early ChatGPT effort. That is, of course, with the studios/producers' acquiescence/encouragment, so it's a problem.
The actors have a more legitimate fear of AI, since it can be used easily to replace them, and over the last 25 years many of the highest-grossing films haven't featured human beings on screen. (Avatar, e.g.) Americans and the world are willing to accept CGI images as protagonists.
I'm settling in for what could last till September. Or beyond. At which time the guild leadership is going to somehow have to walk back the chest-beating rhetoric and persuade the membership that they've made "significant gains," when in fact they're getting what they could've gotten without striking by tempering their demands and rhetoric months ago.
We need to set an over/under for low long it takes the world to even notice this. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about these wealthy crybabies.
I now bail out at unnecessary difficulties, another obstacle having nothing to do with plot so far. Bad writing.
Drinking problem being high on the list.
So in LA we have the writers' strike, the actors' strike, and one of the hotel worker's unions is striking. Things are great.
"This will be solved with a gift from the US Treasury."
Congress has never given a bigger gift than the 100 year copyright. Reduce that to match the 20-year patent period, and money will flow to creative people instead of to curators of back catalogs.
What happens if no one notices?
Let it crumble.
The modern arts industry in general needs to collapse, and be rebuilt with something closer to integrity and virtue.
I'm sure that the fact that movies are crappy has nothing to do with it. We saw "Sound of Freedom" this week. It was OK but the fact that millions are going to see it shows how Hollywood has lost its audience. It's Bud Light all over again. I don't watch TV and my wife leaves the TV on all day with Fox but she doesn't really watch it either. There is on e game show that she loves or I would cut the cable.
I'm getting the vibe of 70s Detroit. Unions fighting with management over a shrinking pie, while the new reality (Japanese and German cars then, streaming now) is taking hold. Fran Drescher is an out and proud Commie, so don't expect a common sense solution soon, if at all. Every sport has been handed more leverage over cable TV, and if the college and pro sports break out of the cable package the actors and writers and movie moguls will find they all have a lot less money to fight over.
No investment. During the pandemic, I cut the cord because of cost and now watch YouTube videos produced by individuals, podcasts and over the air live sporting events and sometimes an old movie. Many of the YouTube content providers are more talented than the Hollywood paid ones.
I have no investment in this. Setting aside opinions and politics; this part of the entertainment industry is over-saturated. That's why a great archive exists, because there is more than can be consumed and enough variety to find new-to-you things in the existing market. It is hard to get better wages and conditions in an industry that has excess supply.
Worse, the growth of other entertainment industries is cutting demand for WGA/SAG/AFTRA products. I don't need a radio DJ, when I have access to streaming services. Do WGA members write scripts for house-flipping shows? Are podcast hosts members of AFTRA (excepting those that were prior to creating podcasts)? Are bloggers joining WGA? I suspect the video game industry is a mixture, but the indie studios, which certainly don't use the guilds, are already building market share. That's before we get into sports.
Throw in hostility to a large portion of the industry's demand, and it doesn't look good for Hollywood.
60 years you say…
I actually think I could survive by watching content 60 years old or older.
Don't watch, don't care. We watch old Perry Mason, old Barney Miller, old All in the Family. Nothing new appeals to us. Let Hollywood die. Don't care. They produce trash now. All woke, no action.
Musicians horribly hit. One of my favorites is James McMurtry, he is renown as a fantastic songwriter. Yet the monies he gets from streaming services and album sales is almost non-existent. They do not even sell cd's at shows anymore. In fact he basically says that he releases an album just to generate interest in their show dates. When the audience begins to dwindle, he knows it is time to release another album.
Many have mentioned the problem
The new content is crap. It is ALWAYS pushing race and queer. Stories center on the faux hurdles all those protected classes suffer thru. IF they get a good series going, its into season 3-4 and all the virtue signaling sprouts like weeds in July. Cluttering up the story.
I'm a little bit invested. Politically, I'd like Hollywood to be squeezed hard and to see more blue-on-blue conflict. Personally, I'd like the domestic supply to dry up to the point that the streamers have to import more top international content.
Meh. I'd rather support content creators themselves, like Rick Beato, Adam Neely, and those guys who make animated narrative maps of historic battles and military campaigns on YouTube.
I'm not long for YouTube, either, as Twitter and Rumble gain traction, because of woketard censorship and happyface fascism via demonetization.
Remember the "Dear Members of the Electoral College" video?
The studios and the Film Actors Guild and all the pederasty-enabling producers in Hollywood and Studio City can all go DIAF.
The "why" is unimportant. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
All the strikers should know that out here our hearts be bleeding purple piss for you.
I wish the writers and actors good luck, but I'm not at all invested in the strike. There are decades of content on the streaming services to watch and even if every US streaming service shutdown the library has hundreds of DVDs for checkout. I would miss my once or twice a year visit to the movie theater but that's mostly because I like the popcorn. The movie is usually kind of incidental.
I don't read the credits on movies but I do click through them so the movie will show on my streaming services as completed rather than still being watched. And I notice that it takes approximately 527,621 people and 2,678 support companies to make a movie these days. I recall watching, say, Casablanca, and the credits show a cast that is almost larger than the entire production crew. So one problem the film industry has is that technology has created a huge number of new production staff and firms that need to share the revenue from films. The film revenue pie may be bigger than in past years, but it is getting sliced into many more, smaller, pieces than in past decades. Technology is making obsolete those who write and those who act.
The farriers' union and buggy whip makers' union also support the writers and actors in their struggle for more job stability and higher pay.
Didn't AA post about the Black Mirror episode "Joan is Awful"? Seems like a relevant scare tactic that these wusses are feeling.
Anyone who strikes: fuck em, and send them to hell. 3 guys in a garage can make better movies than Hollywood.
For the first time in years, I'm interested in going to a theater. My choices are "Sound of Freedom" and "The Miracle Club." My husband wants to see "Mission Impossible." Three potential movies to get our butts in the seats. Amazing!
I'm all out of Give A Hoots about Hollywood's problems. Actors and writers on strike? Yawn.
I think I've seen one movie since COVID showed up--and I walked out halfway through the screening. My wife leaves the TV on, although I'm not certain that she really watches it.
I'm the dog that doesn't like the dogfood that Hollywood serves up. Living in Los Angeles I do know or know of many people involved on the production side of things. I have some sympathy for their plight. But if the executives, writers and actors can't put out an interesting product, then the industry dies. Meanwhile the various groups fight over the money pie.
But frankly, I'd rather read Trollope. 150 years after he wrote the novels, they're still entertaining.
Creola Soul sas, "We need to set an over/under for low long it takes the world to even notice this. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about these wealthy crybabies."
At most 2% of the membership of both WGA and SAG can be considered "wealthy." The typical writer member of WGA, like the typical actor member of SAG, is, at any given time, much more likely to be unemployed than employed.
Ann: "They're depending on our hunger for more new things to watch, but there are so many old things — we have an endless supply of great stuff to watch and (my favorite) rewatch. If they withhold, we (some of us) will turn more resolutely to the great archive of old film and television."
So you will ignore the writers and actors strikes because you have access to archives of stuff written and acted by writers and actors already? And you will pay the companies who run the streaming sites you watch it on, who in turn basically don't pay those writers and actors residuals when you stream their art due to a loophole in their old contract?
I hate to break it to you, but you are invested in -- and investing in -- this dispute.
Most of what I watch is:
Korean
British
Other Asian
Other European
I do watch some US stuff, but it's rare. I haven't watched many US-made programs in a while. Too many of them felt like lectures rather than entertainment.
The last writers' strike gave us "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog", which I really enjoyed. I haven't seen anything come out as a result of this one yet.
I have no doubt that the profits could be distributed more equitably. I hope they can achieve that. I also hope they begin spending less time on messages and more on entertaining, but as long as they have an audience for what they are doing, they should be paid fairly for it.
I would say that very few of the writers are actually striking. Most of them are just soso looking and a few are down right ugly.
Will anyone at all notice? This seems rather like the government shutdown of (?) 2014, where the government tried to maximize the harm to ordinary people (putting traffic cones up so no one could pull over to look at Mt. Rushmore, boarding up all the informational panels on the Capitol Mall, &c.), on the theory that if they didn't do this, no one would know that the shutdown was even happening. Note that all such exercises cost money -- money that the government supposedly did not have.
We have fantastic quantities of "entertainment" already, most of it much better than the new "product." On DVDs alone, I could watch one a day for a couple of years, and that's without even dipping a toe into Netflix, TCM, &c. My husband spent a couple of years, way back, recording Perry Mason off the air. Why do I need contemporary Hollywood?
They just opened the largest screen theater in Illinois in my neighborhood and there is nothin to watch that isn't drivel.
The demands of the guilds are entirely unrealistic. The WGA, in particular, is insisting on a minimum number of series workweeks and a minimum number of writers in the room. This is redolent of old-time railroad featherbedding requirements. Probably the demand least likely to be negotiated is what SAG calls "streaming visibility". Both guilds are demanding that streamers like Netflix, Max, Prime Video, Apple+, and Paramount+ disclose their viewing numbers and related data.
If I'm a streamer, that information is secured deep in the vault next to the Coca Cola formula.
The writers complain that the broadcasters and streamers are reducing writers to gig workers. Duh! Entertainment above-the-line workers have always been gig workers. It's only a career if you have the writing or acting chops to continually get hired for the next gig.
I was a very big supporter of David Goodman's (WGA President) extraordinary effort to strip the big agencies of their packaging fees that ended in an astounding success. I do not believe that this strike will end any time soon nor with anything close to that level of success. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of below-the-line workers around the world, from grips and best boys to VFX artists (who receive no residuals at all), are soon to be out of work for many months to come.
All because of very unrealistic demands of puffed up unionists that are unlikely to be met. It's an "inflection point" all right.
- Krumhorn
Here’s a crazy idea. Why not just pay all the writers and actors upfront at the time of production and forget this whole concept of residuals?
Of course that might hurt a lot of Hollywood accountants whose current job is to hide the profits.
"Since the end of the pandemic the wife and I have seen “Top Gun: Maverick,”"
That film was just a poor remake of "Star Wars", released in 1977.
" and special effects"
The C in CGI stands for Cartoon. Seriously, that's all these new action films are. Cartoons.
Burn, Hollywood, burn
Go toNetflix or Amazon and have a look at the hundreds of horrible offerings. Who thought these were entertaining. Who thought they could make money. What writer thought they, had crafted something of value or even as something moderately interesting. Formula writing. Formula plots. Just as I am delighted when the government shuts down I am thrilled the actors and writers are on strike. Maybe the hiatus will give them a chance to be creative.
"Why are the actors and writers striking?"
Something that has no impact on me. Not even a little bit.
Why does Hollywood need writers anyway? Almost every movie is a remake. All they need writers for is to ruin the existing script with woke bullshit, like the upcoming Disney remake of Snow White.
Why are they striking?
Judging by the quality of films and television lately, I fervently hope they’re striking for more natural talent. Somebody somewhere is withholding their fair share of ability and creativity, and the writers and actors will walk the picket lines until they get more Emmys.
Many years ago, I worked at Disneyland. We went on strike for three weeks one time. I was on the picket line every day and in all the hours I walked it, I didn't see a single person turn around and go home in our support. I asked around, and nobody else admitted seeing anybody decline to enter the park due to the strike.
What are the odds that, out of the many thousands of people going to Disneyland who ignored the strike, none were union workers themselves?
So... someone is striking? Knock yourself out, not my problem.
Oh, yeah... one more thing- unions suck.
Blogger Mason G said...
Many years ago, I worked at Disneyland. We went on strike for three weeks one time.
Many, many years ago I worked for Coca-Cola. The Teamsters held a strike vote which I attended as I was a member. I was 16 at the time. I watched as the single men with no dependents all voted to strike. And then I watched as the older men with families to support voted NO.
It was almost the first step in my trek from Democrat to Republican.
best comedy in years
Do you feel invested in this dispute?
These people hate me, what I stand for and have no trouble telling me just that. Haven't set foot in a movie theater since 1998 (Saving Private Ryan)
Invested? Nope. The entire industry can't fall into the Pacific fast enough.
Sounds as if the writers think their checks are small because of the cut they get whereas their checks will be small no matter what. People have quit watching. Art is supposed to teach us to look at what's around us but obviously art is barely able to look away from its cell phone. Just look at a picture of the account executive they put in charge of Bud light marketing.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324270148112 - Account executive
Obviously, she should have been selling wine coolers or hair dryers. (And now I guess she is, on the CVS channel.) But why couldn't top executives just look at her and see she wouldn't know her market?
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-06-at-10647-PM.jpg - Bud Light drinker
Hollywood has writers?
You never know it from watching Tv and Movies.
Rusty said...
I would say that very few of the writers are actually striking. Most of them are just soso looking and a few are down right ugly.
Very good point. I would be Far More in favor of unions if their members Were striking.. instead of looking scabby
"And then I watched as the older men with families to support voted NO."
I was a Teamster, too (had to join, it's California). And I watched more trucks than I could count drive past our picket line to make deliveries.
My dad was a Teamster, he told me the union was a joke. Sometimes, those older guys aren't wrong.
"To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile—such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished—behold!—all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile—and the return to an eternal rest." J Conrad, written in his piece, the condition of art. 1897
Todays Writers are politically correct asshats, who are incapable of an original thought.
It is the triumph of feminism, marxism, and the soft expectations of gutless people.
Education has taught individuals to be hive members-good cadre.
Nothing will come out of hollywood, other than pedo themes, equality, and banal attempts at serious thought.
I do find it a tad bit amusing that those writers and actors who champion “progress” for everyone else are saying no to AI making some or all of their job’s unnecessary in the future. Automation and machines come for everyone.
Personally, I only care if the product is good. It doesn’t matter to be if it is produced by man or machine.
I haven’t had a favorite TV show since I was 12.
I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. It’s for stupid, fat chicks!
Meanwhile, Top Chef filming next season in Madison.
I'm on board with actors fighting unpaid use of their likeness with AI-generated characters. It's only a matter of time now.
Just look at what MidJourney must be doing to illustrators.
As for the writers - given the state of the movie industry - lazy sequels and super-hero franchises everywhere - how do we know they're not already written by AI?
"Do you feel invested in this dispute?"
No. I'm an indie self-published writer. They can do the same.
"I recall watching, say, Casablanca, and the credits show a cast that is almost larger than the entire production crew. So one problem the film industry has is that technology has created a huge number of new production staff and firms that need to share the revenue from films."
Those films had huge numbers of uncredited craftsmen and technical staff. It's true that the credits in movies have gone overboard in showing all the people involved in the making of them, but those old films used the talents of a lot of people whose names weren't shown onscreen. Even performers weren't always listed. I had watched White Christmas many, many times before I finally tracked down the name of the guy who danced with Vera Ellen in countless scenes in the movie. John F. Brascia.
Do you feel invested in this dispute?
Yes, I'm desperately hoping both sides lose
It's left wing scumbags vs left wing scum bags.
Streaming services apparently refuse to let ANYONE have viewing data, even the show writers, so they also refuse to have any payments go to writers / actors based on how many people watch a show.
Is this yet another example of "participation trophy for everyone"?
Or is it yet another example of a corrupt system that lies about everything, and refuses to let out data that would let people know the truth?
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