Actors, Writers And Directors on Strike??

[David Mullen ASC]

Maybe you should talk to Rodrigo Prieto or Roberto Schaeffer, who just shot movies in China ("Lust, Caution" and "Kite Runner" respectively), before you get the impression that it is easier to make movies in China. If you think American union crews featherbed, wait till you call out for a 6K HMI in China and a dozen electricians run to get it...

 

Every couple of years, there is the "hot" new foreign country for Hollywood to go and shoot movies in: Mexico (in the 1980's), Romania, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Australia, Canada... no doubt someday places like China will get their chance. Same goes for the current roster of "hot" new U.S. states to shoot in, thanks to tax incentives: New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, etc.

 

The cost of crews is only a small item compared to the tax breaks, the exchange rates, etc. and even then, distance for travel of above-the-line folks, or dealing with language problems or political instabilities, etc. always end up discouraging a major shift in Hollywood production to some far-away non-English-speaking country, hence why nearer, English-speaking places like Canada will always have an advantage (and they are unionized, so you're not escaping unions there...)

[Hal Smith]

Does a plumber get a royalty every time someone uses a fixture which he installed? .............

If the owner of the house were to sell advertising based on people coming to see the faucet the plumber fixed, or charge people $10 to have a look at the plumber's work, I suspect the plumber would want a piece of the action too.

[Guest]

If the owner of the house were to sell advertising based on people coming to see the faucet the plumber fixed, or charge people $10 to have a look at the plumber's work, I suspect the plumber would want a piece of the action too.

 

By this logic no one can ever own any thing "outright."

 

I guess I'll have to pay VW a royalty when I use my car, since I use it to drive to places that I use to generate income.

 

I suppose owners of movie theatres will have to pay all the members of the construction crew that built the theatre back end fees.

 

I'll keep saying this until the day I die, I'm fine paying every crew member a royalty for their work on a movie, as long as they agree to give their wages back if the movie tanks.

 

Of course they'll never agree to that, they only want to share in the success, they never want to take any responsibility for failure.

 

I had a similar situation to this on the indie movie I just made. It was shot 1 hour North of Toronto. Most every one that applied for positions on the movie asked how much I would pay for mileage to drive 1 hour out of the city and back each day. I told them all zero.

 

Of course they where always shocked by my response. My logic was that I had to drive into Toronto every day for five years, the total amount of compensation I received from my employer for this was $00.00. No one would pay me mileage to drive into the city for a film shoot, I sure as hell was not going to pay mileage to any one for driving out of the city for a film shoot.

 

R,

[Brad Grimmett]

Of course they'll never agree to that, they only want to share in the success, they never want to take any responsibility for failure.

 

R,

Then who are all these people that are willing to work for free or deferred, or for an "indie" rate? They seem to be everywhere. Crew people are constantly taking pay cuts to help get movies made, including on union movies, and they rarely see a dime when the producer makes millions. I guess the crew are always the greedy ones in the eyes of the people that make the bulk of the money.

Without unions I guess we'd all get paid what the producers think we deserve.....$00.00.

[Guest]

"Without unions I guess we'd all get paid what the producers think we deserve.....$00.00."

 

Actually there are people out there willing to work for less than zero, they'll pay the producer for a spot on the crew. Crazy but true. That's how desperate some people are.

 

There may actually be some logic to this...why spend 150K going to a film school for the possibility of working on a film set vs spending 150K and guarantee a spot on a film crew.

 

Of course no one is forced to do any work for a lower cost or a deferral.

 

Do the producers really make millions? It's hard with any movie, you really do have to earn three times the film's cost to break even. Once the exhibitors take their 50% and P&A is factored in. The production costs are just the beginning.

 

In the end: Union=Never Happy.

 

R

[Alex Ellerman]

I don't think you can shoot any movie you want in Communist China... certainly not any Hollywood movie. there's a lot of government red tape.

 

I have read that screenwriters on avg. receive .03 per dvd, and they want to bump the number to .06, and the studios want to wait... (not to mention the stuff they're haggling over like Internet residuals, etc.).

[Brad Grimmett]

Actually there are people out there willing to work for less than zero, they'll pay the producer for a spot on the crew. Crazy but true. That's how desperate some people are.

The key is that producers know this is true, and they sometimes use that fact to lower everyone's rates.

Of course no one is forced to do any work for a lower cost or a deferral.

If everyone knew this and stuck by it, rates would be higher overall.

Do the producers really make millions? It's hard with any movie, you really do have to earn three times the film's cost to break even. Once the exhibitors take their 50% and P&A is factored in. The production costs are just the beginning.

I'm not saying every movie makes money. My point was that in the cases where a small film does extremely well the producers aren't in the business of paying the crew what they deserve after the fact. That's why crew members should get the rate they deserve from the get-go. Most producers wouldn't be making movies if they weren't making money doing it. Producers have to make a living, and so do crew.

In the end: Union=Never Happy.

 

R

Never happy? Not true. Actually, I'm not even sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that anyone in a union is never happy? I'm happy every time I get a fair rate and am treated like I should be, and not like a slave that is replaceable at any moment.

I think there are a lot of myths about unions and union members that are continually perpetuated....often times by people who know nothing about unions and have never been in one, and/or by people who would like all unions to go away for their own gain. Unions aren't perfect, but we'd be pretty well screwed without them.

[Guest]

"I think there are a lot of myths about unions and union members that are continually perpetuated....often times by people who know nothing about unions and have never been in one"

 

I have both worked with unionized film workers and been IN a union for 18 months.

 

Neither of which was a positive experience.

 

Just a major pain.

 

R,

[Brad Grimmett]

Richard,

The part of my post that you quoted wasn't necessarily directed at you. It was just a general statement.

What I really wanted to find out is what you meant when you wrote, "Union=Never Happy". Could you please clarify? And which union were you in?

[Guest]

Richard,

The part of my post that you quoted wasn't necessarily directed at you. It was just a general statement.

What I really wanted to find out is what you meant when you wrote, "Union=Never Happy". Could you please clarify? And which union were you in?

 

I was in CEP. I believe they cover TV workers in the USA as well? I'm not sure?

 

What I mean by Union=Never Happy is that no matter what employers agree to give unions it's never enough. I had to sit and listen to gripping union members during my five years as a producer at CTV, I was not in the union. Oh they had it so bad....when five o'clock came around they went to 1.5 times their pay, I went to zero! I was salary like all the producers so we got bugger all for extra hours. Now I'll take a bit of my own advice in this case, no one forced me to be there, and that's true.

 

When it was layoff time, only non-union workers where let go. Unionized workers where way too tough to get rid of, even though many where incompetent and had the stench of dead wood.

 

Any way I'm out of it all now, thank goodness!

 

I do however realize that if, and it's a big if, I move onto bigger films dealing with the unions will be a fact of life.

 

R,

[Saul Rodgar]

Does a plumber get a royalty every time someone uses a fixture which he installed? Does an auto worker get a royalty every time someone uses a car which he built? Of course not. As has been mentioned previously in this thread, business is business, and like it or not, someone or some business is always going to get a bigger slice of the pie than everyone else -- that's Capitalism 101. Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges here, but in my opinion, the unions are the greedy ones in this scenario.

 

Whoa! Plumbing and motorcar-making are not ART. You truly are comparing oranges and apples. It sounds you have never worked 14-16 hrs a day on a movie, months on end, giving your all and utmost so that producers can get freaking rich. All this while your girlfriend leaves you for not hanging out with her, your health declines sharply your friends and family wonder if this time you are really dead and then someone has the nerve to say that asking for a fair deal is greedy . . . Capitalism is not suppossed to be cut-throat! :angry:

 

But that's OK, what you don't know can't be used against you.

[David Mullen ASC]

Capitalism is not suppossed to be cut-throat!

 

Sure, it can be. It's amoral.

 

But a healthy economy requires a healthy and large middle-class who don't live in constant fear of losing their health benefits, who can afford to educate their children, plan for the future, save for retirement. So the question is what promotes this sort of healthy economy? A trickle-down theory that whatever is good for General Motors or Rupurt Murdoch is good for the world?

 

It's my belief that there has to be a proper balance of government oversight and intervention and a free market so that both can benefit each other and the maximum number of citizens at a time, rather than a free-for-all capitalism where it's every man for himself and screw the other guy. I don't think the sign of a healthy economy is a large number of billionares, a shrinking middle-class, and a rising number of people living in poverty or near poverty.

 

In the case of the potential WGA strike, the writers feel that their creative ideas get turned into corporate profit, and when corporations discover new revenue sources like the internet for the writers' work, there has to be a system that pays back a percentage of profits back to the creative people. The sticking point is how, when, and how much.

 

The IATSE, to which I belong, is not up for a strike over any issue currently; their contract isn't up for awhile.

 

Unfortunately, studios are now backed/owned by even bigger corporations and therefore have big bucks to spend on breaking a union, any union. Anyone remember the grocery worker strike (actually the workers were shut out) a few years ago in Los Angeles, and how the store chains illegally conspired with each other to support each other financially, with big outside corporate bucks flowing in to break the union? A lot of money was being spent by major corporations just to make sure that the guy bagging your groceries could be paid as little as possible.

 

This is why it's more important than ever for unions to be large, strong, and organized -- just to offer some sort of counterforce to power of these huge corporations. Otherwise what you'll see is the WalMart-ization of the film industry and the notion that skilled labor making these movies should enjoy a middleclass lifestyle will be a thing of the past.

 

I mean, just look at a position like a DP or AD. On a multi-million dollar production, let alone any production, we could really screw things up and drive the production into the toilet if we didn't know what we were doing, let alone we're asked to create a high-end product that seems worthy of the budget. You'd think that sort of important skill would be worth something in the marketplace.

[Bugs Haller]

Without unions to protect people who work in film and television there would be nothing but blatant exploitation.

 

Producers (and I'm not trying to bash) and Studios would just shop around for the lowest bid and no one would have a career because they would always find someone willing to work for next to nothing. It would be vicious. Hell, it already is.

 

Unions don't solve all the problems but they do try to protect the people who belong to them.

 

Several years ago I worked on American History X and we were working at least 14 hour days over night. One night I went to set and everyone was talking about a crew person working on (I think the movie was Pleasantville?) crashed and died on the freeway after putting in an eighteen hour day. He fell asleep at the wheel.

 

Soon after that the laws changed as they pertained to how many hours you could work. Thanks to the Unions.

 

It isn't always about money either. Movie sets can be dangerous and demanding and it's not unheard of for people to be killed or suffer life long injuries.

 

I think Unions are good.

[David Mullen ASC]

Collective action by workers in any industry, to protect their jobs, their salaries & benefits, and to create a safer work environment, is a natural and understandable phenomenon that happens whenever a vacuum is created by an unresponsive government and corporate management that is only seeking to maximize profits without any concern for the wellbeing of their workforce.

 

If we had more enlightened management and a government that looked out for its citizens better, probably there would be no unions, nor a need for them.

[Saul Rodgar]

 

"It's my belief that there has to be a proper balance of government oversight and intervention and a free market so that both can benefit each other and the maximum number of citizens at a time, rather than a free-for-all capitalism where it's every man for himself and screw the other guy. I don't think the sign of a healthy economy is a large number of billionares, a shrinking middle-class, and a rising number of people living in poverty or near poverty."

 

That's what I meant when I said capitalism shouldn't be cut-throat. I should have said (morally corrupt) "capitalists" instead of "capitalism." This is, the management people who think it is OK to screw the other guy in the name of making a buck, free enterprise, and unquestionable (read extreme) Capitalist Values: profit over people.

 

Thanks to David for his usual clear, even-keeled writing and thinking skills. He undoubtedly is not just a great cinematographer.

[Alessandro Machi]

I do agree with the unions in how they're being handled on DVD, don't know enough about the other.

 

I think this is the issue in a nutshell. DVD profits MUST be shared. The internet stuff needs to wait, especially venues like YouTube. It's too early to figure out how to cost that out.

 

If the guilds would agree to only go after DVD revenues and leave the rest on hold I'd like to think something could be worked out without striking. I can't think of anything more insulting than being a writer for a show that is a well written, quality series, but a show that gets axed because the ratings are "not good enough", then it gets released on DVD and a million copies are sold.

 

The fact that significant DVD sales can be had from prematurely cancelled television shows just proves the writers or anyone else that could share in residuals were not to blame. I also don't think that the argument can be made that the DVD sales simply spared the studios from losing money on a cancelled television show. Not all shows can be top ten, it's just a statistical reality. Sure one can argue that there are junk shows, but frankly I think this year there are a lot of good shows and many won't survive simply because of the volume of ever increasing choices the viewer has. If those cancelled shows somehow end up on DVD then it's a no brainer that those revenues need to be shared.

 

Rather than go into a prolonged strike, if both sides would just agree that DVD sales have to be shared and that the internet is not far enough along to establish revenue sharing everyone could move on and avoid a strike.

[Guest]

One thing is for sure, if there is a prolonged strike, there will not be a winner. The writers will lose and the studios will lose. Neither side will be able to claim victory.

 

Lawyers will get rich as they always do, that's all. Lost audiences may never return.

 

Does every one remember the NHL strike? They lost an entire season. In the end the players settled for LESS than what they where offered just before they went on strike. And this was after they lost the entire season. Naturally the head of the players union had to resign, he looked pretty stupid.

 

But there was no winner, the owners lost a season of revenue, the players got less money, the fans lost a season. The lawyers made truck loads of cash.

 

R,

[David Mullen ASC]

The writers do get a share of DVD profits, but the figure was set a long time ago at a low level when no one was thinking about TV shows being sold on DVD, plus internet downloading is a fast-growing market and I don't think the writers want to want how many years it is until the next contract (6?) and lose potential income, plus start a precedent, which is always hard to beat.

 

The studios' attitude has been the profits on the few bestsellers cover the losses on the majority of titles, so they don't want to share any more of their profits.

[Michael Most]

Perhaps due to my status as a lowly IA crewmember I have a rather different view on this, but....

 

Rant mode on.

 

I've never understood why it should be assumed that once paid for a job, one should continue to be paid forever. The entire concept of residuals is based on two assumptions. First, that the creative contribution of actors, writers, and directors is significantly more extensive than anyone else connected with the production, and second, that because none of these individuals work full time, they are paid in a system that gets them income even when they're not working. My problems with both of these assumptions are many, but they start with one premise: Neither the actors, the writers, nor the directors are putting up any of the money it takes to create the production in the first place. They are, in fact, assuming no financial risk. The studios, on the other hand, are putting up all of the money and taking essentially all of the risk. In our society, those who take the risk are entitled to the reward. Those who don't, aren't. And it really is as simple as that. The actors, writers, and directors somehow garnered enough power years ago to create what amounts to a profit sharing situation that exists in no other industry I know of. And they perpetuate it on the notion that "we're all in this together." Except that we're not. Now, while it's true that residuals are actually paid to the IA locals, these residuals go directly in to the health plan. While that's extremely valuable, there are other ways to fund the health plan directly, and the fact is that WGA, SAG, and DGA members get their residuals put into their pockets - and still maintain a health plan. We don't.

 

I really fail to see why companies have any sort of responsibility to share the profits they make with employees who assume no financial risk in the manufacture of the goods the companies make. It's certainly good business to do so, as it encourages employees to put their best effort into making the products better, as it will benefit them directly if it results in more sales. But can anyone here imagine that, say, in the auto industry, the designer of a particular car model getting paid an additional fee - over and above the salary they've already been paid - for every car that's sold? Or the designers of, say, Windows Vista getting paid additionally for every copy of Vista that's sold? That's madness. Everyone who works for someone else gets paid for the work they do when they do it, and that very much includes actors, writers, and directors. In fact, they get paid quite handsomely for the work they do. I've never understood why they should continue to get paid for it til the end of time, especially when the additional value afforded by, say, a DVD release is done without any additional help from them - short of perhaps a commentary track that they also get paid directly for. The notion that when the company makes a profit, the writers, actors and directors should also make a profit is, at its heart, sheer lunacy. When the writer, actor, or director takes a financial risk, they are entitled to a reward. If one of those individuals makes a specific deal to forego a higher original salary in favor of back end points, that is one of those situations. But in a "normal" working situation, the individuals are paid for the work they do at the time they do it. That should be enough, as it is enough in every other business relationship I know of. Except in the film business.

 

Rant mode off.

[David Mullen ASC]

You make some salient points, but what about a book author, for example? Should they only get a one-time amount for the book and no royalties? In some ways, in that world, the author is perhaps paid less up front with the notion that he will share in eventual profits, if any, from sales, so in some ways, the book distributor is acting more like a sales agent for the author and taking a cut. If book writers were paid no royalties, then they'd have to be paid a lot more up front for books that may not make any profit whatsoever, so in some ways, the royalty system is a way of reducing risk for the publisher, or sharing it with the author. I suppose the screenwriters could say, "OK, get rid of residuals and pay use triple up front" but I suspect the studios would balk at that as well.

 

I think writing is unique in the sense that it comes with the notion of intellectual property rights, that someone had to have had the original creative idea that ended up creating a profitable item and therefore they should share in the profits generated even if they did not invest in capital. Now with book writing, the production costs are lower in general than filmmaking, and there is a more direct link between the original writing and the final product for consumption, compared to the transformation of a screenplay into another medium, a movie.

 

Anyway, it can be argued that a royalties/residuals payment system is a way of reducing financial risk by paying less up front in exchange for a share of profits.

[Max Jacoby]

What kind of percentages are we talking about here for dvd sales?

[Paul Maibaum ASC]

My understanding is that writers recieve 4 cents for every dvd sold and that they are asking for 8 cents in the new contract. The 4 cent residual was concieved back in 1985.

[Alessandro Machi]

Perhaps due to my status as a lowly IA crewmember I have a rather different view on this, but....

 

Rant mode on.

 

I've never understood why it should be assumed that once paid for a job, one should continue to be paid forever....

 

Because otherwise you are competing with yourself. Unlike crew that can have a sustained and somewhat lengthy career, the creative side is more subject to being "hot" at the moment and then quickly becoming discarded.

 

 

...............I really fail to see why companies have any sort of responsibility to share the profits they make with employees who assume no financial risk in the manufacture of the goods the companies make.

 

Employees can only work one job at a time, sometimes they can lose several other jobs all the jobs overlap. If they make the wrong choice their career can be over just when it should have been starting. Many times it is the studios themselves that decide which film project to promote and which one to sort of ignore and once again the actor is at the mercy of the studio. If the actor "makes it" sometimes this is reversed. It's just not as simple as work one day, get paid for one day when the project can live on forever on DVD.

 

Notice the actors generally don't get residuals based on theater grosses because that is a diminishing return, whereas DVD sales can continue on for quite a while, hence the term "residual".

 

The writers do get a share of DVD profits, but the figure was set a long time ago at a low level when no one was thinking about TV shows being sold on DVD, plus internet downloading is a fast-growing market and I don't think the writers want to want how many years it is until the next contract (6?) and lose potential income, plus start a precedent, which is always hard to beat.

 

The studios' attitude has been the profits on the few bestsellers cover the losses on the majority of titles, so they don't want to share any more of their profits.

 

Downloading may be a fast growing market, but is it "paid" downloading that is fast growing or pirated downloading?

[Alex Ellerman]

with respect to Mr. Most, we are speaking about the originator of the work, the author. just as someone creates a work of music, or patents a process, they deserve to be paid in future iterations, especially in the case of spec work. perhaps in the case of a "work for hire" i would consider Most's point more valid.

 

consider the case of the actor:

An actor appears in a national McDonalds commercial becomes indelibly linked to that burger, and can certainly not audition for Subway commercials, and probably can't audition for health food products if the commercial is popular. You have to consider these unique instances and protect the participants & their likeness.

 

further, they have no "equity" financing in the product, likely, but they are in a sense spending money in the production in the sense of "debt." it's the time / value proposition. If i'm working on your project when i could be working for someone else, then i'm contributing value (ie money).

[Alex Ellerman]

reposted from thewritersbuilding, re: the WGA viewpoint

 

-----------

Some of us have been screwed for a while now, and not in the pleasant sense. The below is an email post from Micah Wright, posted on the WriterAction (WGA-only board). I requested and have his written permission to spread it like the plague. ~ Tina

 

(FYI, to set the scene, the tone of Micah?s intro is in response to another WA poster unhappy with our leadership).

 

Well this is ONE angry Horad that?s confused about your stance. The AMPTP clearly never intends to pay us one single cent for internet delivery. The music business model clearly indicates that internet delivery for most, if not all content is the future. What then were we supposed to do when faced with rollbacks and refusals to bargain in good faith? Pray? Or just swallow the bullshit they were trying to shove down our throats, and forget about not only what we?re making, but also what every person who ever follows us into this union will ever make?

 

People like you keep bitching about the DVD negotiating point, and yeah, you?re right: DVD was lost 20 years ago, but there?s no magic rule which says we can?t reopen that topic. More importantly, though, DVD didn?t take off for almost a decade after the ?88 strike? the Internet is here NOW, and it?s here FOREVER, and if we give in and allow them to pay us ZERO on Internet delivery, we can just kiss the idea of ever getting paid residuals goodbye forever.

 

It?s not self-righteousness which is driving this negotiation? it?s quite simply the greed of the AMPTP, which clearly sees this as the year in which they intend to break the WGA on the rack once and for all. But you don?t see that? you seem unable to get it through your head that the AMPTP doesn?t want to ever pay us anything. If you think these people are so reasonable and that they deal in good faith, then try talking to writers who work in Animation and Reality? THAT is the future that the AMPTP has in store for EVERY WRITER IN THE WGA. Because if they don?t have to pay residuals to the woman who wrote The Lion King, then why should they ever have to pay one to YOU? Or anyone else?

 

Oh, and before you give me some fu**ing sob story about the disastrous strike of 1988, let me bring you up to date with a more RECENT story: mine.

 

I came to this guild having had a ?successful? career writing Animation for $1400/week for five years. During that time, I wrote on several of Nickelodeon?s highest-rated shows. My writing partner wrote and directed 1/4 of the episodes of ?SpongeBob SquarePants? and I was responsible for 1/5 of the episodes of ?The Angry Beavers.? The current value that those shows have generated for Viacom? $12 Billion dollars. My writing partner topped out at $2100/week. In the year 2001, tired of not receiving residuals for my endlessly- repeating work (even though the actors and composers for my episodes do), I joined with 28 other writers and we signed our WGA cards.

 

So, Nickelodeon quickly filed suit against our petition for an election, and set about trying to ferret out who the ?ringleaders? were. In the meantime, they canceled the show that I had created 4 episodes into an order of 26. Then they fired the 3 writers who?d been working on my show. Then they fired 20 more of my fellow writers and shut down three more shows, kicking almost their entire primetime lineup for 2002 to the curb, and laying off 250 artists.

 

Then, once the WGA?s petition for election was tied up in court over our illegal firings, Nickelodeon called in the IATSE Local 839 ?Cartoonists Guild? ? a racket union which exists only the screw the WGA and its own members ? and they signed a deal which forever locks the WGA out of Nickelodeon, even though we were there first. Neato!

 

Then Nickelodeon?s brass decided ?out of thin fu**ing air? that myself and two other writers had been ?the ringleaders? of this organizing effort, so they called around to Warner Bros. Animation, the Cartoon Network, Disney Animation, and Fox Kids, effectively blacklisting the three of us out of animation permanently.

 

And why did Nickelodeon do this? Why were they so eager to decimate their own 2002 schedule, fire 24 writers, break multiple federal labor laws, sign a union deal, and to even bring back the fu**ing blacklist? They did all of that to prevent us from getting the same whopping $5 residual that the actors & composers of our shows get.

 

For five lousy fu**ing bucks, they destroyed three people?s careers and put 250 artists out of work and fu**ed up their own channel for a year.

 

Ahh, but my episodes run about 400 times a year worldwide, though, so obviously Sumner Redstone (Salary in 2001: $65 million dollars) and Tom Freston (2001 salary: $55 million) were right to do what they did? myself and those other 23 writers might have broken the bank, what with each of us going to cost them another TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS each! OH NO! That? that?s? FORTY EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS!

 

A YEAR!

 

So don?t come crying to those of us who have EXPERIENCED what the AMPTP plans for all of the rest of you, that people who are deciding to stand up to bully-boy tactics like that are the crazy bunch of ?horads? lustily marching ?throught? the streets searching for blood. The AMPTP are the barbarians sacking Rome in this scenario.

 

The AMPTP and their glittering-eyed weasel lawyers are a bunch of lying, blacklisting, law-breaking scumbags, and the fact that they haven?t budged off of ANY of their proposals in the last three months proves that what they have in store for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU is exactly what they did to us at Nickelodeon, and what they can do any day of the week in daytime animation. Or reality.

 

Strike or no strike. That?s their plan: to winnow down your membership, to snip away at your MBA, to chew away at your health & pension plans until there?s just nothing left of the WGA. Why? Because they?ve had a good strong drink of how much money they make off of animation when they don?t have to cut the creators in for any of the cash, and now they want to extend that free ride to all of live action as well. THAT is why they have pushed for this strike at every step, with their insulting press releases, with their refusals to negotiate, etc. ? because they?re HOPING we go on strike, and that enough cowards and Quislings come crawling out of the woodwork after six weeks that they can force us to accept the same deal that Reality TV show writers have.

 

If you doubt me, go read their contract proposals again? there?s not ONE of them which isn?t an insult and a deal-breaking non-starter.

 

So can we PLEASE stop hearing about how it?s the current WGA management which is the fu**ing problem here? Because, frankly, that canard is getting a little stale.

 

Or perhaps you prefer presidents like the President of the Guild back in 2001 who just threw up her hands when we were fired and blacklisted out of our careers and said, and I quote, ?oh well, it was a good try??