My Take On The WGA-SAG-AFTRA Strike

For almost the past two years, when I wasn’t working at my drawing board, I’d been spending time on film sets. From that experience, the main thing I come away with is that however important the writers and the actors are to the process – and they most certainly are as the film or TV series wouldn’t exist without them in the first place – there’s a whole support system that’s necessary to the production of one’s favorite films & television series without which the entire project would not be possible either. It does take a village, or in the case of films and TV, an army.

The vast majority of media writers are not presenting the full picture of the strike, focusing solely on the writers & the actors and whether or not they’ll cave to the AMPTP so everybody can get back to work as if filmmaking were just another 9-to-5 job.

The comments made by Disney CEO Bob Iger labeling the demands of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA as unrealistic sounded pretty tone-deaf, defining a man making $27 million a year plus bonuses even more out of touch than the workers he complains about, especially when he can’t say WHY they’re unrealistic. As if to add insult to injury, he then has the gall to blame writers and actors for costing a lot of people their jobs after firing 7000 Disney employees and/or contractors within the timespan of three months.

Add to that comments made by other members of the AMPTP about breaking the WGA by not negotiating until writers starting losing their homes should give everyone pause about what’s really at stake here.

Ever since that bastard Ronald Reagan – I won’t be a hypocrite here as the man was evil, betraying his working class roots in favor of the oligarchy he would come to champion – broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union and paved the way for replacing pensions with 401K plans, corporations have taken their cues since then that anything was preferable than dealing with a union. Name a company these days facing employees trying to join a union – Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, etc. – and you’ll see management doing everything they can to break those efforts.

The AMPTP is no different. If they achieve nothing else, eliminating having to deal with the various Hollywood Unions is their Holy Grail. It won’t be long after resolving matters with the WGA & SAG-AFTRA that IATSE will want its fair share of the pie, with membership demanding their leaders do better.

But resolving the differences that the WGA along with SAG-AFTRA has with the AMPTP will take some serious negotiating as well as acknowledgement that what Disney, Paramount, Warners, Comcast and other traditional Hollywood Studios want is completely different from what Amazon, Apple and especially Netflix will agree to.

Netflix was the first to start down the path of zero residuals by buying out everyone’s interests in a project. They may have been willing to shell out the big bucks back then but they’re certainly not willing to do that now. Beyond that, they have no interest in paying residuals. That’s money the executives in the upper levels believes is solely theirs, which is laughable as all of them are the most replaceable cogs in the whole machine.

During my time on various film sets, I have dealt with a number of film crews – location managers, grips, electricians, 1st & 2nd ADs, costumers, hair & makeup professionals. caterers, medics and so on – all of whom work long hours while showing up to start their day at the most ridiculous hours. They work in extreme heat and bitter cold, sometimes in the same day. That’s California for you.

Despite the difficult conditions and extreme hours, I have witnessed nothing less than professional behavior, even when they know they’re underpaid on a particular job, which applies to a lot of industry professionals, especially those who work on the so-called “reality” shows.

The actors I have witnessed or dealt with deal with the same conditions as the crew, with the only difference is when they’re in front of the camera and the focus is on them. During that time, most of the crew is “down” until needed. But before and after the filming, the crew is all hands on deck.

Before filming, actors are getting made up and into costume while studying their lines while a beehive of activity is happening all around them. What looks like absolute chaos is simply everyone pulling together doing the job they were hired for to make it happen.

I haven’t seen any writers on any of the sets I’ve been on. Nor have I ever seen a director or writer call for an on-set rewrite during filming. According the comments and articles I’ve seen, this has been a big bone of contention between the writers and the Studios and I agree, the WGA has a legitimate grievance regarding the lack of writers on-set.

The biggest thorn to resolving the strike is the issue of AI. Actors absolutely can’t sign an agreement unless studios agree to some form of compensation for the use of an actor’s image even after the actor has passed. Neither can the writers agree to having their work studied by AI until it can create something in a given writer’s style. Maybe it’s a long way off from when AI can come up with a concept similar to Aaron Sorkin, but there’s enough available material for the AI to learn his style, and that’s a road leading to a darker path.

I’ve been watching Hollywood productions shut down over the past several months. The last few times I was on a set in recent weeks was for commercials, photo shoots and non-union film productions, the last one of which was a student film. I don’t know when the next time I’ll find myself working on-set, but my best guess is not for a long while.

I’ll have more to say when future developments happen.