Strike, days 42 and 43
Yesterday was the last official day of picketing before the new year. I was happy to see a large contingent turning out at 5:30 a.m. for my home gate at Paramount. Blog reader Andrew brought along his girlfriend Olivia. Since she’s not even a future WGA member, I felt an obligation to promise her that if the UCLA psych-bio majors ever go on strike, I’ll carry a sign at her picket.
Paul Weitz came as well, which gave us an opportunity to talk about the experience of being in the audience at a Sarah Silverman show. Mostly, it’s really funny. And then a moment comes when you realize the boundary between hilarious and offensive has been breached, and you find yourself replaying the last few jokes to figure out exactly when it happened.
I missed the general membership meeting last night in Santa Monica, because (a) we had guests over for dinner, and (b) open microphones make me squirm. I was in bed by nine.
This afternoon, I’m having the Disney Feature Fellows over for a chat about craft and career. It’s a cold, drizzly, sleepy day, which seems perfect for quasi-academic conversation.
In a previous comment thread, reader Paul Ramos (a friend from Boulder) asks…
Is it totally outside of the realm of possibility that the WGA can form its own production house that offers the terms that writers are looking for? Or is it just completely financially un-doable? Why must writers deal with production houses that don’t want to play ball? I realize that these questions probably seem rather naive. But wouldn’t distributors of media still be interested in a movie shot by the WGA vs. by Paramount or some other large production house?
Not naive at all. While the WGA itself can’t be in the movie or television production business (it’s a union which represents writers, rather than employing them), there’s nothing preventing writers from finding alternate sources of funding and setting up their own productions.
And, in fact, that’s happening as we speak. There are venture capitalists who recognize this as a unique opportunity: you have giant pool of unemployed content creators, and a hungry distribution system (the internet). Depending on the nature of those deals, they would probably need WGA vetting. But there’s a history of alternative deals being reached.
At the Indie Gate last Thursday, I heard it put thusly:
After the first time negotiations fell apart, the message was, “Come back, baby. We can work this out.”
After this last blow-out, the message is slowly becoming, “Maybe we should see other people.”
Look, the strike will end eventually. We’ll go back to working with and for the studios, writing TV series and summer blockbusters that make money for everyone. But we’re at a strange point in time. Certain ideas, certain properties, may not need giant corporations behind them. If you created the next South Park, or the next It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you as the creator might find it more profitable to deliver it through the internet, where the playing fields are much more level.
That’s one irony of the strike: the key issue of internet distribution may become more viable because of the strike itself.
Articles
December 18th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
John,
You and your friend raise an interesting subject—does talent still need the networks and studios with the advent of the internet?
The answer is, unfortunately for talent, yes. As long as half or more of movies and TV shows fail, and most of the other half take years to recoup, talent needs the big, established corporations to handle the debt load. A writer/director friend of mine explained that, while a studio/network earns billions of dollars, it’s still essentially a ‘locus of debt’, with revolving lines of credit, and huge, sudden intakes of cash and profits, and likewise, huge and sudden outlays of cash, and losses.
‘Venture capitalists’ are too wise, especially in the wake of the dot.com apocalypse of the late 90’s, to get involved with movies and TV, at least not to the extent that the talent side could create or rely on them to replace the current AMPTP companies. You might be able to get a few movies made, but you can’t create a new infrastructure. Even DreamWorks still needs a major studio to support it. It’s too difficult of a business to forecast; there aren’t any measurable drivers…
And it’s subject to labor conflict.
I applaud anyone who tries to set up new companies because that’s really the only way writers, directors and actors are going to get what you want, and I’ll listen to anyone who knows more about it than I, but I don’t see how it’s possible.
December 18th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Hey John,
The later shift was well-covered, too. I noticed, over the course of the weeks, that many folks have formed strong bonds with their walking buddies. I don’t know if anyone counted on that as a consequence of the strike, but it’s nice to see.
Susan
December 18th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I really think the strike IS pushing us toward new markets. Everything is primed for it. I’ve been reading THE LONG TAIL by Chris Anderson, which is about the shift away from the big conglomerates.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Even though I didn’t talk to you at Indie Film gathering on Thursday (I’m the shy type), I wish I had.
I’d like to ask your opinion on scab writing. Today at the Scene of the Crime rally it was revealed that a movie currently filming here in town has WGA writers (apparently anyway) rewriting their script…and after the rally I was at lunch and listening to a conversation at the next table when I overhead that they were in the process of selling a script (they were either producers or writers, I tend to think the latter), who were given a rewrite job. They said something about changing the title page and using a pen name when they sent the script back to the studio…
So, my question is this: how does the WGA investigate incidents of scab writing and how do they discover if a WGA writer is scabbing using a pen name?
I’m not interested in a primer, but I’m curious how the WGA would discourage writers from doing such things and what happens to the writer should they get caught?
December 18th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Was friends with Paul Weitz back in the day. He was undoubtedly the only Upper East Side straight boy who could get away with wearing leather pants. Gossip Girl had nothing on him.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Hi John
I am a former Student Activities Board officer from your reign as our president at Drake. I just wanted to let you know that you are on our minds and we hope this strike resolves soon. My kids (all 4 of them) request Charlie and the Chocolate Factory often–it is one of their all-time favorites
Kim
December 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am
And here I was asking myself what do the studios with all the money, equipment, and actors need from the WGA.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:00 am
That question doesn’t make sense. If a union became an employer, they would inevitably have a conflict of interest between pleasing shareholders/making money and securing boundries for writers. That’s like asking why the bouncer at a rock concert doesn’t get on stage and play a set. Two different goals entirely. I like the previous post that explains the debt load/rotating line of credit situation that studios call their balance sheet. That is the bottom line. Although not really because then studio accountants find ingenious ways to muddle the spreadsheets every time. And all the hard-earned strike victories are nickeled and dimed away by the time the ink dries on the paycheck. (But of course I support the strike!) (I’ve just lived here for a long time :)
December 19th, 2007 at 11:10 am
For the past couple of Mondays, I’ve taken a box of doughnuts down to the strikers at the Riverside Gate here at the Mouse, to show them the support of us editors (or most of us editors, anyway). They were freezing to death and I felt they needed the nourishment of something healthy like doughnuts from the Dough-Nut-Hut to sustain them. They’ve been very grateful and Stephanie Weir was down there too, making a scene, throwing rocks and garbage at the passing cars, yelling things that I didn’t think any human being could or would say to a passing vehicle.
Seriously, she was very sweet and thanked me for the doughnuts. I said, “Hey! Hands off! They’re for the Writers, you greedy guts!!” No, again I jest. She was cool. I told her we mustn’t have the bleached bones of the Writers puncturing our tires in the morning as we drove onto the lot, so I was bringing them doughnuts to keep them alive.
I feel pangs of guilt, because I haven’t yet taken any to the Main Gate on Alameda, or the Buena Vista Gate. Perhaps I’ll address this guilt in the coming weeks.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I hate to get off-topic but where are you supposed to send in questions to?
December 20th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Sean…I know I speak for everyone at the Riverside gate when I say…Thank You. Not just for bringing by the donuts, but you’ve always left a written message on the box to say who it was from (the editors). That actually picks up our spirits a great deal. We always comment how we feel as if we are the forgotten gate. Your donut drop-offs make us forget that, and keep us smiling as those chocolate frosted fuel our back and forth daily grind.
Oh…and I’ve already spoken to the strike captains at the Alameda and Buena Vista gates…they are totally cool if you only bring us the donuts here on riverside…uh yeah, that’s what they said…really…I swear.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Glenn, thank you for your thank you. It is my pleasure to bring fellow (albeit Guild!) Writers sustenance. Sugar is a powerful weapon. I will try to continue to do so in future. Then I’ll walk up to Alameda and Buena Vista and say, “Hey! They have fresh doughnuts on Riverside! Ha Ha Ha HAAAA!”
Seriously, I wish you guys the best and hope an agreement can be reached soon that will work, because it’s getting cold out there. We Editors have never been on a strike, and if ever we did, it would be a catastrophe. Then again, they would just hire off the street – little thirteen year old twits who’ve taken video editing courses, have never touched film in their lives, and who wouldn’t know any of the best edited classics from the past 80 years if you hit them over the head with a goldberg can containing a flammable nitrate print of one.
Have a Good Christmas, and we’ll see you next week! Monday and Tuesday will be dead days here at the Mouse.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:37 am
“That question doesn’t make sense. If a union became an employer, they would inevitably have a conflict of interest between pleasing shareholders/making money and securing boundries for writers.”
Well, the answer makes sense. The union itself wouldn’t start a production company, but writers can do it themselves or convince those with funding to do it.
I think it makes perfect sense, especially as it becomes more and more possible to shoot for lower and lower cost with things like digital video. And a major cost is the rest of the talent like directors and actors – if you can offer a deal where the talent gets more ownership of the content as a tradeoff for some or all of the upfront paycheck, it keeps costs down even more.
This sort of approach is best suited, at least initially, to projects like comedies where the focus is mainly on the actors’ performance and dialogue. Look at the Christopher Guest mockumenteries, they built few if any sets, the costumes were generally things they went out and bought, and the actors were willing to work for cheap because they wanted to make the project possible.
I don’t see any reason why that sort of project couldn’t be done independent of a studio and distributed online. Especially if someone like Steve Jobs decides he wants to start getting original content to distribute from iTunes, maybe even invest in the production if he can attract decent talent.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:53 am
Hey John, I wish you and your friends a great Christmas season and a Happy New Year!!!
December 21st, 2007 at 11:04 am
John~ Nice headshot on the main page of the WGAw! Hope you get some (poster boy) model residuals from that…
Kiddin’ aside, I wish you and all here a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah!
Will download some flyers from the WGA site this break & pass ‘em around in support. I hope/pray all can be resolved soon in the new year.
Cheers
December 21st, 2007 at 11:20 am
It’s very encouraging to read about screenwriters going directly to investors. The Northwest Screenwriters Guild (www.nwsg.org) has been looking into this. Over the past dozen or so years, our members have won and placed in quite a few contests and had their screenplays optioned.
Lately we’ve been researching how to put together a portfolio of our screenplays with each entry having a title, logline, coverage, and cost estimate. The idea is to present investors with enough information and selection for them to make a decision to buy a screenplay. The coverage and cost estimate are the hard parts and are still being worked out.
Since Seattle is a city of millionaires, venture capitalists, and angel investors, we’re hoping we can sell our screenplays the way inventors sell their inventions. This is a model similar to the one used by Nathan Myrvold’s company, Intellectual Ventures, except we are a non-profit and would take no money from the deals.
John, we’d like to know what you think of this model.
Thanks
December 21st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
If there was another phrase other than “paradigm-shift” or “sea change” or even the old “silver-lining” now is the time for it. Like the old studio bosses of the thirties, the majors today control the medium. No way around it.
But there’s something happening in Europe — an opening for screenwriters that does not and could not exist in Hollywood. The EU provides grants and financial assistance (and respect) for all those engaged in the pre-production phase of cinema. In the US, we have to pay to have a gatekeeper read our material, and scribble some mechanized response to problems to which we are already more than aware. A well placed Hollywood producer (i.e., deal-maker) said that it is easier to get a project financed than it is to get a script read by someone who actually makes decisions.
Meanwhile in the EU, governments have allocated a Trust to disperse tens of millions of Euros (could well be in the hundreds of millions) for story idea development, script writing and all pre-production development. Why are we hanging around the gates of Hollywood begging for crumbs? We should turn our backs on these ingrates, get organized and create a pre-production foundation in, say, France, and put the art back into the craft of screenwriting.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
You know the writers’ strike is having an effect on popular culture (and American politics) when…
http://xkcd.com/360/
(links to a ‘A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language’)
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Just a couple of my two cents:
In regards to venture capitalists, there are now hedge funds being set up for making movies now. One of them is indievest(.com). They promise access to the movie, premieres etc. All they want is money to film “quality” films. Insider access to Hollywood- if you have the mega millions.
I saw this on CNBC(“Fast MOney”). They have also given air time to Gavin Palone(producer- Panic Room, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc.) Watching his opinion on the strike was hillarious. He was conceited, pompous and even called the strike a failure. It took almost three weeks for CNBC to be proper journalists and interview the President of WGAw for his side of the story.