Close up your laptops, ladies and gentlemen, and get out those walking shoes. The writers are on strike again in company town Los Angeles (and New York) with fourteen studio sites scheduled for picketing Monday at 8AM from Culver City to Burbank.
Entertainment journos like Nikki Finke – who is doing a great job covering the Writers‚Äô Strike, by the way – love to call Los Angeles a “company town” for show biz the way Washington is for politics. It’s not, really. Vastly bigger than the DC metro area, LA, city and county, is a sprawling megalopolis of nearly ten million (not counting illegals) with more Koreans than any city but Seoul and more Iranians than anywhere but Tehran. Almost half that population is of Hispanic or Latino origin. Few of these people have anything even remotely to do with Hollywood. (Well, some of the Iranians do.)
Still, the last time there was a writers‚Äô’strike (1988, 22 weeks) lots of folks lost their jobs who weren‚Äôt writers – dry cleaners, restaurant workers, you name it – all the people who service the supposedly privileged of the entertainment industry. Businesses closed down that never opened again. A strike by the 12,000-member Writers’ Guild has its consequences, especially if it runs as long as the 1988 one did.
Read the rest at PJM….
In the words of Sarah Silverman
“God did not give us illegal immigrants for us to abuse them… he has given them to us to enjoy them.”
Actually, it was probably one of her writers that came up with that.
From my observation on my visits to LA, valet parking is the biggest industry in town.
Roger, where will you be walking the line. I’ve got some leftover carne asada and would be more than happy to bring some by. Don’t want you to be weakened by lack of food. I’m not a union guy but it looks like those signs get heavy after a while.
I’ve also liked those pictures from union walkouts where you have a bunch of guys around a 55 gal barrel and there’s firing coming out for warmth. I think that is sooooooooo cool. Do you writer guys have those things. I have one I use for bbq’ing so can bring over tonight. It was cool here in the Valley this morning so only trying to help.
signed
Non Union Guy
Amazon was up earlier today.
Oviously somebody (playing with other peoples money) thought that because of the strike people were going to pick up a book.
People have been known to do desperate things at desperate times, but taking civilization back is not one of them
Watching you right now on Cavuto, who seems to be having a little trouble following your point about the internet.
I saw the remake of 3:10 to Yuma last week (terrific movie – cast, screenplay, sets, cinematography), and saw that Halsted Welles was credited in the remake as well as the original. One reviewer said he thought Welles might be a pseudonym, perhaps for one of the blacklisted writers. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I sure hope you and the other writers can achieve a fair contract. All the best.
Roger, you did a good synopsis of your opinon concerning the
strike. If only Cavuto would have listened instead of cutting you
off to hear his own voice, it was irratating to say the least. I think he owes you a big apology. What you did get across was so logical & too the point, ” no one wins “.
Best wishes for a short strike in a very troubled time…
I have no opinion on who is “right” (if anyone) in this matter, but I am facinated to see how it is going to play out. There has been much discussion in the LA Times about what this may mean for what used to be called the “Big Three” (ABC, NBC, CBS) TV season, and how audiences may react. My hunch is that if folks can’t get their fix of , they will just pop in a DVD or some other alternative. The thought that kept going thru my mind was “what if they gave a strike and nobody cared?”
And what if no one cared… because they couldn’t tell?!! My daughter just discovered that we have the BBC-America in our cable package – Doctor Who, here we come!
Seriously, there is so much there, we can watch it for months without falling back on the ‘Big 3′ or the big whatever. There were only one or two current shows we’re really set on watching, and we can get along very well without. For months, and months and months, if it comes to that.
My husband is a member of IATSE and we would really like to stand together with the writers. However, the timing of the writers strike is poor, selfish and self serving. We do think that they should be paid fairly for their work. However, by failing to wait a few months until several of the other union agreements expire, they are weakening their strike and really, really hurting their crews. Most of the other guilds (IATSE included) have “no strike” provisions in their contracts. This means that if they do not continue to work they are subject to the immediate and permanent loss of their jobs. So that even if the WGA gets a satisfactory resolution and goes back to work, the crew member remains without a job. If they honor the picket line then they cannot receive unemployment benefits. Since crews get no residuals they have to work consistently to get paid. It is ridiculous of the WGA to expect crew to support them under these conditions. If they had waited until they had the strength of the other unions behind them then the effect would have been much stronger and this whole thing could have ended much sooner. The writers are imposing an injury upon the crew that will slowly but surely bleed them to death and cost them their homes. The notion is good…the timing is stupid. The argument that without the writers there would be no show means nothing to me because without the rest of the crew the show would never make the screen. Everybody is important to the product and if we truly are brothers than the WGA should have considered this!
Hey Rog, I’m sure most aren’t reading this old stuff, but just heard that Jessie Jackson showed up at a picket line and said something to the affect that this strike was part of a bigger problem.
When’s Sharpton showing up and do you guys really need this type of support?
Rob Long has an essay over on WSJOnline. Here is how he winds up.
Well, maybe the audience will, ’cause then Hollywood’ll finally learn what entertains.