Last Monday I brought you my conversation with Reservation Road director Terry George as he discussed his view on the upcoming writers’ strike in Hollywood. George is on the negotiating committee of the Writer’s Guild and gave us our first real idea of what exactly was causing the big raucous – residuals – and the New York Times has posted an article talking a little more about the whole situation.
First off, they tell us that a mail-in strike authorization vote is set to conclude on Thursday, at which time 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West are widely expected to give their leaders authority to call a strike at any time after the Oct. 31 expiration of their contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. With As the unions sent a message to the studios and networks that any script due beginning in November would probably not be delivered in advance of a strike. Taking that into consideration, the studios stopped making new assignments.
The big problem at the center of the contract renegotiation is that Hollywood producers want to revisit the residual situation, primarily surrounding home video, which has the Guilds not so happy. As the article points out, the writers weren’t exactly pleased with the deal they signed in the early ’80s as videocassettes became widely popular so the new idea that they aren’t going to see any cash until the studios determine the film is profitable is not exactly going to fly. If a studio wanted to I am sure they could declare Titanic as still in the red.
DVDs, of course, are a big portion of the talks, but a major focus has been turned to the future as we move into a digital age in cinema such as programming on the Internet, over cellphones or in media yet to be invented. George pointed this out saying, “The whole industry is moving over to the Internet and the new media and all we are saying is give us our little piece of that and we’d be very happy with it.”
As a matter of fact, the writers are just upset residuals were ever even brought up as Neal Sacharow, director of communications for the Writers Guild of America West, said in a statement, “If the companies were to take their rollbacks off the table, it would be a signal that they were prepared to engage in serious negotiations.”
This is where the problem lies, the companies aren’t backing down and as Hollywood started to think the Writers Guilds wouldn’t strike until next year when they could be joined by the actors and directors it only upset them more which is a large reason why they are expected to strike much sooner, November sooner.
One of the craziest little lines in the “Times” piece actually gave me a laugh. It read as follows:
The path to a solution might well lead back to a study group, if the sides could find a mechanism to establish trust, for instance by positing that any new pay mechanism would be retroactive to the beginning of the contract being negotiated.
Honestly, does anyone think there is any chance of setting up some kind of deal where the studios pay back writers once a deal is figured out? The longer they wait on that the larger that paycheck gets, and is there interest to be paid? Seriously, there is no chance of any retroactive deal if you ask for my opinion.
The “Times” points out that the reason the studios allowed the situation to get so dangerously close to the deadline is because they believed that threatening the residuals system would chase writers back to what studios and networks really wanted: a delay in setting pay schedules for the rapidly changing world of new media. Oops, played that card a little too early folks.
If you want to know why exactly the writers are so upset, just read this little example Terry George gave me, it spells it all out plain as can be:
We had this situation when the DVDs first came in. They went to the unions, in the wake of a strike before that was very acrimonious, oh here’s the DVDs and they cost $80 and it’s new technology so why trust this until it evolves into something else? We’re going to do this little deal until we investigate it, which was so ridiculous, it was like .5 of a percent or something. Then boom, the DVD becomes this big thing… Hotel Rwanda made $23 million at the box-office and $48 million on DVD, and writers and actors were completely excluded from that profit.
For the complete “NY Times” piece click here and for my little chat with Terry George click here. Right now I would think the biggest question to ask is what films will be affected by the strike? Gotta remember the chances for rewrites are out the window, at least by the writers, and films like Transformers 2, which is rumored to be hoping to possibly film a few scenes this year, better hope a script gets turned in quick. There are only 16 days left boys.
Oh, and if you can’t get enough of this strike stuff Kim Masters over at Slate has thrown her two cents in and she is always a fun read. The line, “In other words, give up your puppy, or we’ll kill your baby,” gave me a nice laugh and she boiled it down much quicker than I did outside of my headline saying, “The writers feel they’ve gotten screwed on DVD revenues and don’t want to repeat that experience.” She does also approach it from the television side as well (remember people write TV shows too), and the strike may mean more dreadful reality television! Yeah, not a pretty picture for anyone.
To check out her stance click here.
