I’m on Strike! (Thank God, I’ve Got a Day Job)
Those privileged S.O.B.'s - the screen and television writers - are out on strike again for the third time since the 1970s. What's their complaint now? The high cost of sushi? Roger L. Simon - who has been a Writers Guild member since BSW (Before Star Wars) - tells us why we should care... a little.
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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’ 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’ strike (1988, 22 weeks) lots of folks lost their jobs who weren’t 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.
And talk on the street here is this one could be longer. The reason is “new media” - we are in the age of YouTube and no one knows where it’s headed. Movie and television execs have seen the near demise of the music industry and it has struck fear in their hearts. It should. Their power has always stemmed from controlling the means of distribution. The Internet is threatening that. Soon enough the lunatics may be running the asylum - and if you’ve seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, you know what that means. (Don’t worry: Jack will survive.)
For their part, the writers still smart over a negotiation a couple of decades ago when they foolishly took an incremental gain in minimums instead of a decent percentage of the videocassette royalties. At the time they thought that the home video market wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. That lame-brained decision has had tremendous ramifications in the DVD era. (Estimated DVD revenue this year is $16.4 billion.) Compared to the author of a best-selling book, a screen or television writer currently gets peanuts from the sale of a best-selling DVD. And given the notoriously devious studio accounting system, there is virtually no chance they will make it back as a percentage of profits. The studios, meanwhile, have been making out like the proverbial bandits.
And now, with any even bigger market of downloaded movies and television looming…
Wait.
Whine, whine, you’re probably saying. Why should we feel sorry for a bunch of plutocrat writers who sit around their swimming pools, downing designer sushi while typing left-wing drivel for the masses on their trendy black MacBooks? They can take their Priuses and… Well, I take your point. But I will in return point out that a solid percentage of those 12,000 WGA members work intermittently as writers at best. While not necessarily starving artists, they are far from plutocrats. Only a small group fits that tony profile and most of them are executive producers (creators) of television series, a form under serious threat by “reality shows.” For the rest, these residual profits from DVD sales and, potentially, Internet downloads could be the difference between making your mortgage or not.
Which leads to another point - who are their adversaries - “the producers”? When you read coverage of the strike, you almost always see it framed as writers vs. producers. But the latter is misleading. Most working producers couldn’t care less about the strike; in fact suffer from it. They’re unemployed too. And many writers are writer-producers (”hyphenates”) or aspire to be, particularly in television where that increases creative control and income by considerable degree. The “producers” referred to in the news coverage are the AMPTP - Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. They are not producers at all in the conventional sense, but brass from the studios and companies themselves, at this juncture almost entirely giant corporations like Sony and Viacom.
This has radically changed the nature of negotiations with the studios via the AMPTP. I already saw this in action when I was a member of the WGA negotiating committee back in the early nineties - a certain corporate quality was infiltrating the process - and that state of affairs is undoubtedly more extreme now. Hollywood was indeed once a “company town” in the purer sense where most everyone knew each other or knew someone who did. When negotiations were about to break down, everyone knew to call Lew - Lew being Lew Wasserman, the one-time agent of Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan who rose through the ranks to head MCA Universal. Lew would fix things so everybody in the company town would be, if not happy, at least civil - so when they ran into each other at the Trader Vic’s bar, fistfights wouldn’t break out.
No more.
For Sony, Universal (now NBC Universal, once part of Matsushita and Vivendi), Paramount (Viacom) , Disney/ABC etc., writers, actors and directors are only a tiny part of a much larger picture. The people the WGA will be negotiating with are not principals or even friendly enemies in a company town. Far from it. They are factotums way down the corporate food chain. Lew’s world is long gone and his Universal now seems more interested in building two billion dollar theme parks in Abu Dhabi than in making movies like The Sting or American Graffiti.
So the situation is grim and the future unclear. But unfortunately for the writers, the audience will not suffer greatly, especially in the short run (unless they are late night talk show devotees - Leno and Letterman, not willing to rely on adlibs, are said to be headed for reruns.) More “reality shows” (another area of contention - the Guild says they are actually written and wants to cover them) will undoubtedly appear to make up for the lack of fictional fare.
In the long run, who can say? There’s always YouTube. Like many others, I predict a lengthy a strike. And as a writer, I am sad to say, I do not predict a Hollywood Ending.
[Watch Roger Simon’s appearance in Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox News talking about this topic here]
Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger.
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47 Comments
RE:Hollywood gets no sympathy from me.
Nov 5, 2007 - 12:47 am syn:The current generation of writers are masters at creating garbage. We’d be much better off if they found new lines of work.
I will not come to the defense of people whose crap has led to the closing of the American mind; Hollywood gets no sympathy from me either.
That said, as an audience member I’ve been on strike against the entertainment industry be it Sony, NBC, Universal, Paramount and their actors, writers, directors for two years now and my life has never been better.
Nov 5, 2007 - 5:20 am joe bagadonuts:Will no one think of the children!
Who will pen Count Count’s lines?
“One, one lame assed writer, Ha, ha ha.”
Nov 5, 2007 - 7:34 am chiefpayne:Frankly, I could care less. They say we’ll either watch reality TV shows (never have and never will myself) or reruns (if it is the older shows, I have no problem with that).
I would rather watch reruns of shows from the 60s, 70s and 80s myself.
Nov 5, 2007 - 7:45 am DoktorNo:The good days of Hollywood are gone. Period.
Nov 5, 2007 - 8:16 am Jami Hussein:Many times in the last few months I’ve thought ‘I have one hundred channels and nothing I want to see that I haven’t seen before, many times.’ I doubt anyone will care if the reruns start a few months earlier and last months longer than normal. However it will be good news for BBC America.
Nov 5, 2007 - 9:23 am DaveG:Let’s em cake. I broke down and watched The Simpsons last night just to be sociable with my daughter. I regretted it.
Poor writing, unveiled digs at a foreign policy and military that I happen to agree with, and other dreck.
If I want unfunny comedy mixed in with disagreeable political messages, I’ll read Doonesbury.
I’d rather watch Hogan’s Heroes reruns - they knew whose side they were on.
Nov 5, 2007 - 9:25 am Scott:Strike? Oh well, there’s always TCM, Discovery, History, Science Channel, AMC, Food Network, PBS, BBC America and Netflix.
It isn’t 1988 anymore.
Nov 5, 2007 - 9:52 am RWillis:So the situation is grim and the future unclear? Won’t creative business owners figure out other businesses to get into?
Looks to me like a bright and certain future. Great writers will always find work, just maybe not in Hollywood. Poor writers will deliver pizza made and sold by creative business owners.
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:16 am sharinlite:I absolutely have to go along with the folks above. I, too, don’t watch more than 3-4 hours of “network” shows (CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds) anyway. I do watch lots of cable channels including the reruns. I have no sympathy for the entire industry. The actors don’t care, the big corporations don’t care the viewing public doesn’t care so what’s the big deal. It isn’t like there has been any fair or quality in this business for decades. Look at the “movie” industry…millions paid to make something no one will pay to see.
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:21 am AJ:The sooner the movie industry goes away the better for our children and sanity. Few things have more negative effects on society than TV, the media and especially Hollywood. As a right-leaning site, I’d like to think the editors agree.
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:27 am ShannonLove:Its kind of a shame. From my sampling of this fall’s TV offerings it looks like someone rediscovered that good writing makes for more watch-able shows.
Even so, most of the TV I watch isn’t written per se. I didn’t notice the last big strike and I don’t think I will notice this one.
I do find it creepy and perhaps politically dangerous that one organization, the screen writers guild, exerts so much control over the major organs of speech in the modern world.
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:34 am vivictius:I really cant find it in me care. I dont remember the last good movie I saw and TV is even worse.
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:53 am Lem: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
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:58 am Ken Begg:I’ve never understood the snootiness regarding reality shows. As with scripted programs, there are good ones and bad ones. They may not be one’s cup of tea, but the idea that not watching them in some fashion makes you a more advanced being frankly bewilders me.
Nov 5, 2007 - 10:58 am RebeccaH:Sadly, I think this will hasten the end of the cineplexes, which I think are destined to go the way of drive-ins anyway. If it also damages dramatic episodic television, I’ll hate that, because that’s my primary source of visual entertainment.
Nov 5, 2007 - 11:05 am Tim:A pox on both their houses. Since I only spend 6 to 8 hours on network TV weekly anyway, and 3 of them are DWTS to humor my wife, I doubt I will notice the strike much. Nick an Nite, Food Network, History channel, science channelx2 or 3, I wonder how long before they are losing audience share they will never recover?
To the writers: If you are so good, write novels, the better they sell, the better you get paid, novel concept. (get it huh huh, sorry I blame it on Baen’s Bar) If you are mediocre, you are probably already overpaid.
To the producers: If you want good scripts, you need to pay well enough that you attract top talent. Otherwise, you get….basically what we have today.
To the rest of the audience : LET’S GO ON STRIKE! NO NETWORK TV UNTIL THEY SETTLE! NO MOVIE THEATER TIL THEY SETTLE! DOWN WITH THE BOUGE.. however you spell that French word…Down with the Proletariat……VIVA LA CONSUMER!
Nov 5, 2007 - 11:17 am Daniel:You forgot Manhattan Beach.
Nov 5, 2007 - 11:37 am Curly Smith:The writers are foolishly trying to hasten the TV entertainment death spiral. Typical union behavior, damage the industry with mediocre performance and then kill the golden goose for one last feast. You’d thing the writer’s union would learn something from the UAW but they’re a union.
Take a look at the New York Times Stock Chart (a 5 year chart is here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NYT&t=5y)
Consider the evening network news broadcasts — the networks have lost 75% of their audience over the last 30 years.
Roger mentions the near demise of the music business but misses the reason.
Think about what a “hit” TV show is today versus 10 years ago…
Think about the number of episodes the network buys and how many shows are picked up for full seasons.
The reason for the NYT, network news, music business, and TV entertainment demise is that their products are crap and they routinely insult a very large percentage of their potential audience. There is no originality, no creativity, no vision and it all results from the same thing — liberal groupthink. Watch one show, you’ve seen them all; listen to one song, you’re heard them all.
I may be an ignorant hick but I’ve learned how to turn the TV and the radio off. I’ve learned to read other newspapers and to read books for entertainment. Why should I spend time listening to freedom-hating moronic children insult me and my values?
Hollywood activists turned the studios into “message” promoters. The population doesn’t approve of your message, and it won’t pay for it. Check the NYT’s stock chart again to see your future, lower and lower ad rates for fewer and fewer viewers until you finally reach bankruptcy. You won’t be missed. The old studios, however, will continue to be greatly missed.
Nov 5, 2007 - 11:49 am Roger L. Simon:“The reason for the NYT, network news, music business, and TV entertainment demise is that their products are crap and they routinely insult a very large percentage of their potential audience. There is no originality, no creativity, no vision and it all results from the same thing — liberal groupthink.”
Curly, I don’t disagree with that at all. But there are other reasons as well - like the obvious one that there are many more choices now about what to do with your time.
Nov 5, 2007 - 12:04 pm ZZMike:For me, the most telling quote is:
“- Leno and Letterman, not willing to rely on adlibs -”
It may well be the case that TV (as an entertainment-delivery industry) is about to go the way of newspapers (as a new-delivery agency).
If recent new TV shows have been crashing like Japanese Zeroes in WW II, what can anybody expect for 2 or 3 months of re-runs?
If the brilliant Producers had any sense (which would probably disqualify them from being Brilliant Producers), they’d start re-running things like Playhouse 90, Twilight Zone, Carol Burnett, Ernie Kovacs, Jack Paar, … heck, even Ed Sullivan.
Maybe even “Lies and Whispers” (which I haven’t seen yet.
Nov 5, 2007 - 12:31 pm dymphna:I found a great idea by an economics prof who has a blog. He suggests bloggers could fill in for the striking writers. I came up with a few candidates:
A Striking Opportunity
Nov 5, 2007 - 12:38 pm Bobby:AJ:
The sooner the movie industry goes away the better for our children and sanity. Few things have more negative effects on society than TV, the media and especially Hollywood. As a right-leaning site, I’d like to think the editors agree.
AJ — you’re a right-leaning site?
Nov 5, 2007 - 1:29 pm Skipper:Writing? You mean that the drivel on TV is actually WRITTEN (or is is wrought?) by someone?
Nov 5, 2007 - 1:36 pm Jim:Writers imitating Teamsters? The mind races with script ideas…
Nov 5, 2007 - 2:30 pm SEW:Why don’t the producers simply use the Daily Kos or Reuters? The NYT and WaPo seem to, and everything one reads on liberal blogs, not to mention the conservative blogs polluted by the neo liberals.
It’s all the same crap anyway.
Nov 5, 2007 - 2:35 pm schnargley:But…but…how will I get my daily dose of BDS? How will my conscience be constantly cauterized with the idea that marital fidelity is bad and promiscuity is good? That the only meaning in life is having lots of sex, a “career,” and a lot of junk?
How will we all live without all the stifling-yet-soothing banality?
Nov 5, 2007 - 2:59 pm Curly Smith:Roger, I understand what you’re saying, and maybe it’s just the “chicken and egg”, but those other entertainment options wouldn’t flourish unless the product on TV drove the viewers away. Any successful business will spawn competition and leisure time is certainly an area with a lot of potential for exploitation. However, most other leisure activities require money or effort versus just sitting in front of the TV for a few hours of entertainment. I may be wrong but I think most people will do what’s easy unless something forces them to change, and it’s my contention that people sought out other activities because those that run the TV entertainment industry forced them to.
I’m sure you know the old quote better than I do that goes something like “studios can either be in the entertainment business or they can be in the message business”. The successful studios chose the entertainment business, but somewhere in the late 80’s the movies and TV started moving toward the message business and it’s been a disaster. It’s also such expected outcome that anybody but a genius would have foreseen it.
The entertainment business reminds me a lot of the automobile industry in the late 70’s. The auto industry sold a lousy product, firmly convinced that the consumer would buy whatever they sold (and like it!) regardless of the quality or price. The auto industry learned that the consumer runs the market and the automakers still haven’t recovered. The entertainment business is in serious trouble because once consumers leave and develop new habits it’s going to be extremely difficult to get them back. In fact, the entertainment industry largely has nothing but contempt for the average consumer. Even stupid consumers eventually pick up the subtle hints…
I hope broadcast TV isn’t dead because I don’t think we can stand 956 channels showing paid programming for the latest Ronco kitchen gadget. But, if broadcast TV is dead, then it was suicide and the next 5 years will be rather unpleasant for all in and around Hollywood.
Nov 5, 2007 - 3:23 pm patagonianplato:“Whine, whine, you’re probably saying. Why should we feel sorry for a bunch of plutocrat writers who sit around their swimming pools, downing designer sushi while typing left-wing drivel for the masses on their trendy black MacBooks? They can take their Priuses and… Well, I take your point.”
I’m not sure you do. Hollywood has made utter garbage at least 90% of the time for at least 10 years, if not more. I will provide just one factoid. In the last two decades, more actresses have won the academy award for portraying a prostitute than for portraying any other profession. Why do current Hollywood writers have such a obsession with prostitution? For someone who has been a lover of the cinema since he was a child, it is sickening. It would be a blessing if the writers never went back to work and that Hollywood ceases to exist. Of course, this is too much to hope for.
Nov 5, 2007 - 4:19 pm Jim Rockford:Roger — Nielsen has the ratings data — by a fairly substantial margin men, particularly young men, have simply abandoned ALL TV largely for video games.
Among women viewership is fragmented among shows like Desperate Housewives and say, Home and Garden TV. But men and particularly young men have eschewed even History Channel for the Xbox and Playstation. [You’ll certainly recall the fight the Networks had circa 2003-4 over the male flight from TV]
I would argue the issue is not political but social. The “Harvard Mafia” and vast social distance Hollywood writers and producers have won’t allow them to make shows or movies that appeal to particularly men.
Young men like a flat social hierarchy because it makes the competition for young women more fair/equal. Hollywood’s disdain for ordinary people and particularly working class and middle class men is legendary and the real reason they are in decline.
The strike *could* have been averted but the Producers or rather the corporate folks as you point out fear they can’t make money unless they rip off the writers and actors and such.
[There is a huge gap between our social/political elite and the ordinary person, and IMHO accounts for the sterile stasis of music, literature, movies, TV, and much else creative. The taboos of the nomenklatura class that runs things makes for Stalinesque art.]
Nov 5, 2007 - 6:53 pm George Glass:Here’s what writers go through… They work unpaid for years on their samples, hoping to get them read and possibly (if there’s a miracle) made into a movie. Or they toil for equal years trying to get on the staff of a TV show. These gigs usually end quickly, with work extremely hard to find afterwards. Without residuals to keep them going during this harder time, writers won’t be able to work on future scripts. The writer/creator of Desperate Housewives lived off his residuals for years so he could create a show that millions of people love and one that makes the studio even more millions.
The studios are asking for the right to stream online a movie or TV show in it’s entirety with advertisements they make money off of, and call it “Promotion” for the movie or TV show. Showing a trailer or clip is promotion. Maybe showing an episode of a complicated serialized show like “Lost” so viewers don’t fall behind might be promotional (if there are no ads.) But if the studios make money off of it, how can they say it’s promotional? It’s profit. Pure and simple. Profit they should share with those that created it and need to make a tiny piece off of it so they can create more.
One day soon, all shows will be streamed into your TV/computer box from the Internet. You will have unlimited choice as to what you want to watch (for a monthly fee you’ll have access to a studio’s library. Like cable, but better.) How greedy are the studios that they want to cut the writers (who create the shows in the first place) out completely by calling this “promotion” and not paying a cent?
If the studio heads care so much about their companies, let them give up their $65 million annual salary for a year. That would pay for all the residuals for a year (heck, for several years.) There’s six companies, each year one of the ridiculously overpaid moguls can take a turn. Not fair? More fair than asking thousands of people in Hollywood to lose their jobs because of their greed. And I’m sure the shareholders would rather support keeping product coming in then shutting down and putting people out of work.
Nov 5, 2007 - 7:36 pm Robert M Blevins:Well, I’m sure they’ll work it all out eventually. I have to disagree a bit with the author of the article concerning the 1988 agreement. No one could foresee the explosion of the DVD and home-based theatre market.
Dumb Hollywood producers…there are still a few artists among them, but too many studios are just cranking out mindless garbage they think will suck the greatest number of folks into the 10-buck a ticket movie lines.
At Adventure Books of Seattle, we also protest the lack of good science fiction films being produced right now. The world is changing fast, with fresh ideas around every corner.
And all they can come up with is another Pirates of the Carribean flick, linked to a theme park ride, yada, yada, yada.
Never should have allowed supersized corporations loose with the keys to the film lots and sound stages…
Nov 5, 2007 - 7:39 pm freetoken:Possibly the WGA is about to discover how unneeded they are, in this first part of the 21st century.
Unlike many others above I am not going to slam the writers… certainly most want to do good work and with so many of them vying for the studios’ business it has to be hard work.
Rather, it is simply time and technology that has made their demands passe. The world is full of TV and film production; the whole world does English now. Many segments of American society get their entertainment from other sources now, as noted above about the young males.
I don’t own a TV. Anything I watch is done via the internet. And, with that ability, I’d just as much watch something from Canada or the UK as much as the US.
My prediction: the WGA will not be cheerful over how this plays out, but will eventually end their strike accepting whatever meager offerings the big companies are willing to do.
Nov 6, 2007 - 2:30 am Vexorg:I have to admit that I’ve not been a particularly dilligent consumer of Hollywood’s product over the past decade or so (about as close as I get to watching network TV is an occasional episode of The Price is Right) but if the situation really gets as bad as some people suggest, I might be willing to lend a helping hand…
Nov 6, 2007 - 11:21 am patagonianplato:“Unlike many others above I am not going to slam the writers… certainly most want to do good work and with so many of them vying for the studios’ business it has to be hard work.”
Hard Work? Based upon what standard?
Nov 6, 2007 - 4:06 pm Phillep:Good riddance to bad rubbish. Maybe the directors will go on strike as well.
Nov 7, 2007 - 7:48 am weSwinger:George Glass and Roger have it right. Good entertainment is valuable. If most of you are such purists that you can say “a pox on both your houses”, it just means that you are not the target audience anyway.
It is going to be a long time before the new media come up with anything near the production values of major Hollywood studios.
Nov 7, 2007 - 11:18 am patagonianplato:weSwinger :
“George Glass and Roger have it right. Good entertainment is valuable. If most of you are such purists that you can say “a pox on both your houses”, it just means that you are not the target audience anyway.”
I used to go to the cinema all of the time. Your expression “target audience” can mean a number of things. But, the most important meaning is supposed to be related to ticket sales, as in revenue. After all, didn’t big business take over Hollywood? In my case, they lose approximately $350.00 every year because I refuse to go any longer. And I assure you, I am not an isolated case.
Usually, businesses do not survive very long when they operate in this fashion.
Nov 7, 2007 - 3:29 pm Holly:I SUPPORT THE WRITERS!!!
Whether you like what is being written or not, it is a matter of justice. These writers are simply asking for a [i]very[/i] small percentage of the millions the companies are making off of them.
If you don’t like what’s being written, be vocal in your support of whatever shows or movies you do like and support programs like Act One that train Christian writers.
Nov 8, 2007 - 5:25 am Holly:Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to respond to this:
Tim:To the writers: If you are so good, write novels, the better they sell, the better you get paid, novel concept.
Actually, that’s exactly what the writers are fighting for. The residuals that they are striking over are like royalties. If their show fails, if no one downloads it or buys the DVD, they don’t get any more money. They only benefit if people are watching the show.
Nov 8, 2007 - 6:54 am Dave:Tim:To the writers: If you are so good, write novels, the better they sell, the better you get paid, novel concept.
This is a fairly ironic statement considering the current suit against Regnery by five conservative authors alleging unpaid royalties.
These situations are related. The fight is about fair credit and compensation for the creators of intellectual property - something I consider to be a core American value. If you work hard to create something, you should be fairly rewarded for it. Whether or not you consider the product to be liberal or conservative, the fight is something you should support.
Nov 8, 2007 - 9:45 am RedInLa:To all the writer haters out there, have you considered that the content sucks because of the conglomerates that run the studios? Writers just don’t “get” to put shows on the air. They just don’t “get” to make movies. The system out here has been gang raped by the system. No longer is the content ruled by creatives or execs who understand story..it’s ruled by marketing departments, lawyers, accountants, and focus groups. And the viewers, too. You watch DWTS, you GET DWTS. If you have an idea for a tv show or movie, it gets run by the marketing department so they can determine how many toys and keychains they can sell to you and your kids. And sorry to burst your bubble, but most writers out here are not sitting around their Bel Air mansions sipping Dom - that’s where the moguls live. If they are lucky to be working, they are doing just that, working because next season, and the next season after that, they probably won’t be.
And I’m not a WGA writer. Just an unemployed mid-level entertainment person who is having trouble finding a job since the studios, etc. have slashed and burned the creative departments and let production go foreign.
Nov 8, 2007 - 10:34 am salmo:Hey, patagonianplato, your idiotic rambling made it into one of my favorite blogs:
mightygodking.com
And if you poke around a little, you can find a linkdump of everything you need to know about the strike. It’s utterly justified.
Nov 9, 2007 - 5:50 am gus3:Tim: “To the writers: If you are so good, write novels…”
That’s like telling a painter to start a sculpture instead of painting. Maybe they are both art, but each form requires unique talents. Michelangelo was/is the exception, not the rule.
Nov 9, 2007 - 9:15 am syn:So, writers are going on strike to get a larger share of profits from an industry which gang rapes the writer, what’s the point of working in Hollywood if the content is no longer ruled by creatives or execs.
That said, given “Lions for Lambs” block-buster marketing budget I gather this to mean Redford, Streep, Cruise would not be considered as the ‘creative’ elements in Hollywood?
Nov 9, 2007 - 10:51 am David:Another point to consider is the fact that TV shows are creative works under copyright. If we liken the situation of the Writers Strike and how they are paid to that of the download debacle of the music industry, I think there can be some common ground.
Just like the music indudtry, the TV industry has benefited from new distribution methods (Internet, cell phones, iPods, etc.). Both industries can be viewed from a copyright perspective.
The existance of copyright is to have a certain fixed time in which the creator can make income from his/her creation. The reason for copyright is to allow authors and inventors certain rights temporarily, which in the long run should foster new works. In the past, this limited time was 7 years with a 7-year extension. However, due to changes in the law, it is now life of the author plus 70 years.
These copyright extensions prevent creative works from falling into the public domain. This is why a show such as I Love Lucy continues to make money for all those involved.
Copyright was never intended to give creators a perpetual stream of income over a lifetime, nor to their heirs. Nowadays, a show that is over 50 years old can be repackaged and be redistributed in umpteen formats, thus allowing various companies and individuals to profit unendingly. While I am for everyone getting their fair share of the pie, I do think the way in which copyright and royalties (residuals) are handled should be reexamined.
Finally, many entertainment industries (TV, music, film, etc) have sat around while the Internet and its new distribution methods escaped their comprehension. Moreover, there is creativity beyond of Hollywood and New York and its time to think outside the box.
Just like the music industry has found out, the “big companies” are no longer needed. Actors and writers may want to consider coming together and create their own standards without major studios. It used to be that recording artists had to give the majority cut to their label, but now, many are free of their contracts and can make their own decisions. I would like to see this scenario translate to other forms of entertainment, such as TV and movies.
Nov 10, 2007 - 4:25 pm patagonianplato:Dear Salmo,
Thanks for your rude post.
I stand by my statement.
1995 Mira Sorvino, for her role in Mighty Aphrodite. Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
She won.
1996 Elizabeth Shue, for her role in Leaving Las Vegas. Best Actress in a Leading
Role. She was nominated but did not win. You got me there.
1997 Kim Basinger, for her role in L.A. Confidential. Best Actress in a Supporting
Role. She won.
2003 Charlize Theron, for her role in Monster. Best Actress in a Leading role. She won.
I will not waste my time posting this at the site you mentioned. Maybe the same person who referenced my other post at this other site will issue a correction. Or even better, you could post this there yourself.
I look forward to your next post!
Nov 10, 2007 - 6:16 pm