Unions

 

"You wanna join the union?  Get the fuck outta here!"

I've said this before and will keep saying it every month: Blood, Sweat, and Tedium has moved operations over to Substack, where you'll find a reworked post from the archives every Sunday along with the usual first Sunday of the month post.  Blogger has just become too glitchy to deal with anymore -- it's a serious pain in the ass -- and once the book is out (hopefully late this summer) I'll close up shop here.  This BS&T archive will remain, but no new posts will appear ... so come on over to Substack, where the water's fine.  You don't have to "subscribe" -- although that's free -- but if you do, each new post will land in your e-mail inbox.  

I landed in Hollywood a young man on a mission back in 1977, but it didn’t take long to realize what a steep climb lay ahead in my effort to break into the film industry. Insiders — the sons and daughters of film industry pros — knew the ropes, but with no internet, film blogs, or other guideposts to show the way, most outsiders came in blind, with no idea where to start. After a few months of spending down my savings while staring at the late summer smog, a tip landed my first PA job — unpaid, of course — which eventually led to more work. Once I’d cobbled together a bit of on-the-job experience, I walked into the office of Local 728 (Set Lighting) with a friend to ask about joining the union … at which point the fat, balding guy behind the desk — who was smoking a cigar and wearing a white wife-beater — laughed us right back out onto the street.

“Screw it,” I figured, “I’ll work non-union,” and that’s what I did.

In time I learned more about the process of joining the union, which sounded simple enough: just work thirty union days in a 12 month period for one production company or studio, then pay an initiation fee, and presto, I’d have a union card from a Hollywood IATSE local. But as usual, the devil was in the details: those union work days were guarded by a serious Catch-22. Under normal circumstances, I couldn’t work a union job without being a member of the union, but couldn’t become a union member without working thirty days on union jobs.

In other words, mission impossible. *

It was hard enough for sons and daughters of long-time union members to get a card back then, let alone an outsider with no industry connections. As the years passed, one thing led to another until circumstances aligned to deliver me a 728 card, but it took a very long time. Still, the payoff was having a health plan, union protection on set regarding meal breaks, meal penalties, and overtime, and eventually a modest pension in retirement. How modest, you might ask? Without getting specific, let’s just say that when adjusted for inflation, my monthly retirement allotment is roughly half of the bi-weekly unemployment checks I received between jobs back in the 80s. So … not much. If it wasn’t for the tender mercies of Social Security — and the fact that I managed to buy a small shack in the woods back in the Before Times when cost of real estate hadn’t yet blown through the roof — I might be living in a cardboard condo under the Sixth Street bridge on the concrete banks of the LA River with the rest of the unwashed, unhoused, and unwanted.

Although I was definitely pissed at the IA’s exclusionary policy back in the day, I understood it. To keep their dues-paying members working, the Hollywood locals put a lid on the number of new members allowed in: the last thing they wanted was to dilute the existing pool of work by allowing a flood of new people to join.

Like most organizations run by humans, unions are often plagued by corruption of one sort or another, but they represent the best and only hope for workers to push back against employers who would otherwise abuse and exploit them to the hilt. In a perfect world where all business owners were far-sighted, humane, and understood the mutual benefits of treating their workers well, unions wouldn’t be necessary … but we don’t live in such a world, and I suspect we never will.

Although unions are a good thing, I have to wonder about a proposal to form a PA union that’s making the rounds of social media these days. Granted, the lot of a Production Assistant is undeniably grim, which I learned firsthand doing two features as a PA back very early in my Hollywood adventure. Tenuously perched on the lowest, most slippery rung of the Hollywood Ladder of Success, a PA works long hours for lousy money doing mundane, boring, thankless tasks on set of in the office. Accorded a minimum of respect, PAs are taken for granted and routinely abused in all sorts of ways — they’re Hollywood’s version of Roman slaves, barely able to afford food and shelter for all their their labor — but just as ancient Rome couldn’t function absent all those slaves, movies and television would not get made without the efforts of PAs.

Most people join a union with the intent of making that craft their career, but there’s the rub: being a PA is such a miserable, underpaid job that the goal of every PA is to get move up the ladder to a position offering more money and respect as soon as possible. Being a PA is a springboard position where a young person gets a good down-and-dirty look at the reality of the film industry while deciding which path to follow. Being a PA is not a career — believe me, nobody wants to be a forty-year-old PA — so how would a PA union work? Why would a PA who can barely afford rent and food shell any of their precious income for an initiation fee and dues in a union they’re hell-bent on outgrowing as soon as possible — and without those funds, how would such a union be able to function?

Okay, maybe my aging brain has been flattened and dulled by too many years of long hours and heavy lifting on set — or too many years of life on earth — but the only way a PA union makes sense to me is if the DGA were to make “Production Assistant” a DGA position as some kind of trainee. The DGA already has a trainee program for wannabe Assistant Directors who might — or might not — have ambitions to move up to directing someday. Having a DGA/PA guild card could offer PAs some protection from being abused and establish a minimum pay scale … but I really wonder if the DGA would have any real interest in tackling this.

I dunno, but if any of you have some thoughts on this, let me know. I’m all ears.

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So, it turns out that PA Bootcamp — classes that teach brand newbies the basics of working on set as a PA — is still in action. I first heard about it a dozen or so years ago when there was considerable sturm und drang on the internet as to whether the course offered a valuable service worth the money or if those who ran it were taking advantage of gullible young Hollywood wannabes.  

I didn’t know then and I don’t know now — some things never change.  Although it’s true that being a PA is neither rocket surgery nor brain science, walking on a working set for the first time with no clue as to the hierarchy or protocols — little but important things like proper walkie-talkie etiquette — is a high stress experience.  A little knowledge can go a long way toward easing the confusion, so … I dunno.  The idea was to “fake it ’til you make it” when I got started, but there was a lot more production going on in Hollywood back then. With all that activity and churn, it wasn’t quite so hard for a brand-newbie — a stranger in a strange land — to be offered enough slack to learn on the job.  Today’s work environment is a lot less forgiving, so being able to act like you know what you’re doing on set could be an advantage for someone just starting out.  I don’t know what PA Bootcamp charges or if it’s worth the money, but if I was new in Hollywood and desperate to get some traction, I’d take a look at their website and give it some thought.  

The way things are nowadays, I wouldn’t advise any young person to consider a film industry career.  Maybe things will improve and maybe not — nobody knows at the moment — but if you’re determined to tilt at the windmills of Hollywood, you’ll want every edge you can get.  

That’s all I’m saying.

* There were two ways to get your 30 days: work as a “permit” when Hollywood was so busy that all the union members were working — at which point the studios could hire off the street — but this only happened twice a year, during pilot season in spring and mid-summer when all the TV shows geared up for a new season and features were going strong. The other way was to work a non-union feature that “turned” — signed a union contract during the course of production — so that each day of work then counted as a union day.

Leave the Gun ...

First, an apology.  Last month's post was goddamned mess, not in terms of content, but formatting. Among other things, there was a blizzard of unintended redundant links, because it turns out I can't just toggle back and forth cutting and pasting between this site and its Substack doppelgänger.  Various iterations of that have been tried, each of which failed in a different way ... which meant double the work for me, since the post has to be custom fit for each respective platform. This post presented similar formatting difficulties, most -- but not all -- of which I was able to fix.  Maybe I'll get it right next month, but that's all the more reason you-all should head on over to the BS&T Substack page rather than this increasinlgy cranky Blogger site.  There's a lot more to read over there, and once the book is out, I'll probably abandon Blogger to put all future posts on SS.

When I was in school making student films back in the Pleistocene, my assumption was that working on movies in Hollywood would be a completely different experience. While student films were a one-step-forward/two-steps-back circus of earnest, enthusiastic ambition hobbled by boundless ignorance and confusion, Hollywood productions would be run by seasoned pros who knew how to make each day’s filming on set unfold in a smoothly efficient manner. My assumptions further concluded that the classic films which lured me to the world of film — Casablanca, The Wild Bunch, The French Connection, Chinatown, and The Godfather — must have been a pure pleasure to work on, right?

Yeah … about that. Despite repeated first-hand experience in just how fucked-up a Hollywood film set can be, the romantic (read: hopelessly naive) illusion that those classic films were somehow blessedly immune from the maladies plaguing all forms of filmmaking persisted in my mind. It’s only now that I’m comfortably ensconced on the sunny beach of retirement that I’ve learned the truth: working on every one of those films was a bitch.

This revelation came from the venerable form of self-education known as “reading books.” Yes, I know … reading printed books is no longer fashionable in these modern screen-addicted times, but I’ve reached the point in life where the socio-cultural whims du jour are a matter of indifference. When I’m not outside shaking my cane and yelling at passing clouds, I even listen to CDs and watch DVDs — so, yeah, I’m a full-on dinosaur. 

My latest this-is-how-it-was read is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, by Mark Seal, and it’s a good one. If you’ve read Bob Evan’s memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture or seen The Offer, a ten-part dramatic series about how The Godfather was made, you know something about it, but Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli goes much deeper without stretching the truth for the sake of ramping up the drama. It’s very well written, and a great read for any fan of The Godfather in particular, or movies in general. 

I hadn’t seen the movie since it first hit theaters in 1972, more than fifty years ago, so after reading the book, I pulled out the DVD and slipped that shiny disc in the player. Although it didn’t feel quite so monumental as it had on that warm summer afternoon so long ago, it’s still a damned good movie — and having learned how hard it was to get that film from screenplay to screen made it all the more impressive. I dunno … maybe there’s a connection between how difficult a particular movie is to make and the quality of the finished product. As the old adage holds: “It takes a lot of pressure to turn a lump of coal into a diamond.” 

On the other hand, consider a phrase I heard on set more than once: “It’s just as hard to make a bad movie as a good one — so let’s make a good one.”

As for reading about those other classics, I highly recommend the following books — they’re all terrific:

We'll Always Have Casablanca

The Wild Bunch

The Friedkin Connection

The Big Goodbye

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The single-take aesthetic has long had adherents among a small cloister of cinephiles deluded enough to declare that Hitchcock’s Rope — the first long-take feature film I saw — is actually a good movie.  Rope is an interesting experiment in crafting a film that appears to be shot in one uninterrupted take — a feat impossible with the technology of the time — but it’s light years from being a good movie. I found it an insufferable bore: a stage play turned into a movie that embodied all the negative aspects of live theater while pointedly ignoring the advantages of film. As evidenced by Twelve Angry Men, a truly great film can be made with a small cast in a single room, but Rope doesn’t measure up … at all. Even the masters occasionally fall flat on their face, so with all due respect to the great Alfred Hitchcock, the only way I’d watch that movie again is if I was strapped to a chair like poor Malcolm McDowell here.

The next long-take feature I became aware of was Birdman, but being perennially behind the times, I have yet to see it, and thus can’t say whether the single-take technique works for that film or is just a gimmick.

Now comes a four-episode show from Britain — each segment an hour long — called Adolescence that also follows the single-take muse. I watched the first episode and was seriously impressed with the astonishing human and technological achievement of shooting a multiple-location, sixty-five-minute drama in one single take — without so much as a single cut — but wasn’t entirely sure that it qualified as “entertainment.” The initial episode is a grim story about a terrible thing that happens to two working-class families in England, a tale that in many ways feels all too real. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch any more … I mean, it’s extremely well done, but given that we’re currently living in a world that seems to be collapsing on itself and going up in flames, “grim” doesn’t necessarily check the “that’s entertainment” box of my watch list. 

Maybe that’s why I tuned in this podcast interview with Steven Graham, the British actor playing the father of the young boy who’s the focus of that first episode. The meat-and-potatoes character Graham portrays is a blue-collar guy, stocky and muscled, without a lot of nuance, but he loves his son and can’t understand how or why the young boy — who’s just a kid — is being held by the police on a charge of murder. 

Until listening to that podcast, I had no idea Graham had a big role in getting this show made and on the air. It turns out he’s not so much interested in who did what — the dramatic thrust of most police dramas — but why it happened. I don’t yet know if the series can or will answer that question, but after hearing him talk about it for forty-five minutes, you bet I’ll be watching to find out.

In a recent piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, critic Mick LaSalle discussed the aesthetics and relative impact of shows that simulate a single-shot technique by using post-production technology — in other words, cheating — and the real deal like Adolescence.

“There’s a difference between faking it and really doing it. Part of the distinction is our own response. If you’re watching a trapeze act, it’s just more exciting if there’s no net. The longer a shot goes on, the more pressure there is on the actors not to blow it, and I believe we as viewers can pick up on that anxious energy. But an even bigger difference is that a genuine one-take film has a weird languor about it. Simple acts, such as walking from room to room and driving from one location to another take place in real time, and that creates more immediacy. We’re forced to inhabit spaces in a more direct and immediate way.”

I think he’s right. If done the cheaper, easier way by faking a single-shot episode or using the standard wide shot/medium shot/close-up editing techniques, Adolescence might still be a good show, but it wouldn’t be extraordinary — which it certainly is. 

That said, Apple’s new The Studio is more in my wheelhouse these days. Two episodes in, I love it — and you don’t have to be a Hollywood veteran to appreciate this show. It’s cringy-worthy in the extreme, but very funny … and I don’t know about you, but “very funny” is exactly what I need right now.

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So here we are, May already, the doorstep of summer. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the tsunami of bad news these days: we’re in a serious shit-rain with no end in sight and the news brings another “unprecedented” insult every day. I don’t know how, when, or if this will end, but here’s the crux of the test facing each of us: Do we remain strong, keep the faith, and push back however and whenever we can to set things right, or do we curl up in a fetal position and hope that it all goes away? 

Time will tell.

April

 

                                “Change is the only constant,” Heraclitus

 

Note: It seems that none of the links in the original post here worked ... so I opened it up and fixed all that.  This is one more reason I've bailed on Blogger in favor of Substack.  But ... sorry about that. 

I'd like to remind any who stop by here on the first Sunday of every month that I've more or less moved BS&T over to Substack.  Although it's not a perfect fit, Substack is considerably less glitchy than Blogger, so I'm going with it. The usual monthly posts will continue to arrive here (until I run out of steam, anyway), but that's all -- over at Substack you'll find another post every Sunday, some of which are re-written oldies that didn't make the cut for the book along with a few that did.  Don't be put off by the relentless exhortations of the Substack administrators to "subscribe!" -- which I find extremely irritating -- but subscribing is free for BS&T. All it means is that each new post will be sent to your e-mail box as soon as it hits the web.  Blogger had that feature, but it was never reliable and quit working a long time ago, which is just one more reason for the move.  And now, on with the show...

Waves of change have buffeted the film industry ever since the first scrappy producers fled New York — and Thomas Edison’s patent police — early in the 20th century to set up camp in Hollywood, where land was cheap, snow scarce, and sunshine abundant. They made the most of their new home, and although a few early movie stars rode the outhouse-to-penthouse roller coaster right back to the gutter, the industry prospered.1

The first revolution to hit the new Hollywood was the introduction of sound, which 

ended the careers of those who couldn’t adapt to the new reality.2 Another casualty was the visual sophistication silent films had achieved, using exceptionally fluid camera movement to refine and expand the scope of cinematic language. The noisy cameras of the time needed to be encased — sometimes with the cameraman — in huge sound-proof enclosures, rendering them essentially immobile, while the bulky microphones that made “talking pictures” possible were hidden on set in ways that hindered the actor’s ability to move. 

Photo courtesy of Cine Collage

This led to ponderous movies — lots of talk and little action — until quieter cameras and better sound recording equipment were developed, bringing motion back to the screen. 

Filming on location with a blimped camera and carbon arcs at the LA Arboretum, 1944

As the technology improved, so did the movies, ushering in the first Golden Age of Hollywood as the studio system achieved a new level of stability … but not for long. After courts ended the lucrative vertical monopoly studios had long enjoyed, another revolutionary technology — television — began to compete for audiences, forcing studios to produce vastly more expensive cinematic spectaculars to keep theaters full and profits rolling in. Making movies has always been a risky business, but putting more eggs in fewer baskets raised the stakes to the point where a single flop could threaten a studio’s survival. The final nail in the coffin of the old studio system was driven by an influx of young writers and directors using newer, more compact camerasand lighting equipment to make radically different movies that captured the imagination and ticket-buying dollars of their generation.

It turns out Heraclitus knew what he was talking about.

The waves of change keep coming, with the ongoing digital revolution now turning Hollywood upside down, not only changing the way work is done on set, but undermining the economic foundations of the industry in a major way. The new technology, rapid proliferation of international financial incentives (read: bribes), and lower labor costs overseas led productions to shoot offshore, leaving much of the below-the-line workforce in LA — and the rest of the U.S. — high and dry.3 Although I rode the boom-and-bust roller coaster through some serious bad times during my forty years in Hollywood, I never experienced anything like what’s happening now.

All of this was on my mind when an aimless trek through the wilds of Substack brought me to No Soul, Dark Nights, by screenwriter Dean Bakopoulus. Although it was written more than two years ago (well before the current political insanity), it sums up what’s haunting so many people in — and beyond — the film industry these days: 

“I found ‘discontinuity’ to be the perfect way to describe how so many people are feeling right now, whether they’re worried about climate change, or something more immediate, like heartbreak, or a layoff, or any rejection of some key part of themselves by a force they cannot control. Discontinuity is a moment where the experience and expertise you’ve built up over time cease to work. It’s extremely stressful, emotionally, to go through a process of understanding the world as we thought it was, is no longer there… There’s real grief and loss. There’s the shock that comes with recognizing that you are unprepared for what has already happened.”

I avoid politics on this site in favor of concentrating on the film industry — my lived experience was in Hollywood, not the corridors of power in Washington D.C. — but I encountered that paragraph as the current regime began taking a wrecking ball to the institutions of government so many Americans have relied on for many decades. Although there’s much dust, chaos, and confusion at the moment, one thing is clear: we’re transitioning to a very different world. This new reality has rocked millions here and abroad as they wonder where all this disruption will lead, and although history suggests that we’re sliding toward a very dark place, nothing is yet cast in stone. There’s still time to stem the tide, although rebuilding what’s been broken won’t be quick or easy. Meanwhile, much of the country and beyond has joined Hollywood in being traumatized by uncertainty and fear. It’s not a comfortable feeling. 

I won’t pretend to know what’s coming — for Hollywood or our country — but it’s safe to assume we’re in for what the Chinese refer to as “interesting times.” Indeed, we’re already there, so buckle your seatbelts, people: wherever you are and whatever you do, it’s gonna be a very bumpy ride.

1

See: Fatty Arbuckle

2

John Gilbert was among many famous actors who didn’t survive the transition to sound.

3

A “perfect storm” of factors contributed to this, including Covid, which stopped the industry dead in the water, after which strikes by writers and actors shut things down. The subsequent contraction by the major streaming entities led to massive unemployment in Hollywood at a time when the high cost of housing makes it difficult for single-income families of film industry workers to survive, let alone thrive.