Photo by Mark Boster, LA Times
Today is the day of decision: by tomorrow we should know if another WGA strike has been averted. Looking from afar, I have no inside knowledge as to what will happen, but all that I've read and heard points to the likelihood that a strike will be called, and it could be a long one. I was still working in Hollywood during the last WGA strike, which ran for three months between November 2007 until mid-February of 2008, and it hurt everybody in the business. The issues this time around are an outgrowth of what that strike was about, but this time the issues are even more serious. The threat to writers truly is existential this time around, and the streaming entities will be cutting off their proverbial noses to spite their equally proverbial faces over the long run if they don't come to a reasonable compromise ... but that doesn't mean they'll do the right thing until, as the saying goes, they've tried everything else.
If then.
This column in the New York Times, by a successful working screenwriter in Hollywood, explains the issues at stake -- and here's the money quote:
“Allowing screenwriters to sustain a stable career is absolutely the smartest investment that the industry can make.”
He's right. Despite the contractions in the business since the halcyon days of the digital streaming boom, the industry depends on having lots of smart, creative, motivated writers to come up with shows the viewing public will love. Sure, they'll watch the inevitable toxic algae bloom of "reality" programming a lengthy strike will generate for a while -- but not forever -- and once the subscription cancellations begin to snowball, those streamer executives who drew a hard line in pre-strike negotiations will come to regret it.
We all had to absorb the gut-punch of the strike back in 2007/08, and it wasn't fun. There are always ways to get through such lean times, but as I described at the time, it's not easy. I'm out of the game now on the sunny beach of retirement, but still have a lot of friends in the biz who really don't need an extended stretch of unemployment -- not after suffering through the Covid shutdown -- so I really hope the producers and streamers will come to their senses and make a fair deal with the writers.
As Wilford Brimley used to intone, "It's the right thing to do."
It's also the smart thing to do, so, fingers crossed...
* Bend over, here it comes again.
2 comments:
Strikes are so hard on everyone, and the rancour afterwards is tricky to deal with.
But with creative work everywhere being devalued as people rush blindly ahead with AI initiatives, it feels like a necessary step.
Someone somewhere has to draw a line in the sand and point out a truth. Without the creative impetus, the rest of the money-making machinery cannot work. That creative impetus deserves to be supported and rewarded so the creator can, with food in their belly and a roof over their head, create again.
If we reinvested a small portion of the gazillions of dollars in the pockets of the titans into people, helping them live and be creative so they’ll be able to purchase tech and toys and enjoy living…
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Star Trek.
My heart goes out to the writers, and all creators. I wonder if boycotting streaming services for the duration of the strike, if there is one, would help?
Debra --
I don't recall much lingering rancor after the 2007/2008 WGA strike -- at least not between writers and below-the-line workers -- but I have no idea what might have gone on between the writers and producers. My guess is they were all just glad to be back to work.
I totally agree on drawing a line in the sand, though. Even Henry Ford understood the value of paying his workers enough so they could afford to buy the cars they helped manufacture, but the big thinkers running the streamers and studios these days don't seem to have Henry's basic grasp of common sense -- or common values.
A boycott of streamers might work if done on a massive scale, but that's asking for a lot of buy-in from millions of people across the country who have no reason to think about the plight of Hollywood writers, so it seems unlikely. Even then, the powers that be might well use the reduced income as an excuse to hold the line from their point of view, so I don't know.
It's hard to envision this ending well, but we'll see...
Thanks for tuning it!
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