Screen Actors Guild joins writers on strike

That was excellent.

 

Powerful

 

Not me, not only generally but also selfishly. My daughter worries about her career/job from a prolonged strike.

And don't assume the producers are liberals. I would think they are just the opposite

 

Well they are certainly blaming the 10 executives whose annual compensation in the aggregate exceeds $2.2 billion that are saying the industry cannot afford increases in aggregate contracts totaling $450-600 million. Those numbers are issued by advocates and some of the annual compensation numbers may include executives should not be included, although the largest ones certainly should (see tweet above), and they may be including years in which there are big stock cash outs that artificially inflated the annual compensation.

But even if you assume it's only 60% of annual compensation, that still means aggregate annual compensation of $1.3 billion. Moody's is the party that estimates that the current value of the 3 Guild contracts as $450-600 millions. Of course they are requesting increases. But even with 25% increases, you get $750 million (too expensive) vs. $1.3 billion in executive compensation. So seems fair to blame them.

And that's not even talking about the two nonmonetary issues, which is transparency and AI. The studios have not pushed back on the claims that in the negotiation with the writers they offered absolute nothing on AI - the ability to use the writer's work product without limitation, with possible future meetings to discuss. On actors, they offered one day's compensation to digitize your image which they could then use without your consent or further payment ad infinitum. Those sounded too extreme to believe, but I note that the studios have not pushed back on those very public accounts even though they have PR professionals.


And then there was the issue of transparency. Kim Masters in this week's podcast explained why studios are so resistant to providing their base metrics. They use them for different reasons. Amazon considers how much their shows promote the other ends of the business (as opposed to Netflix, which measures how much it promotes subscriptions). Disney+ products are also measured by how much they promote Park and cruise expenditures and create lifelong customers in future generations. So the studios have some decent reasons in wanting to hold on to the data.


But you still have the issue that your income is based your purported value which you have no way of verifying. Plenty of stories out there about working on the most popular shows out there and receiving practically nothing, because you had no idea what your value actually was. And the industry practically revolves around NDAs.

 

True about automation. None of us are immune, and I would be less sympathetic if the unions insisted om a long-term rule that it could never be used. But they were just trying to come up with compensation schedules, and also preserve their work product. The writers didn't want to
be asked to polish up the script originally done by AI. I'm somewhat sympathetic on that one, but I'm more sympathetic to the fact that AI would basically learn through having all of their scripts downloaded. Normally they give up the rights to their scripts when they write them, even with modifications, but to have those then used on a derivative basis in a mass download to "teach" a program, or whatever you want to call what AI does to it, did seem to be beyond the pale.

And especially for the actors, only getting one days pay with the studio having perpetual rights without further payment or consent, That just seemed crazy.

And the transparency issues are tough. I understand the studios, but really you can't have no upside for someone who makes the studio a lot of money. I understand that the writer/actor is also guaranteed for being paid even if the project's a loser, so obviously you give up some of the upside in return for a guaranteed downside. But to have projects make hundreds of millions of dollars for the studio without any sharing with the lower level actors and writers, who in any event could never verify who much money their efforts made the studio, seemed to me to be too much.

Hard to know what to say about the highly paid actors. The union rules are not really for them. They negotiate their own deals. So far they're very supportive although I don't know if they would be if they felt like they had to give up something. I don't know that level of intra union relationships. And there's a lot of nepotism as well. I don't really know on those issues and none of my sympathies are with the wealthy successful ones.

In fact, one of my statements I routinely make to my wife is that the well-recognized character actors, which themselves are big successes compared to the day-to-day types, especially those who don't often get work, are what really make a movie/show work. They will sublimate their character to the project, whereas the big stars are always more about preserving their brand.

Two things we watch this weekend illustrate the distinction in my mind. Mission Impossible had fun stunts to watch, but the dialogue and character development felt like it was written by Tom Cruise's publicist and had no substance. In fact it was distracting.

On the other hand, Jared Harris is one of the great character actors that makes every production he is in. He is the reason I gave Foundation on Apple plus a chance, despite not being a fan of the genre, and he never disappoints.

So I'm not a fan of hardly any of the big stars. The only thing that having big stars tells me is that it has a big budget which usually but not always mean that the rest of it will be more carefully produced. But if I had my way we just all be lower level actors. I prefer ensembles and character actors anyway if there's any subtlety to the production or the script.