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The @ia_stories page is an unpretentious Instagram account that rarely posts pictures—mostly just white text on a black background, which makes it especially unmemorable in the visually saturated space of Hollywood–adjacent social media. But within its hundreds of posts are some of the juiciest secrets in the industry, with most identifying details carefully edited away.
“We had a dept head die of a massive heart attack a few weeks ago and we just kept shooting,” writes one contributor, in a post dated August 19. “Then they added more days, more hours, and more weekend work. They brought in a grief counselor the next day but didn’t even break for lunch so no one could visit them.”
The Instagram account’s moderators—who spoke with me on condition of anonymity to protect themselves from professional reprisal—tell me it’s one of a dozen messages about a death on-set that they’ve received in the last few months. But more haunting than even that detail are the last despairing lines of the gruesome story. “Nothing was learned,” the anonymous submitter writes. “We are expendable.”
The account has become an unofficial gathering place for the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the negotiating body for the tens of thousands of unionized entertainment industry workers. (They have the flower-shaped logo you’ve seen in any number of film credits.) IATSE proper has embraced the account as well: Writes a spokesperson, “While the @ia_stories account is ‘unofficial’ in the sense that it is not run by the IATSE International, the account and the experiences being shared there demonstrate that there are real, longstanding issues in the film and tv production industry.”
As a crew member, getting one’s union card theoretically provides workplace protections against grueling hours on-set; nonunion workers have little recourse against the whims of their employers. But on the volunteer-run @ia_stories page, anonymous crew members are sharing hundreds of stories of dangerous and exploitative work conditions.
“Anonymity is very important to the whole account,” one of its moderators tells me. The account’s managers have made the decision to redact not only workers’ names, but companies’ and producers’ too. “Naming names would blow back on these people,” she says. And anyway, “ragging on a specific department or a specific person—that’s not what we’re about here.”
“It’s possible the stories aren’t one hundred percent accurate,” she continues. “We’re kind of doing it by feel,” and not independently verifying the details of each post. But, she adds, “everything I’ve posted has been something I can relate to…every one of these stories we’ve gotten could be a friend of mine.” Sometimes crew members will read a particularly relatable post and then message the account saying, “I had to go back and see if I had sent this story.”
“It’s all of them,” says a moderator wearily, when I ask if there are any producers or production companies that have a particularly bad reputation for how they treat their crews. Another concurs. It’s not a bad apple problem, she says—“the isolated good apples are the outliers.”
It’s rare for IATSE workers to kibbutz across craft lines: Costumers and cameramen and post-production editors might never see each other during work hours, and often, they belong to separate unions too. But work conditions have become so dire, and morale so low—as the ever-expanding need for content has pushed workers into long filming days with brutally short turnarounds—that crew members have been inundating the site with messages. The account’s follower count has grown so dramatically that the founding members had to bring on two more moderators just to keep abreast of the submissions.
The foment is reminiscent of the furor in 1997 when assistant camera operator Brent Hershman fell asleep behind the wheel and fatally crashed his car. He was driving home at about 2 a.m. after a 6:30 a.m. call time the morning before on the set of Pleasantville, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. The 35-year-old father of two’s death led to a push for a 14-hour workday to become the industry standard.
The effort didn’t work. In 2014, Longmire teamster Gary Joe Tuck fell asleep behind the wheel after an 18-hour shoot day, and died on a New Mexico highway, Deadline recounted in 2018. But once again, in 2018—the last time IATSE negotiated the wide-ranging basic agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)—they were unable to secure the limits on workdays, instead getting concessions from producers on offering housing or transportation after long workdays.
Meanwhile, in the first seven months of 2021, IATSE received more than 50 reports of workdays over 14 hours, a number it conjectures is “just the tip of the iceberg,” according to Deadline. And though 14-hour workdays might be a goal for crews on-set, it’s still six hours more than the eight-hour workday most Americans expect. “People dream of working 10-hour days in this industry,” one moderator tells me.
Shooting a TV show or film is an expensive undertaking, and the easiest way to curtail costs is to reduce the number of shooting days. But that makes each of those days longer. Sometimes a 10-hour day becomes a 12-hour day. Or a 16-hour day. Or a 19-hour day. And once the work is done, the next day’s call time might be only a handful of hours later.
Plus, organizers tell me, as streaming content has become the industry standard, the production schedule for film crews has changed from seasonal work to a year-round blitz. “If one job [a year] makes your money, maybe it’s fun to do a Friday overnight shoot,” one moderator tells me. But for wage earners who work on multiple productions a year, the pace makes for a grueling marathon, as crew members are often expected to be available on nights and weekends. “It’s one hundred percent a culture of constant availability,” says one moderator. And while technically, crews do get meal breaks—there are union penalties for skipping meals and higher pay rates for overtime—production companies often choose to pay the fees in order to save broader costs. “Flexibility was baked into these contracts,” an IATSE spokesperson tells me, referring to the contracts that expired this month. “But it was never intended for production companies to be factoring fees into their budget.”
The submissions on @ia_stories indicate that though it has been 24 years since Hershman’s death led to calls for systemic change, crew members are still struggling to get enough rest before driving. There are dozens of posts sharing unnervingly close calls behind the wheel. Some stories feature 17-hour days, little to no sleep, and tips and tricks for managing the burnout. One submitter writes that they were so tired after back-to-back night shoots that a cop pulled them over, convinced they were intoxicated. Another includes a picture of a white car with a badly mangled front bumper. “This was the result of my first film job ever,” reads the submission.
One post, where a crew member suggested blasting the air conditioning to stay awake, became a showcase for ever more disturbing advice. “I was once given a Hot Tip to roll my hair up in my window so that if I nodded off while driving, I would jar myself back awake when my hair got pulled,” reads one comment. Another commenter says they carry salty snacks in their car. Another packs gloves with aloe so the tingling sensation keeps their hands on the wheel. One shares that a transport worker suggested rigging a rubber band between their driving hand and their mouth, so that if they fell asleep, the rubber band would snap against their skin, waking them up. “Sometimes I have to chew plastic bottle caps to stay awake,” confesses another commenter.
With the film-festival circuit in full swing and an in-person Emmys celebration, this autumn has seemed like a return to normal for the entertainment industry after 18 months of battling COVID-19. But behind the scenes, long-simmering resentment has been festering. After months of stalled negotiations, on September 20, IATSE asked members for a strike authorization vote—a procedural move that would allow their leaders to call for a walkout if they can’t reach an agreement with the AMPTP, which also represents the interests of showrunners and executives. Since then, tensions have only escalated: The strike authorization vote is set to begin October 1.
It’s a moment with little modern precedent. If crews were to strike, it would be the first such action since World War II.
In a statement to Vanity Fair, an AMPTP spokesperson defended the organization’s position. “In choosing to leave the bargaining table to seek a strike authorization vote, the IATSE leadership walked away from a generous comprehensive package,” they wrote, listing a number of its components, including a proposal covering a projected $400 million deficit in IATSE’s health and pension plan, the addition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday, and increases in minimum rates for some workers and some productions. Additionally, AMPTP’s proposal included “meaningful improvements in rest periods,” bringing more workers in crews—but not all—to the standard of a 10-hour turnaround from the end of one shooting day to the beginning of the next.
The proposal highlights a key tension at work in IATSE’s fight. In the Donald Trump era and its aftermath, Hollywood has had the advantage of appearing to be a bastion of progressive values—especially as the industry has made showy moves to address the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, as well as dramatic changes to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s diversity requirements for Oscar eligibility.
But the possible IATSE action could put these progressive values to the test. These stories from blue-collar workers in the Hollywood system shed uncomfortable light on the less savory side of the multibillion-dollar global entertainment industry—one that has been scrambling to respond to the demands of the pandemic and adjust to an increasingly socially conscious viewership, while simultaneously providing profits to its shareholders.
Reasonable rest, long a cornerstone of the organized labor movement, intersects here with progressive talking points like sick leave, maternity benefits, and a living wage, which some IATSE members contend they do not receive. (The hourly pay for a union writers’ assistant, one tells me, is a couple dollars more than California’s $14 minimum wage.) The IATSE Stories Instagram features posts about parents who barely see their children, partners who struggle to maintain a romantic relationship, and the physical toll of long hours with heavy equipment and repetitive work. Numerous posts are from women detailing sexual harassment. Breastfeeding crew members have shared deeply unsettling stories of pumping in unsafe, unhygienic locations, like port-a-potties and stairwells. Others have shared being unable to take a sick day due to a miscarriage—leading one to bleed through her clothes while standing on location. One heartbreaking post describes a fellow employee who had to return to work the day after his newborn died.
With this account, IATSE organizers are trying to draw attention to the lives of ordinary film workers—not just from the general public, who are used to seeing Hollywood as a center of glitz and glamour, but also for the above-the-line talent in the industry, many of whom may have no idea what it is like to work as a wage laborer on a film crew. Notably, the September 19 Emmys went by without a single reference to the IATSE strike authorization, though a few winners made sure to express their appreciation for the crew on their shows. A moderator tells me they were not entirely surprised that above-the-line talent would be “totally unaware” of the struggles faced by IATSE members. Despite how high profile the industry is, she continues, “the reality of my working conditions are invisible.”
“Actors don’t really know about this stuff,” says another. “There’s many layers of separation between the decision makers [on a shoot] and those affected.”
As a result, moderators say that morale has cratered throughout the film crews. Frustration and exhaustion are rampant. “So many people are ready to leave the industry,” one tells me. “This is not the place to have a family.” The monthslong halt in production at the beginning of the pandemic gave many members a chance to rethink their commitments; the return to work has been so challenging that it’s cemented, for many, the need for change.
It doesn’t help that crews are working for hugely profitable multinational corporations headed by the very publicly wealthy—figures such as Jeff Bezos, who notoriously became richer during the pandemic. “Our story is the same story as Amazon workers trying to unionize,” a moderator tells me. Resentment at the risks crews have taken to make content during the pandemic has combined with awareness of how studio executives insulated themselves from physical and financial risk. Crews often pride themselves on a can-do attitude that makes “movie magic” out of what can be chaotic productions. But this willingness to make things work has been superseded by a growing conviction that conditions need to change.
With negotiations between IATSE and AMPTP at a standstill, what comes next could be risky, and challenging, for workers and producers alike. In the run-up to the strike authorization vote, statements of solidarity for IATSE have come from major labor organizations across the country, including several based in Hollywood: the Directors Guild of America, the Teamsters, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Writers Guild of America’s East and West divisions, and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’s Department of Professional Employees.
IATSE has told lawmakers in California and New York that a strike would “effectively shut down” production in both states. (Because premium cablers have a separate contract from other productions, a strike would not halt HBO, Showtime, BET, Cinemax, and Starz shows, IATSE told its members last week.) Both producers and workers will be affected by a shutdown, but work stoppage is far riskier for individual wage workers who may be living from paycheck to paycheck. There’s also the risk of public support eroding as a strike could delay much-anticipated seasons of television or long-awaited film projects.
Still, moderators say, the authorization is “absolutely necessary.”
“We do love our jobs,” one says. “Your best days on-set are the best days of your life. It is magical. But it’s not magic—it’s human beings working very hard.”
“Abuses will still happen,” another moderator tells me. But it’s the union’s job to motivate productions to provide the best conditions for their workers. “I want to incentivize networks to one up each other on human rights and kindness.” After all, there is a ubiquitous tag at the end of movie credits that indicates no animals were harmed making the film. What about that, but for workers? “I want a movie that says, ‘no human beings died on the way home.’”
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