The grind is here. While the pep rallies were fun, the temperature is rising, and the hardest part is yet to come. The grumbling has started: that Spielberg will call Zaslav to save TCM, but not help the folks making movies now. (But please save TCM!) That not enough big-name showrunners are on the lines. Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass or Joe Biden haven’t intervened to force the AMPTP to the table.
There’s anxiety, too: the fear is we’ll be alone in the end, as always. Especially after Fran Drescher released a statement that SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations with the AMPTP were going just peachy-keen. Every writer did an eyeroll: the fear is that SAG-AFTRA would get swindled, which means we’ll be out on the line a long fucking time.
Here’s something folks outside Hollywood should know: Those who’ve made TV and film will tell you the working environment of your show gets set by whoever’s No. 1 on the call sheet. The star. The lead. The Actor.
Bloggers and gossip rags and your friend’s hairdresser whose cousin worked on Friends back in the ’90s will regale you with stories of starlets behaving badly, of prima donnas, of egos run amok. Because Hollywood can absolutely be a playground of egos run amok.
But what never gets printed, or passed around, or plastered in 48-point font on glitzy websites, is what it means to have a decent human being atop the call sheet. When your No. 1 really is an A-list human being. ‘Cause when a star speaks up for what’s right, assholes shut up and people listen.
Last night hundreds of No. 1s spoke up. They pushed back against the fear that, eager to shore up its shaky pension, SAG-AFTRA might flop like the DGA did, and accept a deal for 30 pieces of silver. A deal for the top rung that sells out the up-and-coming artists who make the “content” to corporations that don’t even understand the False God of AI they’re lining up to worship.
It wasn’t just Meryl Streep. Hundreds of A-listers — Quinta Brunson and Bob Odenkirk and Glenn Close and Jennifer Lawrence and Patton Oswalt and Brendan Fraser — all said hold the fucking phone. (Apparently there would’ve been more, but this thing got whipped up in 24 hours.)
A lot of people outside the industry still suffer the delusion that acting isn’t a real job. That actors just read words. That they don’t pay attention. But they do — especially the good ones. They don’t just read lines; they memorize whole speeches on the fly. They research and listen and question and think about what they’re told to say. Anyone who’s been onstage knows it takes courage — sure, it’s not like fighting Putin’s fascists in the trenches, but still, it’s courage. (And the one inspiring Ukraine these days is an actor, so…) Anyone who’s hit a mark 13 hours into a 14-hour day, 7 times in a row, knows it takes focus.
You can bullshit a lot in this town, but you can’t bullshit a smart actor. So, don’t try to fuck them when it comes to a real labor deal. Maybe it comes as a surprise to the AMPTP signatories gliding about in private jets and reading out empty blather for quarterly earnings calls (there’s a use case for ChatGPT) that the smart actors would know when they’re being fed a line of bull. And they smell it right now, especially after that Black Mirror episode where AI Salma Hayek was made to do godless things in pursuit of Netflix’s soulless bottom line. (I mean, “Streamberry’s.”) They know this industry is at a turning point. That the system that gave us the great works that inspire us, that teach us how to dream, has been broken. That something new needs to happen.
That Silicon Valley is not Hollywood’s friend.* That before Apple bragged about how they “think different,” actors and writers and directors were the ones who did think different. And that if you impoverish and grind them into the ground, you’ll just get the homogenous, sterile and ultimately empty digital garden that Facebook and Google and Microsoft force down our throats as they skim profits from others’ livelihoods. Would you rather live in a world dreamed up by Jeff Bezos or one dreamed up by us?
Who do you think has more fun?
But in order for any of us to dream, we need a labor agreement that respects our ability to make a living, acknowledges (with actual money!) that “content” is made by people, and understands this whole system should be built to serve humans, not the other way around. Otherwise, Netflix and its algorithm will turn Hollywood into an even deeper swamp of exploitation — like in South Korea, according to a bombshell investigation in the L.A. Times.
That bleak future is what Meryl Streep et al. want to stop. Let’s hope SAG-AFTRA’s leadership — and the world — listens.
*(If there’s a place more rapacious and self-satisfied than Hollywood these days it might be Silicon Valley startup culture. They know how lazy we are. They know we don’t read the terms of service; they know we forget to unsubscribe after 30 days. They steal and profit and leave in their wake a shell of hollowed-out industries and people broken and robbed by their greed.)
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June 29, 2023 at 03:59AM
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Anonymous Strike Diary: The ‘Eastside Warrior’ Cheers Meryl Streep and the A-Lister Outcry - Hollywood Reporter
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