Adele Lim, Kara Brown and Elan Mastai Talk Writers Strike and Possible SAG Work Stoppage: “The Writers Guild Means Business”
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As the Hollywood writers strike extends well into its second month, top screenwriters at the Banff World Media Festival declared their resolve to see the current negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reach a comprehensive and uncompromising new labor contract.
“The Writers Guild means business,” Adele Lim, whose screenwriting credits include Crazy Rich Asians, told a festival panel when asked what might be the impact on the labor talks from SAG-AFTRA starting negotiations with the AMPTP, with the threat of a wider work stoppage and the possibility of a separate deal for Hollywood actors.
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“We’re not going to take that as the pattern for what we need to accept with the SAG contract,” Lim insisted. The screenwriters in Banff instead talked up the benefits of being in alignment with the often fractious world of Hollywood unions, while also striving for the best deal for writers.
Kara Brown, co-executive producer on Boots Riley’s I’m a Virgo, agreed the WGA stood to benefit from solidarity with other unions and guilds but that the WGA would ultimately have to hammer out its own deal with the studios and streamers to solve key issues affecting its members.
“We want everyone to get what they need, but we’re not going to change what we want or give in to something because they’ve (producers) made a deal with other unions,” Brown said. For Elan Mastai, writer and co-executive producer of This Is Us, the issue at hand was resolving what he insisted was a simple business disagreement between producers and writers, so everyone could get back to work.
“On a very fundamental level, this is just a business situation, right? The guild contract comes up every three years. We’ve accommodated for a number of cycles, we’ve made small gains. But what we’re saying very loudly is this isn’t working for us,” to the point screenwriters have taken to picket lines, Mastai argued.
Artificial intelligence was raised by the trio of veteran writers as a sticking point in the negotiations, but it was the issues of residuals and minimum staffing for writers rooms that dominated the panel discussion in Banff and was heard in conversations in surrounding gatherings and networking sessions.
“These mini-rooms, honestly, should be illegal,” Brown argued, while adding she continues to get residual checks from early cable TV and network shows she worked on. But Brown’s more recent work on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law earned her an upfront fee and no additional payments down the road.
“I’ll never get another check for that work. And that character that we built I’m certain will be in a movie and the jokes that we crafted, that will play on, and I’ll never get anything from that ever again,” she said.
Writers have been picketing at locations across Los Angeles and New York City, as the guild is seeking viewership transparency from streamers, an increased wage floor and protections against mini-rooms and the use of artificial intelligence.
Mastai recalled his work on This Is Us, where the writers not only received residuals but also a chance to be on set to help make creative decisions on the fly to help them hone their craft.
“I always want to tell people in these decision-making positions that, however much money you think you’re saving by cutting back on writing, you are going to blow so much money by all the screw-ups that will lead to wasted time, excess on set, not to mention problems that could be solved on set rather than later in post-production,” Mastai said.
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