'Hollywood' strike impacts Memphis, beyond: 'We're hanging in there,' actor says

Last week, Memphis-based talent agent Lisa Lax flew to Los Angeles, donned a T-shirt emblazoned with the word "RESPECT," grabbed a "STRIKE" sign, and joined her daughter and other film and television professionals on a picket line.

"As a SAG-AFTRA agent, I'm out here fighting for a fair wage for my actors," said Lax, in a phone call from outside the historic Sunset Bronson Studios on Sunset Boulevard. "I'm tired of mailing 58-cent residual checks. We deserve better."

As Lax demonstrated with her feet as well as with her words, the "Hollywood" strike that has replaced movie and TV production as the major source of activity at the big studios has repercussions beyond the coastal entertainment centers of L.A. and New York.

Actors and crew members in Memphis and other locales in Tennessee and beyond are keeping a close watch on the strikes, hoping for an outcome that will boost their incomes and improve their benefits, and for a resolution that will enable them to return to work on studio productions in Nashville, Atlanta, Louisville, New Orleans and elsewhere.

"We're not able to work much, but we're hanging in there," said Jan Falk, a Memphis actor who moved a decade ago to the busier production center of Nashville, where she participated in an actors' union rally July 18 on the city's famed "Music Row," home to multiple record labels and production companies.

The much-publicized strikes involve two major unions, the WGA (Writers Guild of America), which went on strike May 2, and SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), which began striking July 14.

The double-whammy labor action halted studio production and has caused the cancellation or delay of projects in the pipeline. As it drags on, it is likely to leave networks, streaming services and, eventually, movie theaters without new product for audiences — a drought that could last for months.

This would be an especially unwelcome situation for cinemas, which have struggled to regain the audiences they lost during the COVID-19 shutdowns — audiences that have been encouraged to stay home by the very corporations that create the movies, as hit studios like Pixar continue to send some new feature films straight to streaming.

Some of the news coverage that has accompanied the strike has focused on such celebrity picketers as Jason Sudeikis, Lupita Nyong'o, Rosario Dawson, Susan Sarandon and Kevin Bacon. But the vast majority of the strikers are people who struggle to make a living in the entertainment profession, or who augment full-time or part-time jobs with movie and TV earnings.

The labor disputes pit the 12,000 or so unionized writers and the 160,000 actors against AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that negotiates collective bargaining agreements on behalf of production studios, television networks and streaming services: Paramount, Sony, Universal, Disney, Netflix, Amazon, CBS, FOX and so on.

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Lax — whose daughter, Cydney Wilkes, also is an agent, in Los Angeles — said that agents and other SAG-affiliated professionals are affected, along with the actors. "I'm a SAG agent and I represent people in SAG," said Lax, who receives a percentage of her clients' residuals. "We all have the benefits of the union."

Much of the disagreement involves relatively new concepts introduced by new technology, namely, streaming and AI (artificial intelligence).

In the first case, the actors and writers claim they no longer receive fair compensation from the streaming services, which do not report viewership numbers in the same open manner as the traditional networks or cable services, and which produce "seasons" that last only several episodes.

Crucially, much of a working-class actor's or writer's income derives from residuals, a payment that occurs when a program or movie is rebroadcast or made available via some secondary source. But because streaming services typically do not syndicate or otherwise share the "content" they create, residuals can be insignificant. Thus, contracts that were negotiated before the impact of the streaming services was understood benefited the corporations at the expense of labor, according to the strikers.

“Entertainment has changed so much, but the contracts haven’t kept up,” said Memphis actress Karen Marie Norris, a SAG member since 1990, whose recent credits include "The Messiah," a Netflix series. “Some of the residual checks, you don’t even want to go to the bank to cash them. They're 20 cents, $10, $2."

“Let me tell you about my residual checks, the stamps cost more than the majority of the checks,” said Falk, who has worked on such television series as “Claws” and “Nashville.” “It’s good getting those checks, but they’ve gotten down to pennies.”

With a traditional network program or studio movie, residuals "could be a few thousand dollars per check," Norris said. "Not always enough to live on, but enough to pay some bills. But the streaming services pay so little. Most I’ve gotten are between 25 cents and $12."

As for AI, both the writers and actors want language in their contracts restricting its use, even as some tech companies work to develop artificial intelligence programs that can write stories and scripts and even provide "casting," in that a digitally rendered version of an actor could be stored and later retrieved and applied to new media. "It's very scary," Norris said.

The studios "want to have extras comes in and generate them in AI and never pay them again," said Lax, whose Lisa Lax Agency, a talent agency, has offices in Memphis, Nashville and New York. "They want to photograph their images and have access to those in perpetuity, which is just appalling. There are people who make their living as extras."

Meanwhile, the studio shutdown isn't expect to have much immediate impact on Memphis employment because most local film production involves commercials, music videos, industrial films and small non-union "indie" projects. The situation would be different if "Young Rock" was returning to shoot another season in Memphis, but the NBC series was canceled; and no other major production in the manner of such past Memphis-based projects as "The Firm" or "Bluff City Law" was expected this year.

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“In the grand scheme of things, it hasn’t affected us to much yet,” said Patrick Durkin, a Memphis-based grip, a camera and lighting technician. “Day jobs is how most of us get by. Live interviews, commercials — all that stuff is still happening, to some extent.”

However, the strikes likely will mean the coming year won’t be a repeat of the past year, when “Tennessee had one of the best years ever for crew, for the entire state,” Durkin said, thanks to “Young Rock"; Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies; a Dolly Parton special; and “Holland, Michigan,” a thriller with Nicole Kidman, shot in Nashville.

Worse, even work on commercials may dry up. Said Durkin: “Without content being created for television, commercials will slow, because advertisers won’t be spending as much money.”

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: How SAG-AFTRA strike impacts Memphis, Tennessee, beyond