Mom hosting Detroit watch party for son's Netflix film puts emphasis on actors strike
Joya Koch started planning a watch party for her son's latest movie a good while before the start of the current actors strike.
Nearly 100 people are ready to converge at a Detroit restaurant this week to see Alexander Koch co-star in the Netflix romantic comedy “Happiness for Beginners." But now he's busy picketing Los Angeles and, according to his mom, he would rather the attention be focused on the importance of the SAG-AFTRA walkout.
What to do? Like the classic “Friends” episode where Ross tries to navigate the carrying of a huge couch up a small staircase, sometimes you have to pivot.
A group made up of local actors and musicians, plus friends and family, still will gather at Cadieux Cafe on Thursday for a screening of “Happiness for Beginners.” But the event will include a discussion of the strike by 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members.
“We have total respect for the strike,” says Joya Koch, who wants the gathering to be about more than her pride as a mom or her son's accomplishments, but also the bigger issues at stake.
“Happiness for Beginners” stars Ellie Kemper of “The Office” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” fame as Helen, a divorced woman who’s trying to improve her mood with a group hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. There, she clashes with an unexpected fellow hiker, a handsome doctor named Jake (Luke Grimes), who is a friend of her brother, Duncan (Koch).
The film arrives Thursday on Netflix.
SAG-AFTRA, which went on strike July 13, is not asking consumers to boycott films or TV series to show support. Its members, however, cannot promote their work through things like interviews and red-carpet appearances.
It’s the first work stoppage for actors since 1980 and the first time since 1960 that both actors and writers, who’ve been out since May, have simultaneously been on strike.
SAG-AFTRA members say they are fighting for increases in basic pay rates, a fairer share of profits earned by streaming sites and artificial intelligence protections to prevent the voices and likenesses of actors from being used without permission or compensation.
Although there is a perception that acting pays well, only a tiny percentage of actors earn vast riches. For instance, only between 12% and 13% of SAG members make the roughly $26,470 per year necessary to qualify for health insurance.
Joya Koch, a photographer and documentarian who is working on a project called “Women Who Rock Detroit,” says the Cadieux Cafe evening is still happening “so we can all band together and show respect for one another and what’s happening.”
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She says the realities that prompted the strike are "outrageous.” “People are getting residual checks for 14 cents,” she notes while discussing how streaming sites pay a fraction of what actors used to get for repeated airings of their work on TV.
Her son, a Grosse Pointe Park native and graduate of Grosse Pointe South High School, got his first major screen role playing Junior Rennie, son of a civic leader, in the mysterious and scary 2013-15 CBS series “Under the Dome,” executive-produced (and based on the novel of the same name by) by Stephen King.
Since then, he has been in a number of projects, including the indie drama “Black Bear” starring Aubrey Plaza; “Lucifer,' the Fox series that moved to Netflix, and NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Joya Koch says her son is dedicated to acting. “I respect what he does and I respect his wishes in things and how he wants to handle them," she says of the dilemma that the strike has posed to the screening. "But this community says, ‘Hey, we want to see Alex acting in this role.'"
Contact Detroit pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Alexander Koch co-stars in Netflix movie 'Happiness for Beginners'
