Ray Richmond: Actors join writers on the picket line for first time in 63 years
It was already a balmy 82 degrees at 9:15 on Friday morning at Warner Bros. headquarters in Burbank, where picketers were out in force. Hundreds lined the sidewalks and marched across the streets (in an orderly fashion at stoplights). The solidarity that actors representing SAG-AFTRA had shown the striking WGA writers for the previous 74 days finally morphed into official unity as day one of the actors walkout began. The mood was positively giddy, like a block party being joined by your cousins from Boston. They came, they walked, they carried and they chanted: “Hey hey, hi hi, we are actors and not A.I…Hey hey, hi hi, we are actors and not A.I.”
As if there were any doubt.
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Not necessarily the most tuneful chant. But the suspicion is they’ll unfortunately have plenty of time (weeks? months?) to hone their message.
SEEPrimetime Emmys may be postponed if WGA strike stretches past early August
It took the actors two and a half months to join their writer pals on the picket line, and they hit the ground Friday with a determination in their heart and a gleam in their eye – the first time the two unions have been on strike together since 1960. The writers were thrilled to see them but took it in stride. They were now the veterans of the walkout, and they greeted their SAG-AFTRA comrades a bit like curious high school seniors welcoming the freshmen into the fold, even though many of these same actors had already been walking side-by-side with the striking WGA members unofficially for months.
One WGA strike captain, Eric Wallace – showrunner for the TV series “The Flash” when he’s working, just another guy in a green vest here – proclaimed deep happiness to see his SAG brethren in huge numbers. “Oh my God, it’s a beautiful day of unity and solidarity,” he said. “It’s a game-changer, a day that history’s going to remember.”
And why is that?
“”Because solidarity stood up to greed,” he replied, “and now you’re seeing it live with SAG and the WGA marching together saying that workers matter. It’s that simple.”
SEEEmmy campaign season continues normally in face of WGA strike – for now
The primary issues that the actors are striking over are similar, if not identical, to those uniting the writers: streaming residuals, Artificial Intelligence, getting their fair share in general. “We absolutely don’t want to be replaced by A.I., that’s unacceptable,” declared Jason T. Gaffney, whose IMDB credits include about a dozen various roles. “Plus, the audacity that producers have to basically scan our background talent for one day of work and then eliminate them from the picture is also a non-starter. That’s 60 percent of our union right there.
“We also need streaming residuals. New media is no longer new media. We know what it is – it’s streaming. The AMPTP helped create the new media streaming format and want us to pay for mistakes they’ve been making. I mean, eventually this model will be worked out to be profitable. But they can’t do that at the expense of the writers, actors and crew members who are making the very content that’s earning them millions of dollars.”
Agreed SAG member Jack Yuran: “Residuals are way down. Back in the 1990s, you could work on a sitcom and if it was popular you’d still be making money on it today. Now, you could be the most popular show on Netflix and make no more than a couple hundred bucks a year from it (in residuals). That’s messed up. At the end of the day, it’s just greedy capitalism.”
One think that many people I spoke to charged was that producers hadn’t been negotiating with SAG-AFTRA in good faith prior to the breakdown in talks. “They duped us into thinking they were serious,” one actor who requested anonymity charged, “but it was clear they had no intention of trying to actually strike a deal. They only kept us at the bargaining table to buy time so they could promote their big movies like ‘Mission: Impossible,’ ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ before things broke down.” That idea seems to track with what SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher believes as well.
As the morning wore on, the summer heat began to envelop the double-strike area like a sweltering blanket. But the walkers were undaunted, scurrying along while sporting pickets that read:
“Revolution = Solution”
“I’m Pro-A.I.: Actors Income”
“Someday I’ll Be Working Under A Fair Contract And All You’re Ever Gonna Be Is Mean”
“This Strike’s IMDB Starmeter Just Went Through The Roof”
“David Zaslav Owes Me Money (For Real Though”)
“You Need Us More Than We Need You”
“Me Daddy Can Acts Good But No Can Aford 2 Send Me Two Gud Scool”
“DespAIr”
“Look What You Make Us Do”
“You Came Up With Quibi”
Colleen O’Dwyer, who said she’s been a WGA member since 1995 and a member of SAG since 1999, carried both WGA and SAG strike placards, her WGA one reading, “Exploitation Does Indeed Suck.” Her fear is that “this thing is going to go on for a while” and that “no one here has a trust fund. It’ll be a bummer if this goes on for a while, but that’s how it’s looking.”
SEE SAG-AFTRA pre-authorizes strike by whopping margin
Indeed, should the double-strike extend on indefinitely, from the perspective of awards season, there will be no panels, no interviews, no FYC events and no promotion of the Emmys (in the short term) at all into the foreseeable future. It also impacts all sorts of below the line crew members and people who work in a number of businesses that you don’t even see. At its heart, Hollywood is a factory town, and with a pair on major unions walking off the job, the factory shuts down.
But again, the atmosphere on Friday after weeks of a WGA labor dispute and hours of a SAG-AFTRA strike was anything but pessimistic and gloomy. In fact, there was the presumption that this was all absolutely necessary and served the greater good that will invariably leave the industry itself stronger. No one needed to be reminded that this is indeed serious business, yet at the same time they were looking at it as an essential step toward a better tomorrow. And today, it still felt like a great big street event.
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