A Stab At Explaining This SAG Nonsense

Trying to explain why, even though it does not appear the Screen Actors' Guild is actually going to strike anytime soon, I am frustrated with the lack of progress in the talks, is a little hard to explain.

The stalemate has brought all feature production to a grinding halt, and because of the weird timing of the pilot I'm on (even if it gets picked up, it won't go for a few months, and almost all other TV in town has already started up), I had been looking to hop on a feature when it finishes in a couple weeks.

So, why is a stalemate a bad thing for feature films? Well, I'll try to explain.

Were the Screen Actors' Guild to strike, everything would shut down immediately because without actors, there is nothing to shoot. That's the easy-to-explain, apocalyptic part.

In a stalemate, which is where we are now, the actors are not striking, but they have not signed a deal and could theoretically strike at any time.

With a stalemate, TV shows keep shooting because they have all the actors under contract for basically the entire year. Were a strike to happen, they would give the crew an unpaid hiatus for the duration of the strike, and then everyone would come back to work when it's over (assuming a short strike of about a month or so, which everyone is).

With films during a stalemate, you run into the big problem of actor scheduling: While television shows have the principal actors under contract essentially year-round, every film has a very short window in which its principals are under contract.

For example, pulling a name that's fun to type out of the air, let's say Jake Gyllenhaal is scheduled to do a film that starts tomorrow, and finishes in early September. Then, he's scheduled to go on to a second film that starts in mid-September.

If the actors strike, it will eat up all the time that he was on film #1, and they still lose him to film #2 in mid-September. The fact that the strike is happening does not push everything back, it just makes the time disappear.

Why is this a problem? Well, the main issue is that because a SAG strike could completely fuck up actors' schedules, major films can't get what's called a completion bond.

This is a very large insurance policy that will pay the a substantial portion of the cost of production should the film not be completed for some reason beyond the control of production (actor is hit by a bus and/or drops dead in the middle of production, earthquake destroys Los Angeles during shooting, whatever).

The insurance companies don't want to give completion bonds right now because if Gyllenhaal starts shooting film #1 and SAG strikes for a month in August, he will still have to move on to film #2 on the same schedule. Film #1 could potentially only be half-finished and largely unusable, and the insurance company would be on the hook for the money.

If you can't get a completion bond (and right now, you can't unless you have a waiver from SAG, which you can only get if you're a small independent production not part of the AMPTP), the studio will not give you the money to make your movie.

So everyone on the features side is pretty much sitting tight, waiting for SAG to make a deal. Once they make a deal, plenty of stuff will start up, and hopefully many of us will be gainfully employed once again.

We'll see what happens. Again, I'm in a bit of an odd spot with scheduling, but hopefully by the end of July this will get sorted out, and I'll land on something or other. I'll probably get an involuntary break of a month or so, but hopefully not much longer.

I hope that sort of clarifies for those of you who don't have to deal with this glorious horseshit on a daily basis what's happening and why, and why while people in LA are worried about this, most of the national entertainment press is pretty much ignoring it.

Once More, With Feeling

It's always fun to read a story in Variety and, before reaching the end of it, start mentally calculating how much plasma and/or heroin I'll need to sell to make rent.

Strike Comme Ça, S'il Vous Plait

Why can't strikes here be like French strikes? They're going to have a TV strike, but it's been announced well in advance and is only lasting one day.

I'd rather that sort of strike than the sort I fear we're about to have. The sort where I look at my pile of old shoes and think, "Which of these will be the most edible if I boil them long enough to kill all the germs?"

Oh, Yeah...

I suppose I should say something here before it starts, since I will likely be sucked into a black hole for a couple months once it does: I've got a new job starting Wednesday.

I'm leaving the HBO pilot I'm on as a PA up in Santa Clarita to work on a Fox pilot as an APOC (assistant production office coordinator) downtown. The good news on this change is severalfold:

First, this brings me back roughly to the level I was on back at House, though on a wholly different track. This track will have me joining a union and thereby getting health insurance that isn't tied to my job, which is a huge thing for my broke ass at the moment.

Secondly, my base pay is finally back to where it was. Oddly, I probably won't take home as much as I do at my current job, if only because I'm not driving 400-800 miles a week for work and getting mileage for it. However, I also won't be having to buy 3-5 tanks of gas a week, so it evens out.

Thirdly, I won't have to drive anywhere near as much. 15 miles to downtown instead of 35 to Santa Clarita, and very few (if any) runs. My poor car, which I've driven almost eight thousand miles over the last two months, is ready for the break.

Hopefully, if the show gets picked up to go to series, they'll take me along for the ride, bringing yet another period of random employment to an end. But, if it doesn't get picked up (or they elect not to take me with them if they do), I'll at least be in the union, and it'll be a hell of a lot easier for me to get another job.

So all in all, I'm pretty excited about this, although I'm fairly nervous since I have a short time to make an impression, and I have to knock it out of the park pretty much immediately and constantly.

The bad news is that with the shooting schedule perilously close to the SAG strike deadline, I may be working a Saturday or four, so we'll see what shred of my sanity remains after we wrap. Whee!

Strike Two

Depending on who you read, talks between the AMPTP and the Screen Actors' Guild either ended without a deal or completely fucking imploded tonight. You know it's serious when Nikki Finke breaks out the clip-art alarm bells.

So now, we're staring down the barrel of another potential strike, this time by the Actors.

A smaller union, AFTRA, is probably going to cut a quick a deal to undercut SAG on TV deals in order to gain a larger percentage of jurisdiction, but the vast majority of primetime TV (which I work in) and all feature films are SAG signatories.

The threat of a SAG strike has already ground a lot of stuff on the features end to a halt. Anything that's not already filming or that couldn't use the time without actors wisely (for example, Transformers 2 building more models and working on the VFX while everyone twiddles their thumbs) is not getting greenlit, because nobody will insure anything with a post SAG-deadline end date.

SAG's contract doesn't actually expire until June 30th, so there's about two months where TV shows are going to try and crank out as many episodes as they can, and networks will jam in as many pilots as they can (I'm actually leaving the pilot I'm on at the moment to go work on another in a couple weeks; more on that in a later post).

The difference between SAG and the WGA is that if SAG walks, everything grinds to a halt immediately. With the writers, people could still shoot finished scripts, with the directors making "tweaks" on set.

But without actors? No shows. No movies. No nothin'. No jobs almost immediately for a huge chunk of the already-hurting SoCal economy.

A SAG strike would be a colossal disaster for everyone involved, but SAG and the AMPTP seem to hate each other enough that they'd rather destroy themselves in order to destroy the other than let the other side even appear to win.

That mentality is almost exactly the same one that led to a three month writers' strike that drove a fair few people I know to the brink of bankruptcy.

I wish I could be more optimistic that both sides are going to pull their heads out of their respective asses and make a deal in the next few weeks, but at this point, I'm stocking up on ramen.

Here We Go Again

SAG's next up in the Great Strike-ocolypse of 2008.

The problem this time? SAG and AFTRA, two sister unions that have bargained jointly for the last 30 years, have chosen this critical moment to get in a massive pissing contest with each other.

Their infighting has (as far as I can tell) delayed the start of negotiations, and left everyone in town on edge that there's going to be a second strike.

Already, with the SAG contract expiring June 30th, nothing that would finish past June 15th has been able to get any funding, which is part of why I had such a shit time finding a job after I got the ax.

I hope to hell this settles soon, mostly because no one, and I mean no one, can afford another strike right now. Least of all my broke ass.

Ding Dong

The Strike is dead.

Waiting For A Phone Call From The Fat Lady

So as you may have heard, the strike seems to be just about over. Official voting will finish Tuesday night, and if all goes well, the writers will be back to work Wednesday.

What that means for me personally is a bit unclear. Seeing as how it's about 10pm and I haven't gotten a phone call from my ex-employers yet, I'm under the impression that I at least won't be working tomorrow.

All I know is, even if that phone call for some reason doesn't come (although I expect it to sometime this week), at least with the strike lifted, there are going to be actual jobs that I can go out and compete for, with some confidence that I'll actually get one of them.

That's been the most frustrating aspect of all of this: Not only did my job disappear, but 95% of the other jobs that I'm qualified for disappeared as well.

All in all, as much as I enjoy being able to blow off doing my laundry because I can do it in the middle of the day Monday, it'll be very nice to go back to work and be productive again, as well as seeing all my friends.

At least the end is in sight. Hooray for that, at least.

It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over

As word spreads over the interwebs that the DGA has cut a deal with the studios, I've already had several people ask me if this is going to end the Writer's strike.

Frankly, I doubt it, and I base that doubt on the following key analytical paragraph from this New York Times story about the deal:

Over all, the agreement was designed to reflect the directors’ belief, bolstered by an independent study of industry economics, that digital media will render the companies a negligible amount of revenue during the life of the contract, and will become significant only after 2010.

Here's where the fundamental strategies of the DGA and WGA differ: The DGA is fighting like it's negotiating for the next three years, and only the next three years. The WGA is fighting like it's negotiating for a rate for the forseeable future.

Frankly, given how bad the unions have gotten screwed on the "oh, we'll raise the rate once we start making some money" concept before, I think the writers are right and the directors are being ludicrously short-sighted.

Now supposedly, the directors have had a clause written into the contract that the numbers they're agreeing to now aren't setting a precedent for the next negotiation in 2010-11, but...they're still setting a precedent.

Remember, writers have gotten the same 4 cent per VHS/DVD residual (and actors and directors have had similar numbers that have never been adjusted) since the early 80's, with no adjustments for either inflation or the dramatically declining cost of production, despite assurances from the studios when the deal was first struck that it would not be precedent-setting.

The DGA is putting an awful lot of trust in the studios to stand by their word and not fuck around during the next negotiation, and I don't know that the studios have done a damn thing to earn it.

Obviously, we'll have to see how the numbers play out and how the inevitable battle between the DGA and WGA in the press goes over the next few days, but I fear this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

I hope to god I'm wrong.

A Very Belated Answer

Laz posed a question in the comments a few days ago, which I thought I might want to actually answer before it becomes irrelevant:

So tell us -- Letterman circumventing the process and sorta crossing the line. Is that a good thing for the striking workers as a whole because it sets a possible precedent for bigger production companies, or does it take away from the solidarity of the union?

Actually, he's not crossing the line, his production company actually wholly owns his show and signed a deal with the WGA (note: That link has some interesting analysis by Nikki Finke, who's clearly sided with the writers over the main issues, but is still pretty good about calling bullshit on both sides when they deserve it).

This is extremely rare in these days of vertical integration, and at least a piece of almost every other show on television is owned by one of the major media conglomerates that comprises the AMPTP. Because Dave is independent, he was able to cut his own deal and get his show back on the air with writers.

Many people with more insight than I have taken a stab at predicting how this is going to turn out, with Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle hitting most of the short term points I would have.

Long term, it really depends on the ratings. If Letterman starts to win on a regular basis (and with writers vs. Jay's flailing, it's hard to see him not doing so), that's going to light a fire under NBC, whose negotiators have been among the serious hardliners.

However, if viewers are more compelled by the high-wire-without-a-net of Jay Leno trying to be funny without writers, it could prove a serious setback to the WGA, and hasten the fracture of the union (and oddly, might end the strike faster).

The one thing that has to be kept in mind is that these late night shows are absolute cash cows. They cost little to produce, get good ratings, and command enormous fees from advertisers. The amount of profit from these shows is above and beyond almost anything else on television.

Viewing habits in this timeframe are hard to break, which is why NBC has got to be concerned that its 13 year grip on the lead could be lost for good if Letterman is back with his writers and Jay without his for long enough.

Overall, it's a risky move, but if the ratings for Letterman (and Craig Ferguson, whose show Letterman's company also wholly owns and is also coming back with his writers) wind up way ahead of the competition, it's going to put an awful lot of pressure on NBC Universal to drop their hard line and to help convince others to drop theirs.

This week won't be the most telling: There will definitely be a "what-the-hell-is-he-gonna-do?" spike in interest in Leno. Next week, when people have had their chance to see what he's doing and decide whether or not it's worth watching, will be the key.

The Last Cliché of 2007

A few New Year's Resolutions, because if I post them somewhere, maybe I'll actually live up to them:

1. Continue to lose weight. Have lost: 33 lbs (net; had lost 35 but gained back 2 lbs stuffing my face with Waffle House and other assorted goodies over the holidays). To lose: 47 lbs. Mark my words, it will be done by the end of 2008.

2. Relegate Mr. Cranky Ankle to his former status as My Left Ankle. I've been sick of this shit long enough, this is the year that my weight loss and continued diligence with my foot exercises finally pays off.

3. Get a good job. Getting a job is part one of this, since I kind of need to, you know, eat. But I want to get another job that I'll be proud of, and not simply something that will get me through the duration of the strike.

4. Record songs I've written since last album. Once upon a time, I was a songwriter, and a half-decent one at that. Maybe I should at least put some tracks down to see if I can turn them into anything good.

5. Get out of the goddamn house. Between the entire Foot Fiasco of '07 that prevented me from leaving the house for 2 months, and the ongoing foot issues that left me extremely reluctant to for most of the rest of the year because of the pain, I feel like I've turned into a complete hermit/crazy cat lady. I promise that, once I have a job to pay for it, I am going to go out and be a social person, dammit! Just as soon as I finish this disc of Battlestar Galactica that just came in from Netflix...

6. Finish Redesigning my website. Not the blog, this is certainly sufficient for me at the moment (who knows what I'll think if I can't find a job for a couple of months and get REALLY bored). But as several people have pointed out to me, the main site could use a little update. Probably best to try and make it less than five years old.

And those are really the major ones. I considered adding in "get a girlfriend," as I suspect several people are awfully tired of hearing me whine about not having one, but I fear if I officially add it to the list, I'll just jinx myself, and I've had enough bad luck in that department as is.

Anyway, Happy 2008! Enjoy yourselves, and for the love of god, don't drink and drive. Unless you're just drinking water. Then, I think you're okay.

Breaking Out An Old Meme

You're all now officially On Notice.

'Twas The Night Before Strike-mas

'Twas the night before Strike-mas, and through Hollywood
Every crew member thought, "Oy, this can't be good."

The pink slips had been rolling on in for weeks
And news only came out in rumors and leaks.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds
While parents sought Advil to quiet their heads

I was sitting inside, bundled in winter gear
Having turned down the heat to try remain austere

When out in the alley honked a very loud horn;
'Twas a Teamster in his five-ton, looking forlorn

I opened my window and shouted "Hey, yo!
It's after midnight, don't you have somewhere to go?"

He replied, "It's all from the Christmas episode,
Fake trees and ornaments, an entire truckload.

Our vendors were shut down, our office laid off;
Every light in town seems to be turned off."

I asked, "Can't you take the truck to the studio?"
He said, "Their lot's so full, it's got no place to go."

I said, "Let's take it to Les Moonves's house!
He ought to have room, that $30-mil-a-year louse."

"Or Chernin or Grey," he said, "Or Barry Meyer,
Maybe Zucker or Sloan, or Lynton or Iger.

They all make good money, even Patric Verrone,
And some guy I saw on TV named Gavin Polone."

So I pulled on my jeans and I pulled on my boots,
The Teamster and I were now in cahoots.

We charted a course towards Beverly Hills
Ready to get in a last few cheap thrills.

With some inside tipsters and Google Maps Mobile
We took on a task...perhaps somewhat ignoble.

I will leave out the name of the victim selected
But do rest assured, he was quite well connected

We were dressed all in black from our heads to our feet,
To flummox security guards we might meet.

But our worries were baseless, 'twas no one nearby
As the shadow of the five-ton darkened the sky

We pulled up to the gates and claimed a delivery
Our friend didn't know it was heavy artillery.

We hung a huge banner urging negotiations
And left the truck there, despite protestations.

A silly and juvenile prank, to be sure,
But since when have crew kids ever been mature?

We fled the scene and I whipped out my crackberry
And called us a taxi to someplace more merry:

To the party of one friend who still had a job
And hadn't turned into an unemployed slob.

We drank to our family and friends and moreover
To the hope this will end before hell freezes over.

---

Now I end with a plea for a wee bit of reason
Though it sometimes seems such a thing's out of season

Please stop the name-calling through press releases
And try to begin to pick up the pieces.

For Peace is the one thing we B.T.L.'s seek
And the return of our 70-hour workweek.

Though I've fled from L.A. for a Christmas that's white,
Merry Strike-mas to all, and to all a good night.

Many thanks to the providers of the Online Rhyming Dictionary, without which this would have been even sillier.

Fun With Playlists

So I'm putting together a playlist I've dubbed "Laid Off Blues", and I wanted to solicit some suggestions.

Here's what I've culled so far from my own personal library, in no particular order:

School's Out - Alice Cooper
Fired - Ben Folds
It's The End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) - R.E.M.
Say Goodbye Hollywood - Eminem
Goodbye - Patty Griffin
I'm A Long Gone Daddy - Hank Williams
Already Gone - Tarbox Ramblers
Leaving To Stay - Kevin Bowe and the Okemah Prophets
Leavin' - Shelby Lynne
Why I Left California - Liz Phair
The World Has Turned and Left Me Here - Weezer
I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself - The White Stripes
California - Rufus Wainwright
Day Job - Gin Blossoms
Why Don't You Get A Job - The Offspring
Get A Job - The Silhouettes
Nice Work if You Can Get It - Billie Holiday
Bad Days - The Flaming Lips
The Union Forever - The White Stripes
Sixteen Tons - Johnny Cash

Any other songs y'all feel are glaringly absent from this list?

A Quiet Goodbye

Not quite a complete goodbye yet, since I've already agreed to come in on Wednesday and help out with some holiday nonsense as I badly need the money.

But today was my last day of real work. It's been almost exactly two years since I started working for my employers, and today I officially got laid off.

It's been deathly quiet for some time, with more than 90% of our crew gone. But tonight, as I packed my belongings and deleted my files from my computer, I was the only one there.

All I could hear was the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, and the insanely loud ticking of the clock in the bullpen as I addressed a couple of letters and finished cleaning out my desk and all my decorations.

I don't know when this strike is going to be over. The WGA's NLRB complaint, while it may be legally justified, certainly isn't going to speed up the process of returning to negotiations.

Because of that, I have no idea if I'm coming back. I have some savings, but not enough to last me more than about three months, if I'm being realistic. I have to start looking for a job at the first of the year if I don't want to starve.

So I packed up everything, from my Giant Bottle O'Advil to the hilarious "While You Were Out, Everyone Exploded" message a co-worker left me over a year ago, and that I'd tacked to the wall for posterity.

And I listened to the clock tick and tick and tick, time marching inexorably forward, and life moving on whether I wanted it to or not.

So I walked out the door, and I shut off the lights in the office for the weekend. And I closed the door behind me, wondering when (besides Wednesday) or if I'd be opening it again.

A Distressingly Close Approximation Of My Office At The Moment

Is shown in this video from the kids at Late Night With Conan O'Brien.

You can't hear the buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights as loudly as you can in my office right now, but the level of deadness is pretty comparable.

A Magical Place With Aisles and Aisles of Food

I realized tonight as I stopped off at the grocery store on my way home that it's been an astonishingly long time since I actually went to the grocery store for more than about five items.

Since my foot surgery, I've gotten highly addicted to getting my groceries delivered. It's so much easier than going grocery shopping that I hadn't been in quite some time, despite the fact that I think it works out to be slightly more expensive.

As I got out of work at a reasonable hour tonight and have been running low on many foodstuffs, I decided to actually go to the grocery store.

About five minutes after I walked in, I heard the voice of George Oscar Bluth in my head, saying, "I've made a huge mistake."

There was...so much food! And it was all on sale! I had to buy it now or I'd lose out on my chance to save $1.65 on a box of couscous!

The other problem was that I've gone into severe stock-up mode for the long winter of unemployment that's about to descend on me, and there were several items there that helped me in my goal of trying to keep my average meal cost hovering around $3.

I now have enough cheese to clog the arteries of even the most fastidious jogger, enough cans of Chunky soup to make a three-story pyramid, and bunches and bunches of Honey Bunches of Oats. Oh, and several boxes of couscous.

Luckily, I think I now have enough food to get me through about mid-January, except perhaps having to pick up the odd gallon of milk from time to time. Although I suspect I'm going to be awfully sick of Chunky soup by that point.

Fuck Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck

My industry is so completely and totally doomed.

I am going to ignore the protests of Mr. Cranky Ankle and have a nice stiff glass of bourbon or three.

The Axe Swings Backward

Well, at least the uncertainty is pretty much gone: If the strike's not settled by the end of next week, then next Friday's my last day.

At least I got the courtesy of a warning so I can get my shit together both physically and financially, unlike the last time I got canned.

It sucks, but I'm getting paid for two more weeks than the entire crew and most of the production office, so I'm still in a better position than most.

And now, to try and trim the nonexistent fat out of my budget...

The Wind-Down

I've experienced the wind-down once before, during summer hiatus between seasons 2 and 3. Between 3 and 4 I missed it, since I was trapped in my apartment after getting foot surgery instead.

The wind-down comes after we finish filming, which we did on Thursday. Everyone gets their wrap days, cleans out all their shit, and says, "See you in a couple of months."

Except this time, nobody has any fucking clue when we're going to see each other. Up until Thursday night, I had some confidence that this could be settled soon.

Then this hit, and it became clear that this wasn't a realistic offer, and even more dreariness descended upon us.

So everyone wished everyone else a Merry Christmas, a joking "Happy Strike-atus!", and offered our fervent, probably false hopes that we'd see each other again in January.

Normally, during the wind-down, everyone knows we'll see each other in a couple months. This time, if there's no settlement by Christmas, nobody knows.

The problem is, everyone needs to eat, and if the strike goes long enough, we and every other show around will probably lose half our crew to features, if not more. So we say goodbye and see you soon, and hope to hell that's the case.

This is a time that's very odd for me as well, since working for the one and only non-writing Executive Producer who's there day to day, I'm going to be one of the last people out.

I'm exceedingly lucky that I've worked twelve months a year for the last two years, and I'm even luckier that I still have a job when the vast majority of my friends are going to be unemployed after tomorrow.

Were this a real hiatus, this would be simultaneously the worst time at work, but the best time out of work.

Worst because there's not generally a ton for me to do except take the occasional messenger run up to our corporate overlords in Universal City, and some research that I beg for to keep my brain from rotting.

Best because I actually get out of work after ten hours at 6pm, early enough to feel like I have a normal job for once in my life. During the summer, during real hiatus, it's early enough for me to go for a bike ride down to the beach.

But it's strike-atus. It's the middle of the winter, and unless I leave at about 3pm, I would never get home with enough light to make it to the beach before the sun set and the temperature dropped precipitously.

So I'll wander in to my apartment complex in the dark, worried as hell about what happens after Post finishes and my presence becomes even more redundant.

And I'll enjoy the last few episodes of my favorite shows as the networks burn them off, waiting for an RSS bulletin or a phone call or a news flash while flipping through channels to tell me it's finally over.

And then we'll slam back into gear, and I'll be busier than ever. But I sure as hell won't be complaining about how much work I have to do.

That's Appropriate

So I get home from drinking with the crew because today (well, yesterday at this hour) was our last day of filming, and I grab the computer so I can read while icing my foot.

The first thing I see when I look at my RSS feeds is this from the Onion: "Uninsured Man Hopes His Symptoms Diagnosed This Week On House."

So hilarious on so, so, so many levels, the most bitterly ironic of which is that many of my friends who work on the show are about to be uninsured themselves.

One Down, Two To Go

Broadway stagehands: Followers when it comes to calling strikes (having called theirs about a week into the WGA strike), but let's hope they're leaders when it comes to settling them.

Now it's down to the main body of the WGA and the CBS news writers.

It's at least a somewhat hopeful portent, and for the week we finish filming and 95% of the remainder of the people I work with get laid off, I'm clinging to whatever hope I can.

Normal vs. Strike, Vol. 1

Normally, I'd be moaning and complaining about having to go back to work after a blissfully lazy Thanksgiving break.

This year, I'm just thankful I still have a job that I'm not nearly ready to drag myself back to kicking and screaming.

Cross your fingers that progress is made tomorrow, my friends.

A Light At The End of The Tunnel

Let's just hope it's not an oncoming train.

Although at this point, I consider the two sides sitting in the same room, staring hatefully across the table at each other for eight hours to be a giant step in the right direction.

If they actually to get this shit settled, it'll be a Christmas miracle.

Desperation + Goofy Theme Striking = Dating Gold

So the Writer's Guild division of the Gay Mafia is putting together an LGBT picket, which sounds like ever so much fun.

I've decided I'm totally going over there, because I might actually be able to get hot/funny writer lesbians to go out with me.

You see, while in normal times, my weekly salary would not pay many an employed writer's dry-cleaning bill, I now have the distinct advantage that I am still actually receiving a paycheck...for the next few weeks.

So I plan to take advantage of this advantage while I can, and hopefully draw to a close the dreadfully long period of singledom I've been suffering through for...longer than I care to try to calculate.

Striking single lesbians, your knight in shining armor* has arrived!

* - Note: Shining armor may be made of tin foil rather than actual armor as I'm really not making enough money to rent a suit of armor.

The Daily Grind

Wearing a mouthguard is weird.

I had to order one because I've been super-stressed what with the strike and all, and have been grinding my teeth when I sleep, leading to some fairly irritating jaw pain.

I'd done this before when I was unemployed, and my dentist had suggested $1500 worth of contraptions to prevent recurrence, but I got my current job shortly after that suggestion, and the grinding subsided.

Doing some research, I discovered that for most people, the $1500 kit is severe overkill, and the $15 boil-and-bite mouthguards you can pick up for sports tend to do well enough.

I'm trying it tonight for the first time, and the instructions suggested leaving it in my mouth for a while to get used to it.

It's a really bizarre feeling, but I think the fact that I'm utterly exhausted should help with trying to get to sleep, since I've been ready to pass out all damn day.

Anyway, off to give this a shot. I guess if I can't sleep, I'm covered if I want to go out and participate in a boxing match or tackle football game instead.

It Begins

Five of my friends got laid off today.

Four days into the strike, not a "your last day is Friday," not a "you have until the end of the day", a letter from the conglomerate stating "your employment is terminated effective immediately." Turn in your badge and your keys this minute, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

My friends knew it was coming, since they all worked in the writers' office. The logic was simple enough. But nobody thought it'd come quite so soon or so obnoxiously harshly.

I still have a job for now. Working directly for my boss's production company rather than for a multinational conglomerate has its advantages, but if the strike goes long enough, I'm out on the street too.

Small solace for me, but no solace for my friends let go the exact second the conglomerate figured out who they could can.

This is going to get so very much worse before it gets better.

Update: Ed Bernero from Criminal Minds sent a CM fansite a long but fairly clear explanation of the writers' side of the argument.

I'm linking here because it's got the best real-world analogy of residuals I've come across, comparing the payments to a contractor who gets half the money for remodeling your kitchen upfront, while getting paid for the rest as the work gets completed.

Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole

This is getting ridiculously ugly very quickly. When even Variety is this pessimistic this early in the ballgame, we're all fucked.

Someone at the WGA made the extremely smart move of making a fairly simple video explaining their entirely rational demands on the internet residuals, which you should watch if you've found my explanations of the issues lacking.

The problem is that the studios feel compelled to try and cling to every penny they can, even as they issue statements to Wall Street trumpeting the potential gold mine in internet content delivery.

It's the ultimate nightmare for people who work in Production: Both sides are utterly convinced they're right, and they're both digging in deep.

My worst fear during the run-up to this week was a six month strike, but as details trickle out about how horribly the talks broke down on Sunday, it sounds like there's a distinct possibility that it might last even longer than that.

Meanwhile, the first of my friends (or at least those friends not amongst the picketers) are probably going to get laid off at the end of this week, if not earlier.

This just sucks.

Update: Deadline Hollywood posted a picture of almost our whole writing staff (there's a couple people I don't see, but I think some are blocked by the signs of the people in front), plus a couple of SAG friends of the staff who are out picketing with them, from the picket line at Fox yesterday.

A Little Perspective

Strike day 1 came and went. Some pictures of the group picketing the lot this morning are up on LAist, but our writers were on the afternoon shift, so none of my friends are pictured there.

However, this afternoon I found out another friend I used to work with got hit by a car and badly injured while she was riding her motorcycle yesterday. She's going to live, but only because she was wearing her helmet.

She's still in the ICU, and after a very long time in surgery yesterday, it looks like she's going to be okay, or at least as okay as you can be after having one of your hands crushed into a million pieces and having your femur break so badly it breaks the skin, among her many, many injuries.

As much whining as I do about my stupid foot and all the horseshit it's given me after I tripped on a stupid fucking rock, it's nothing compared to the utter hell my friend is about to go through.

It also gives me perspective about my worries about unemployment: If I lose my job, I can get another one. My friend might never be able to get back a lot of what she lost yesterday.

Cross your fingers for her. She's a good kid, and I wouldn't wish the pain and frustration she's about to go through on my worst enemy.

And Now, Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Strike

Back from San Diego, and sadly, it appears we're headed down the rabbit hole for real.

I'm at least modestly heartened to hear that the sides talked for over eight hours (though apparently talks collapsed around 10). I fully expected at least one if not both sides to walk out telling the other side to go fuck themselves after a couple of hours.

I really hope something gets pounded out in the next week or two, because I fear if this isn't settled very quickly, it's going to go for several months.

In the meantime, these next couple of weeks should be awfully fun.

Armageddon Arrives

It's on like Donkey Kong, kids. Writers announce tomorrow when they're officially going to start picketing. In all likelihood I'm going to have to cross my first picket line on Monday, something I'm not at all happy about.

But I need this job and especially the health insurance it provides, so I'll drive past my picketing friends on Monday, go into the office, and try to figure out what the hell to do from there.

And I hope to hell they'll understand.

This Will Get Much Worse Before It Gets Better

Sorry to be on all-strike, all the time mode, but really, this is pretty much the future of the industry I work in on the line here.

Why do I think it's going to get worse? The following two lines from the AMPTP's statement:

In referring to DVDs, we include not only traditional DVDs, but also electronic sell-through — i.e., permanent downloads. As you know, we believe that electronic sell-through is synonymous with DVD.

This, THIS, is the flagrantly insane statement that the producers make on the last day before the deal expires.

Anyone who knows a goddamn thing about digital distribution knows that trying to make DVDs and downloads equivalent is utterly ridiculous.

We're all doomed.

Cheap Eats

So I've mentioned my joking plan to subsist on cat food should the strike put me out of work to several people, and I've learned a couple of things about inexpensive food:

1. There are a lot more ways to prepare Ramen than you'd think.

2. People seriously will eat anything when they're stoned. More than one person mentioned eating dog biscuits while high. One even touted the biscuits' high calcium content as a potential benefit.

For A Few Days (And Dollars) More

The rumor du jour is that the strike might get held off until next week. This is good for TV production, because every extra day means another chance to maybe get another script in under the line.*

Also, at the end of that article is a good summary of what the key issues are in the negotiations.

The biggest sticking point is currently the New Media stuff, since although it's costly now, it's fairly clear that if properly executed, it's going to make a boatload of money. It's really a question of what percentage of that boatload the writers get.

* - Scripts turned in before a strike is called can theoretically be shot, just without any changes from the writer and only very minimal changes from the director.

However, if the Teamsters honor the writers' picket lines, as they're sort of urging their members to do, it's going to be very, very difficult to shoot anything without trucks to move everything around.

The Teamsters, I should note, are the only union in town that has a specific clause that says they can honor picket lines without getting fired. Pretty much anyone else who honors them is out of a job.

Who Wants To Feed A Starving TV Industry Employee?

This is looking increasingly likely to become a reality show starting Friday.

At least the mediator the Feds are sending in is a black belt in aikido, and can kick the shit out of the moron negotiators if they have another fight over chairs.

Looks like me and Chaplin are going to be fighting over who gets to eat the cat food.

An Inauspicious Sunday

Two items today that together are a real great way to kick off the week:


First, last night there were some serious Santa Ana winds blowing, and my power (and the power to the rest of my block) went out. To SoCal Edison's credit, it was back on within the hour.

However, one key item in my apartment building seems to have been permanently injured by the flickering of the power before it finally died: The hot water heater.

That's right, my apartment building has NO hot water. I lived with having cold water for laundry, figuring the soap was fine for most dirt, and the heat from the dryer would kill just about everything else.

The real problem occurred when I first discovered the lack of hot water...when I jumped in the shower after I came home from the gym, and thought I was about to freeze solid.

I shower at home when I go to the gym because the showers at my gym are horror-movie level disgusting. After freezing my ass off, waiting in vain for the water to warm up, I briefly reconsidered going back to the gym. Then I decided it was better to freeze.

After considering options (although forgetting a few: I thought of a couple people I could have called later to beg for the use of their unfrozen showers), I decided to run a bath, and then boil a bunch of water in the hopes of at least making things livably lukewarm.

That worked decently, except for the fact that my bathtub doesn't really seal off too well, so there was a slow draining that caused a minor race against the clock in terms of completing my ablutions.

I still had to gut out a minute of rinsing in the ice-cold shower water, but all in all, it could have been a lot worse.


Secondly, this story went up (and continues to go up in pieces), which makes me rather pessimistic about the strike. Nikki Finke, who runs Deadline Hollywood, can be rather full of herself, but she's also usually right on the money in terms of predicting what's going to happen.

The gist of that story for those who don't feel like reading the inside-baseball account is that a large number of the moguls are willing to let the writers walk, losses at the box office and the ratings be damned.

The whole thing is shaping up to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions, although I can't imagine that either the Governator or Mayor Villaraigosa won't step in and try to smack some sense into these people, given how fiscally disastrous a strike would be for the L.A. economy.

The last big Hollywood strike, a 22 week writers' strike in '88, cost the studios alone over $500 million, and the ripple effect into the local economy was well over a billion.

I don't think it's a stretch at all to say between inflation and the significantly larger entertainment business, this strike could cost L.A. a billion dollars a month.

As for me, I'm stocking up on Ramen and canned goods and cat food, and battening down the hatches.

I'm lucky enough that I think my bosses will have enough for me to do (and enough reserve funds) to keep me at least partially employed through the end of the year. But if the strike drags on for four or five months, I don't know how long they can continue to justify paying me.

The sad thing is, I'm far better off than most. If the writers walk November 1st, most of my friends will be out of work by Thanksgiving. And accepted wisdom is if they walk then, there's no way they're back before the first of the year.

There will be some feature production, as anything that's already got a script is going to get made, but it's not going to be nearly enough to make up for the huge number of TV people who suddenly become unemployed.

I keep hearing the argument that I shouldn't stress about it because there's nothing I can do about it. While it's true that I have no control over this mess, that just makes me stress about it even more.

I tend to get more worried about things I can't control because I can't do anything about them. If I can do something, then I get up and do it and it's done. All I can do now is sit on the sidelines and hope these guys don't wind up driving this whole industry over a cliff.

Sadly, the consensus seems to be that both sides are so pissed off at each other that they don't realize they're about to do just that.

This Can't Be Good

Ah, fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

As the potential armageddon draws closer and on a day when I'm not as tired, I'll go into more detail about exactly what a strike would mean, both to the industry in general and to me in particular.

Suffice to say for now, I'm becoming very, very glad that I'm going to be in Chicago this weekend, away from the HOLLYWOOD STRIKEWATCH! madness seizing this town.