the podosphere

Here’s a way to help out some actors – a charity auction with all manner of cool donated stuff. Proceeds to the WGA and the Actors Fund, to help out those most affected during the recent strikes and layoffs.

There’s already a lot of cool stuff here, and more on the way.

Bravo to Jill and to S.E. Olson for volunteering their time and energy to make this happen, and to everyone who’s generously donated items for auction.

http://criminalmindscharityblog.blogspot.com/

A few thoughts on where SAG is, and the above-the-line creative guilds in general, as of 6 July 2008.

SAG negotiators are currently in hovering mode, awaiting results of the AFTRA proposed Schedule A contract balloting. Most ballots should already be at least in the mail as of this writing.

The conventional wisdom is that AFTRA membership passage of Schedule A adversely affects SAG’s position vis a vis the AMPTP. Rancor between the two actors’ union is likely to continue either way, and with or without AFTRA, SAG still has to negotiate the best deal it can for its members.

Obviously the current negotiations concern me, as does the adverse impact to actors of AFTRA’s company-union deals with the AMPTP. SAG’s next move in relation to AFTRA after negotiations with the AMPTP are concluded and a deal approved and signed is anyone’s guess. The next couple of years in SAG/AFTRA relations could be interesting.

Rather than pursuing this tantalizing morsel, however, I would instead like to address the larger concern of the creative guilds – the next set of contract negotiations in 30-36 months.

SAG has already joined the DGA, WGA, and AFTRA in ceding the 17/24-day residual-free window for New Media. We learned this at the town hall meetings. The DGA, WGA, and AFTRA in Schedule A (pending membership vote) have also allowed for work defined as union work historically and in every other contract they have with the AMPTP to be redefined as non-union work, as long as it’s original made-for-New Media work and below a certain budget level ($15k/minute, $300k/show, or $500k/series). As of this writing SAG is sticking to its guns, insisting that all member work for signatories fall under union jurisdiction.

Out of respect for the WGA as well as current SAG negotiations, I have not written much lately about the 17/24-day windows. As the conglomerates’ New Media footprint grows, as they migrate more of their content to the Internet and mobile devices, the folly of this giveaway will become more and more apparent. Already, branded network websites as well as portals like Hulu are chewing into residual income for actors and writers. This trend will not simply continue, but accelerate over the next three years. Just look at the growth projections the conglomerates report to their Wall Street investors. They are confident about this shift from television/cable network distribution to New Media because the cable companies and telecoms are busy laying fiber optic pretty much everywhere, while various electronics companies busy themselves developing and marketing set-top boxes to connect the big screen in the living room the Internet as well as building televisions that don’t even need a set-top box for the Internet connection (they just use IPTV, wired or wireless). The most likely holdovers after 2011 – the poor and the elderly, particularly in rural areas – are the least attractive demographics for advertisers. Even for these slices of the market, the government’s mandating cheap conversion boxes. The conglomerates will not slow their sprint to the New Media distribution model out of consideration for the poor or the elderly.

As for the New Media production exemption, the creative guilds (including SAG if they cave in, God forbid) are going to learn the hard way why a union never, ever, lets employers redefine any union work at any budget level as being non-union work. The principle of union protection for employees of signatory companies is sacrosanct. The DGA, WGA, and AFTRA under the proposed Schedule A have clearly violated this fundamental principle.

The union principle exists in most industries to protect current employees as well as the next generation. In the entertainment industry, lamentably, even though television is famous for eating its young, many older, established writers and actors may feel their resumes, relationships, or fame protect them from the vagaries of creeping “low-budget” “New Media” work. Those of us who have written, acted, directed, and/or produced in the New Media space know better.

It doesn’t take $15,000 to produce a quality minute in of New Media entertainment. Hell, it doesn’t take $1,000. Michael Eisner is aware of this, even if he hasn’t mastered it yet. Check out what he’s up on the cheap at vuguru.com.

For $300,000 I can think of quite a few content creators (that’s how we refer to ourselves in the New Media space) who could produce 22 minutes of quality entertainment, the kind of entertainment that could easily be a template for a television series. You know, a pilot. That’s another way the conglomerates plan to use New Media. It’s the new back-door pilot space. NBC had to swallow hard and take the leap with scripts and promises this year, but next year, given a choice, are those executives going to feel more comfortable with a script and a promise, or a quicktime file of the show on its feet they can actually watch?

Caryn Mandabach, late of Carsey-Werner, was recently interviewed on KCRW’s The Business on the subject of television development in Great Britain. Across the pond they like to put a pilot on its feet via a staged reading – with actors, and blocking, on a stage. She said this way you can get a stronger feel (and I’m paraphrasing, to be sure) for how the show’s going to play, at a cost of literally tens of pounds (a couple of c-notes, give or take). American producers have long been looking for their own version of this, and they may well have found it in direct-for-Internet production. Already they have bought “We Need Girlfriends” for series development. Actors Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel got a feature deal off their Internet short, Jay & Seth vs. the Apocalypse. Both were done for almost nothing.

Another thing that’s important to know in the brave New Media world. A screen is a screen is a screen, whether it’s an iPod, a cell phone, a laptop, the LCD hanging in your local Coffee Bean, a 50-incher in the living room, a good old-fashioned movie theatre, an IMAX screen, or a projection onto the side of a building. In an era of time-shifting, channel-shifting, Internet streaming, theatrical-length productions made directly for the Internet (InAlienable, available through www.walterkoenigsite.com, is just the first. Full disclosure – I’ve shared an improv stage with the film’s co-writer and Walter’s son Andrew Koenig, and he is amazing), and the free-flow repurposing and mashing-up of content, when it’s all zeros and ones it can be used anywhere, and monetized in any of a growing variety of ways. SAG is going in the right direction by thinking of its member participation in New Media projects in terms of a partnership with producers. There is certainly precedent for this, not just in residual structures but in the gross participation deals so many A-listers – actors, writers, and directors – have cut for themselves.

By including regressive New Media provisions in this contract cycle’s deals with the AMPTP, the DGA, WGA, and possibly now AFTRA are cutting their own members out of literally thousands of career-making or career-rejuvenating opportunities. In the case of the AFTRA deal, the terms of the proposed Schedule A deal will strongly encourage signatories to issue casting calls specifically saying “No Union Actors Need Apply”. In short, the union-work principle is there for sound reasons.

To those who would say I worry too much, because, after all, the AMPTP agreed to sunset clauses on these New Media provisions, I ask, how good a job did the AMPTP do keeping its promises to revisit VHS? DVD? Oh, but sunset clauses are in writing, they’re in the contract! Sure. Now, what exactly does a sunset claus promise? That both sides get to renegotiate. That’s it. There is absolutely no promise, real or implied, that the AMPTP will negotiate better terms the next time out. In fact, in their June 12 statement to SAG, they referred to “the industry’s now well-established new media framework”. I take them at their word. This is not the language of an entity viewing the current New Media agreements as temporary, or only for three years.

“Well-established”. This means in three years the conglomerates will have built revenue and revenue-growth projections, based on production expense and compensation/residual models the creative guilds have negotiated this year, into their Wall Street reports. Three years from now, they will point to this statement they issued, that the New Media framework is “well-established” as proof that they signaled clearly their long-term intentions. They will say to the guilds in 2011 – and they’ll be right – that the guilds had all of this information about what the conglomerates were doing and planning in New Media back in ‘08. If these terms were good enough in ‘08, they should be just fine in ‘11.

Well-established”. This is what the creative guilds have set themselves up to negotiate against in 30-36 months. Now is the time to prepare. Now is the time to organize. Now is the time build unity and solidarity within the guilds and amongst the guilds. Now is the time for the guilds to gird their loins for the biggest fight they will have ever faced, a fight for the survival of the unions as entities relevant to the interests of their members.

If the creative guilds fail to find their unity, if they fail to come together with a single voice in defense of their rights as workers and needs as creative artists, not only will the result be the decimation of the middle-class working professional artist, not only will the below-the-line workers suffer from longer hours, shorter-turnaround times and the underfunding of their benefits packages, not only will actors find their workplaces more dangerous, sometimes even more deadly, but the very industry that now pushes wages and compensation downwards, that fights workplace safety, will find that their product – our creative output – has suffered serious degradation in quality and audience appeal, thus suppressing the same profits they aim to enhance by squeezing the artists in the first place.

Before I close, I would like briefly to address the issue of compensation. The general public often is misled into thinking creative types in the entertainment industry have it so easy, because they see the most beautiful of us splashed across the covers of the glossy magazines at the supermarket checkout line. That’s not the average creative professional, not by a long shot. The average creative professional is the one who shares a couple of scenes with the “star” and makes them look damn good. The average creative professional is the person who writes the dialogue the “star” says so cleverly. The average creative professional is so good they make their fellows – including the better-paid ones – look that much better. The other part of this misconception lies in the fact that the enormous salaries & compensation packages pulled down the top executives of the largest conglomerates – most of whom couldn’t act or write their way out of a paper bag, let alone direct traffic – and their assorted comings and goings and doings are not nearly as well-publicized as the activities of the top actors or singers. Their wealth is not as much in the public eye. Let me put it a bit more crassly – with a bow to Chris Rock: if Rupert Murdoch woke up tomorrow morning with Britney Spears’ money, he’d shoot himself in the head. Same goes for Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Mike Ovitz, Robert Iger (counting stock options), and any of a couple dozen other top industry executives.

Well-compensated, well-protected artists freed to work in a creative space generate the kind of product that has made Hollywood the financial and creative standard and envy of the world. In working to protect themselves, actors, writers, and directors work to protect the industry they love.

********************

Okay, now the short version. It’s the Internet, stupid. The creative guilds need to build internal unity, and come together as one, for the 2011 negotiations if we’re going to maintain New Media to Old Media parity in wages & working conditions, and keep union work in the union. We have a lot of work to do, as we’ve already given up stuff this year we’re going to have fight hard to get back.

My thanks to Halley Bondy for the mention in Backstage June 25 of my “Billionaires for AFTRA” short. She also mentioned a few other shorts on the Internet lampooning the current SAG/AFTRA/AMPTP situation. My personal favorite is still the brilliant SAG vs. AFTRA vs. AMPTP: A Brief Satirical History….

I do have to offer some perspective on one paragraph from Ms. Bondy’s well-written piece. From her article:

David Alan Basche, who was on the negotiating committee, supports the actors’ right to free speech but pointed out that these very videos would fall under AFTRA jurisdiction under the union’s tentative contract, provided they were produced by an AMPTP company and cast at least one union member. “That jurisdiction didn’t exist before we pushed the AMPTP into agreeing to it,” Basche said. “Bet they didn’t mention that, did they?”

 The point I have made repeatedly here, at Deadline Hollywood Daily, and other forums is that if the AMPTP were funding videos at this budget level (my video cost literally under $50 in props and digital tape – yeah, that was a cheap cigar) under the Schedule A deal AFTRA leaders are currently trying to con and bully their members into ratifying, the producers would bar union or other “covered” actors from even auditioning, to keep their costs down and those pesky unions away so they don’t have to worry about silly things like labor protections.

In Jerome Bixby’s classic original Star Trek episode “Day of the Dove”, an alien entity puts the opposing crews of two ships into literally the same boat, gives them weapons, and lets them fight it out in an unending battle. All the while the alien entity feeds and grows stronger off the blind hatred of the two crews for one other.

SAG, AFTRA – welcome to Jerome Bixby’s nightmare.

In this Trek episode, much like the current labor situation, the scant trust of the two sides hung by a thread, a thread the alien entity was all-too-eager to sever. My purpose here is not to rehash the events or the politics that brought the two actors’ unions  to this precipice, rather, my concern is more for the future – immediate and long-term.

In a couple of weeks, give or take, we will know the will of the AFTRA membership in regard to the proposed Schedule A contract (full disclosure: I’m a member of SAG, in most-join status with AFTRA, and have voiced my opposition to this deal). If they vote no, AFTRA’s members will send a strong signal to the AMPTP that they don’t want to be played against SAG, and AFTRA leadership returns to the table with a mandate to do better. Whether or not AFTRA chooses to join SAG at the table, the AMPTP will be again negotiating with two actors’ unions. For all intents and purposes, SAG and AFTRA (who have a history of providing observers for each other’s negotiating sessions) would be best served knowing that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or at least my frenemy.

If AFTRA members approve the deal? I don’t even want to think about that possibility. Suffice to say it might not be pretty.

Looking further down the road, neither actors’ union is likely to get everything this year that it will need in New Media – production and residuals – to remain viable a decade from now. The WGA, and perhaps even the DGA, will come to the same realization as original New Media production ramps up over the next couple of years. Roughly three years from now, the creative unions will be forced to revisit these issues. Another fight, tougher still, awaits these unions, and nobody should be under any delusions.

The two crews in “Day of the Dove” eventually figured out what the alien entity was up to, and came up with a logical solution. Together, in unity, they laughed at the entity, denying it the one thing it could use to keep them at odds.

While the immediate future of the two actors’ unions appears rocky, in the longer term, Jerome Bixby offers us the solution – dispense with the hatred, and work together, in unity.

I love James Cromwell. As a fellow human being, of course, out of my firm belief in the oneness of humanity. I respect his politics, too. I’m not a member of a political party, but I keep up with politics like some keep up with sports. Well, except that I feel like a bit more is at stake.

Mr. Cromwell was an early and strong supporter of Dennis Kucinich, a politician I admire for a number of reasons: his ardently pro-union stance; his early, strong, and consistent opposition to the Iraq war; his championing of a single-payer health care proposal that makes more sense than anything offered by any other major-party presidential candidate this year. And of course, most recently, his championing of the rule of law in the face of great opposition even within his own party in bringing 35 articles of impeachment against the president of the United States.

I have a strong appreciation for Mr. Cromwell’s work as an actor. Many people know him from Babe, or Six Feet Under. Trekkers like me know him as Zefram Cochrane. I also remember him from the all-too-brief Norman Lear series Hot L Baltimore.

But there’s another role Mr. Cromwell took, Capt. Dudley Liam Smith in LA Confidential. I loved everything about this movie. I do fanboy moments very rarely, but when the opportunity arose, I had to tell Curtis Hanson he was robbed at the Oscars that year.

My father passed away just over three years ago. In the final years of his life, I made it my job to see to it we saw great movies together, and avoid movies that sucked (My son slipped Van Helsing past me once when I was out of town, and watched it with my dad. I’m not sure I’ve forgiven him). One movie I made sure to screen for my dad was LA Confidential. My dad was especially taken by Mr. Cromwell’s performance. As a child of Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, my dad well knew the people, the region, the period. Mr. Cromwell’s accent in the film belonged to an Irish man assimilating into Los Angeles. There was still some Irish in it, but he was clearly on his way to fully blending in with the city. My dad – I should mention he was also a retired drama teacher – felt the choice was perfect, and Mr. Cromwell’s execution spot-on.

I must add as well that I have met Mr. Cromwell on at least three occasions, and have always found him warm, engaging, and intelligent. He also has this great way of bringing his tall frame down to make the inevitably shorter person he’s speaking to more comfortable. He plants his feet far apart while keeping his back straight, like an upside-down Y with arms.

A slight digression. In my acting work, on-set, on-stage, wherever, I’m professional. I give 100 percent, I watch out for my fellow actors. I take to heart the Second City adage that if you make your fellow actor look good, you’ll look good. I have not lost my joy in the craft, or my undying admiration for the amazing work the best in our craft do. All of us, IMHO, should feel comfortable praising our fellow actors and taking joy in their creative success. Any actor who has lost that joy in the craft, who views going to the set as just another job – do me a favor. Put your union card in a drawer somewhere, and don’t pull it out until you’re ready to let your light shine again. Your fellow players – and your audience – deserve no less.

It is with all of this as backdrop that I now express my confusion with Mr. Cromwell’s stance vis a vis the proposed AFTRA Schedule A contract. I don’t know Mr. Cromwell well enough to speculate about his motivations, his internal logic. I don’t think it would even be appropriate to do so.

I’m new to union activism, having only become active this year after walking with the writers. I am not part of any faction within the Screen Actors’ Guild, and have no interest in identifying myself with any faction. I have no interest in running for any guild elective office. Given the personal invectives I have seen bandied about in various forums, and directed against me personally, I feel it important to make my stance public, especially in light of what I’m leading up to.

So here’s what specifically confuses me. It seems to me Mr. Cromwell should be well-versed in unionism in general, with his political leanings and relationships as well as his long service in SAG and AFTRA. I hope someone corrects me if my line of reasoning is way off here, but it seems to me Mr. Cromwell should be aware of the concept of a closed shop.

In unionism, a closed shop is one in which only members of the union may work. American law, to my knowledge, doesn’t allow a truly fully closed shop, one in which every worker in the shop must pay full dues, whether or not they agree with the union’s activities outside of negotiations for wages and working conditions. The law does require workers in union shops to pay a sum to the union for their services in negotiating contracts, regardless.

An open shop, by contrast, is one in which union and non-union workers work side by side.

Most unions use collective bargaining agreements to bind their employers to the union for their labor supply. The unions and employers agree on the job classifications, and the employers agree to not hire non-union workers at any location for jobs which are classified as union jobs.

Mr. Cromwell, IMHO, should know this. I have no ill feelings for the man. Even if I didn’t believe in the oneness of humanity as a matter of spiritual principle, he gave my late dad and me a memorable experience at the movies (like I said, my dad taught drama, so these things resonate for us). But Mr. Cromwell, with his years in union activism and his political connections, should know about the importance of closed shops. He should know that principal speaking roles in television and the movies have been 100 percent union territory for decades. He should know that a screen is a screen is a screen, whether it’s on a cell phone or the side of a building.

He should know that in a world where Internet series budgeted in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars – series like “We Need Girlfriends” - get picked up for network television, or Internet shorts made the cost of videotape and sandwiches – like Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse – get picked up for studio theatrical development, low-budget New Media MATTERS.

It puzzles me that Mr. Cromwell would champion an agreement that allows the signatories to break the closed-shop rule they and the actors have agreed to and abided by for decades. The argument that AFTRA “won” jurisdiction in New Media doesn’t wash. If it’s a screen, there are actors on that screen, and a signatory is paying to make that piece of work that appears on that screen, it must be union work. Period.

I can’t imagine that Congressman Kucinich – himself a union member, and a man Mr. Cromwell has hosted in his home – would remain sanguine at the thought of an employer so brazenly cracking the closed shop.

In the laughing billionaire piece I posted on Youtube a few days ago, I made a reference to Farmer Hoggett – Mr. Cromwell’s character in Babe – leading the sheep astray. Before doing that bit, before posting it, I gave it a lot of thought, just about to the point of agonizing over it. I was concerned I might have gone too far, that the context would be lost and somehow it would be taken personally. My criticism is not of Mr. Cromwell personally, just his stance vis a vis this egregious proposed AFTRA Schedule A contract.

I can’t even imagine that Mr. Cromwell would consciously want the studios and networks to be free to fund thousands of low-budget non-union New Media projects – as we already know they plan to do – and let them bar the doors on these projects to union talent. But that’s exactly what would happen, and the proposed AFTRA deal gives the employers a strong financial incentive to put out a shingle on these projects: No union members need apply.

It stretches credulity even further that Mr. Cromwell would have been unaware of a viable alternative to the AMPTP’s New Media formula, one that SAG has already had in beta testing with independent companies for some time, one that SAG has proven works. More than 500 companies have signed with SAG to produce low-budget New Media projects. If the projects make money, the actors get a taste. The on-camera talent shares in the risks and the rewards, as partners.

So, Mr. Cromwell, if perchance this finds its way to you, thank you for the joy you’ve brought to my father and me. I would also urge you, in light of what I have pointed out here, to reconsider your position on the AFTRA contract. It’s all zeros and ones now. We can take a minute, do another take, and get it right.

Here:

 [youtube 2qxlltkqGSM]

Or - why Mike needs to have a vanity Google alert.

Daily Variety quoted my blog - a full paragraph’s worth - way back on June 5, and I just found out today. My somewhat-delayed gratitude to the Big Green V. They quoted me accurately, and even spelled my name correctly (yeah, I know, my name’s not that tough, but it’s happened).

One other programming note: I’ve been fairly active lately at the sagactor and showfax blogs.

Oh, and if you happen to have an AFTRA card in your wallet, please vote against the proposed contract. You and your fellow actors deserve better. Much better.

Andrew Salomon penned a piece at Blogstage about the current actors’ union/negotiation situation. In many respects, he’s reflecting a pro-corporate view. Those who perceive a rift between actors on the two coasts may see the east coast in his perspective. While there is much I see differently than him, I chose to focus in my response on what I see as the most fundamental issue. I am restating, rewording, summarizing basically the same arguments I’ve made previously, on this blog and elsewhere. I have chosen recently to leave the concerns over this tree or that to others (which is not to say those trees are unimportant; far from it), and to focus on the health of the forest. BTW, this piece should in no way be taken as a criticism of either Andrew or his abilities as a writer. He’s damn good. I disagree with him, but he’s damn good.

Andrew -

With respect, please turn the telescope around and look through the eyepiece.

The broader issue here is the long-term viability of the labor movement in Hollywood. Not just SAG, not just AFTRA, not even just the other above-the-line guilds. The labor movement.

Where you see Doug Allen immediately “going to the mattresses” as if SAG wanted a war, I see (and I daresay many other actors see) a clear and present danger to the bedrock foundations of unionism in the entertainment industry. New Media is where the moguls are already migrating. The technology is already developed; the industry is now a couple of years into the process. The moguls want to wrap up these final deals so they can quit obfuscating and get on with the process of shifting tens of billions of dollars’ worth of development and distribution to the Internet, which means tens of billions LESS to broadcast, cable and pay television.

The moguls are playing for keeps with this year’s labor deals. While advocates of the proposed AFTRA deal cling to the sunset clause, the AMPTP crows about “the industry’s now well-established new media framework”. Those are not the words of an organization concerned about sunset clauses, those are the words of an organization that fully intends to keep whatever it gets in New Media. History is on the side of this view, as the DVD issue clearly shows.

In agreeing that signatories may hire non-union principal casts, the AFTRA deal violates the most basic of union tenets. Andrew, you would apparently have SAG do the same. Not only is this egregious on its face, not only does this represent literally thousands of missed opportunities over the next three years for actors to do what they love, advance their careers, and (under the terms of the SAG New Media contracts) share in the rewards should the projects turn a profit, but it gives the employers a wedge in to make more principal work non-union going forward.

SAG officials have already learned from their employers that they most certainly plan to exploit the New Media exemption far and wide. It’s not just back-door pilots, it’s a LOT of interstitial-length pieces destined for the Internet and mobile devices. The moguls would not have fought for this provision had they not already known exactly how they plan to fully exploit it.

A friend wisely noted an old Arab proverb: Never let a camel’s nose in the tent.

Even were I grant that a significant number of SAG members do not feel the New Media exemption by itself is a big enough issue to strike over (and I’m not granting this; I’m only using this rhetorically for the sake of argument), SAG can and will strike if the AMPTP puts the actors’ backs to the wall over the combined issues of New Media, clip use, and force majeure.

I want to be clear about this. Because the AMPTP is ripping at the core principles, the bedrock foundation of unionism, because they’re ripping at the protections that constitute the raison d’etre for the union to exist in the first place, it’s up to the moguls at this point. Bob Iger, Jeff Zucker, and their counterparts at the other major studios and networks will make the determination whether SAG strikes.

So, will there be a strike? If the moguls think the actors don’t have the intestinal fortitude to engage in a labor action to save their union from annihilation, then I would have to say, yes, the moguls will force a strike. If OTOH they perceive the actors standing firm on fundamental issues, they will make a deal. It’s that simple.

The “war” will end, and there will be a deal, when the moguls decide to respect the core values of the labor upon which they rely.

In their public statement on the current AFTRA/SAG situation the AMPTP says “although SAG has said that it was willing to work within the industry’s now well-established new media framework….” Let’s set aside the first part of this statement, because from everything I’ve heard, SAG and the AMPTP have very different definitions and understandings of this framework, and focus on the latter part of this statement.

I have been in discussions recently with sincere and well-meaning people, people who hold the same fundamental values of good unionism as me, but who believe that the sunset clause for the New Media exemption in the AFTRA contract is something the AMPTP will sincerely honor when it comes time to revisit this issue in less than three years.

I have maintained first off that any union agreement which sanctions the non-unionization of any labor which has been historically 100% union when performed for signatory companies under the auspices of a collective bargaining agreement constitutes a fundamental violation of the very principles upon which the union was founded, and must be rejected out-of-hand.

In allowing the moguls to fund non-union principal acting roles in low-budget New Media productions - that is, if you consider up to $500,000 a “low” number - the proposed AFTRA agreement does just that. Why any AFTRA leader who has any understanding whatsoever of unionism would negotiate such a deal is well beyond me.

As I am in “must-join” status with AFTRA and do not vote on this deal, I could simply take the attitude, it’s their problem. If they want to sink their union into a laughingstock of irrelevance, so what?

But of course, AFTRA isn’t just any union. AFTRA represents artists - actors, musicians, singers, dancers, so on - and it is difficult to bear the thought that these artists would even consider turning their profession into a hobby.

AFTRA isn’t the only union representing actors, musicians, singers, dancers, stunt people, and other performing artists on television and apparently now in New Media. They have chosen to compete with the Screen Actors’ Guild by cutting deals with the moguls at the expense of their talent. They make their union more attractive by making their talent cheaper for the moguls.

Everything AFTRA has done through this entire negotiation process does directly affect SAG, and of course vice versa. Now if SAG were the union presenting its members this egregious deal, my criticism would be directed at SAG. But that’s not where we’re at.

In my discussions with people who favor the AFTRA deal, they have cited for me the sunset clause. Nothing in the New Media provisions of this contract is permanent, the argument goes, because both sides have agreed it’s up for renegotiation in less than three years. History is not on that side. DVD residuals are to this day a huge - as in $20-25B gross revenues - issue. The moguls promised to revisit VHS early on. Never happened. They promised to revisit DVD. Now it’s a total non-starter for them.

The same will be true of New Media, and you have it from the horse’s mouth. “Well-established new media framework”, the AMPTP says. I take them at their word. They also say, “The Producers’ position has been that there is no valid reason to upend the new media framework that has already been accepted during four other separate negotiations this year.” Of course they’re saying that. They manipulated the DGA and WGA into accepting non-union directors and writers for low-budget New Media projects, and they’re working on the AFTRA membership right now. The camel’s nose is in the tent!

What SAG and AFTRA establish this year, separately or together, is it. If AFTRA accepts its signatory companies funding non-union contracts, those companies are never ever going to roll back on that without a bruising strike that will cost them and the overall economies of LA and New York tens of billions of dollars. Anything short of that, and the moguls will happily weather it to keep their gains. Think I’m wrong? The moguls put the writers’ backs to the wall, forced a $2B strike, and STILL blame the writers for it.

If we take the AMPTP at their word, then clearly AFTRA members have no choice but to reject the AFTRA deal, send AFTRA’s leadership back to the table with a clear mandate to negotiate a deal for the actors that keeps every signatory principal acting job for every stream of distribution at any budget level a UNION job. Anything less, clearly, from the implications of the AMPTP’s own public pronouncements, is professional suicide.

I attended last night’s SAG Town Hall meeting in LA, which was called to update members on the status of SAG contract negotiations and to educate dual-cardholders on the deficiencies of the proposed AFTRA contract. The text of the main handout was published by DHD.

I’d like to offer a few of the opening statements, paraphrased here unless quoted.

Alan Rosenberg:

We’re not here to vilify AFTRA. I was an AFTRA member before I was a SAG member.”

In reference to the current situation – AFTRA’s proposed deal, SAG’s negotiations - “That’s what’s at stake here. The future of the acting profession”.

Doug Allen:

He reiterated that it’s not about politics or institutions or personalities, rather, “It’s all about actors”.

After recapping briefly recent history, he said on May 6 – after AFTRA, WGA, AFM, and the Teamsters were invited to and attended most SAG bargaining days – negotiations were suspended by the AMPTP and “We handed the ball off to AFTRA transparently….”

SAG gave AFTRA all of the sensitive internal documents to help AFTRA negotiate.

SAG observers did not have the same access to AFTRA negotiations that SAG gave AFTRA. AFTRA kept SAG observers out of negotiations the last seven days before AFTRA came to their agreement with the AMPTP.

SAG is opposing the AFTRA agreement because unequal contracts for the same covered work allows producers to pit one union against the other at the expense of actors. “Competition in this environment (between unions) is bad, not good”. Companies will of course pick the union contract with the lowest terms, not the highest.

The AFTRA deal does not address actors’ priorities, including many which the two unions agreed upon in the joint wages and working conditions meetings.

If AFTRA members vote down the deal, it forces AFTRA back to the table, and it actually makes a strike by SAG less likely. It also makes it more likely both SAG and AFTRA will get a better deal.

Questioners also had a few interesting things to ask and/or share.

One questioner said he has friends being pressured by their agents and/or managers to ratify the AFTRA contract. The response was that some of the agents or managers may not be entirely disinterested players in this, as AFTRA allows them some level of investment in production. IMHO, every actor should keep in mind that your agent and manager work for you, not vice versa. Why would they encourage you to ratify a deal that gets you – hence them – a smaller chunk than SAG should be able to get, and mortgages New Media forever (sunset clauses notwithstanding; the AMPTP conveniently forgot their promises to revisit VHS and later DVD), unless they have competing interests? Agents & managers work for us; we can ask these questions of them.

Another questioner – a dual-cardholder – shared that he received a robocall from James Cromwell extolling the virtues of the AFTRA deal. Apparently this person wasn’t the only one, and a suggestion was made to initiate robocalls against the AFTRA deal. No commitment was made by SAG leadership in relation to that suggestion.

At least two, possibly three actors asked where the stars are. IMHO, each SAG card is worth one contract vote, so star wattage is of limited relevance to me. However, after these queries, a prominent actor who quietly waited her turn in line did step up, announce herself, and pose a question to the presenters about clip use from the floor. Mr. Allen explained SAG’s proposal includes a range of protections on how the clips may or may not be used. The actor asked about clip use in commercials. Mr. Allen said SAG’s proposal would prevent that.

Force majeure also came up. AFTRA has deferred to SAG on this. SAG’s position is that force majeure is sacrosanct, and the AMPTP needs to pay up on the 80+ productions with outstanding claims from the WGA strike.

SAG has not yet asked for a strike authorization. Mr. Rosenberg reiterated that nobody wants a strike less than he does. He’s unemployed, as his SAG duties have taken up all of his time, and he doesn’t want to put his wife – Marg Helgenberger of CSI - out of work.

Most of the attendees are dual-cardholders. I would characterize almost all of the questioners as being very concerned about various aspects of the AFTRA deal, and about the future of union representation for actors. Mr. Rosenberg actually invited anyone who would like to defend the AFTRA deal to step to the front of the line. No takers.

These are my primary recollections from the town hall, FWIW.

I remain vehemently opposed to the AFTRA deal first and foremost because of the New Media non-union exemption, and from what I saw last night, apparently I’m not alone.