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the DON JONES INDEX… |
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GAINS
POSTED in GREEN LOSSES
POSTED in RED 8/21/23... 15,050.55
8/14/23... 15,050.49 |
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6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
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(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 8/21/23... 34,500.66; 8/14/23... 35,281.40; 6/27/13… 15,000.00) |
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LESSON
for August 21st, 2023 – “RE-UNITED!”
While the suits in
their suites at the Hollywood motion picture, TV, streaming and dreaming studios
are seeming to scheme to break the actors’ and writers’ unions whose striking
artist are steaming teeming with rage (and, their supporters allege)
determination to hang on to the bitter end Don Jones wearies of the reruns and
homegrown game shows still on the idjut box... even
if these studio suits follow the advice in last week’s Lesson and force-feed
Americans rom-coms from NoKo, crime shows from
Germany and Nigerian game shows... decent folk might hope is there an
alternative to this never-ending torrent of crap?
Perhaps there is...
but the strikers will have to delve deeply into the past and impress upon the
handful of superstars that their celebrity (if not their bank accounts) would
disappear should the crisis linger for months more, or years, or forever.
Therefore, a spoonful
of history...
On February 5, 1919,
the three greatest superstars of the silent movie era, plus one superdirector, knocked their heads together and decided
that they were sick and tired of the studios filching almost all of the box
office receipts of the day (people had to go to cinemas in those days, long
before the invention of television) – leaving them little and leaving the
downcast down-cast actors and writers next to nothing, or nothing.
Action hero Douglas
Fairbanks (the Tom Cruise of his day), comic legend Charlie Chaplin (think
George Clooney), dream queen Mary Pickford (the Sandra Bullock or Lady Gaga of
the silent era) and the epic (if by our own standards now, controversial) director D. W. Griffith (an amalgam of Lucas,
Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Michael Bay, David Duke and a few others) decided
that they were done with allowing the studios to rip them off and so, fingured that as they could’t
beat them, they might as well join them... as competitors and Ghosts of
Hollywood Future, salvaging not only their own souls, but the hungry bodies of
hundreds of lesser-paid lesser lights.
So, putting their fame
and their fortunes on the line... not just for charity but for combat... the
four rounded up some lawyers and salesmen (again, while politically incorrect,
all such were men in those heady days after the end of World War One) and
formed the United Artists’ Corporation – henceforth to be known as UA. (See Wikipedia compilation, Attachment One...
referenced here, there and within by further links and references to
contributory... if not always concurring... sources.)
The story begins like
this...
“In 1918, Charlie Chaplin could not get his parent company First
National Pictures to increase his production
budget despite being one of their top producers. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had their own contracts, with First National
and Famous Players–Lasky respectively,
but these were due to run out with no clear offers forthcoming. (Wiki)
“Sydney Chaplin, brother and business manager for Charlie, deduced
something was going wrong, and contacted Pickford and Fairbanks. Together they
hired a private detective, who discovered a plan to merge all production
companies and to lock in "exhibition companies" to a series of
five-year contracts.”
Not quite as ominous as replacing them with computer-generated AI robotics
that would employ old, already-paid-for voices and images to be scrambled up
and recycled as “new content” (perhaps under the authorship and direction of
some imaging application), but opporessive by the
standards of the day.
“Chaplin,
Pickford, Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith incorporated United Artists
as a joint venture company on February 5, 1919. Each held a 25 percent stake in
the preferred shares and a 20 percent stake in the common
shares of the joint venture, with the remaining 20 percent of common
shares held by lawyer and advisor William Gibbs McAdoo.[9] The
idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford and cowboy
star William S. Hart a year earlier. Already Hollywood veterans,
the four stars talked of forming their own company to better control their own
work.”
“In 2019, United
Artists celebrates its 100th anniversary,” wrote Gaylyn
Studlar of the Washington University in St. Louis
shortly before that anniversary. (April
8th, 2019, Attachment Two).
“One hundred years is a lot of history by American standards, but even
more so by Hollywood’s. The founding of
United Artists was a radical act, one that occurred early in the history of the
American film industry.” Studlar contended, “...(i)t was also one of its most historically significant
events.
“Movie studios had existed in
Hollywood for less than a decade when United Artists was created. William Selig
had opened a studio in 1909 in the city of Los Angeles, but it wasn’t until
1911 that the Nestor Motion Picture Company set up shop in Hollywood, in a
rundown former roadhouse, the Blondeau Tavern.
Also in 1911, the young Canadian
actress, Mary Pickford, received her first on-screen credit for a Biograph film
called Their First Misunderstanding after uncredited appearance in Biograph one-reelers
since 1909.
Soon to be known to her audience
as “Little Mary,” “The Girl with the Curls,” and “America’s Sweetheart,”
Pickford became the biggest female star in the first quarter century of
American film history.
“Pickford’s only
rivals in box-office popularity were smiling action hero Douglas Fairbanks, who
would become her second husband in 1920, and Fairbanks’ good friend, Charles
Chaplin, whose “Little Tramp” comedy persona was beloved worldwide.” (Studler, above)
Douglas Elton
Fairbanks Sr. was an American actor and filmmaker. He was best known for his
swashbuckling roles in silent films, including The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood,
and The Mark of Zorro, but spent the early part of his career making comedies,
according to Wiki
Sir Charles Spencer
Chaplin KBE was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to
fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen
persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important
figures
Pickford followed
the call of duty and the prospect of money throughout the teens, becoming the
first Hollywood star to produce her own films under a partnership agreement
with Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount. In 1918, she moved to First National, but
by 1919, she was fed up.
What raised her
temper, Studlar notes, as the studio practice of
“block booking,” which forced movie theater exhibitors to take groups of films
— sight unseen, titles unknown. “Pickford learned that her spectacularly
popular films were used by Famous Players-Lasky and then First National to
force theater managers to commit to these large packages of films. Pickford had
enough of letting a major studio profit in the millions from her popularity and
even sell inferior films with it.”
The
impetus behind these early A-listers Pickford, Fairbanks, Chaplin and “Birth of
a Nation” director David W. Griffith’s literally seizing “the means of
production” wasn’t a strike,” according to Mark London Williams of Below The
Line (July 21st, Attachment Three), inasmuch as the formation of
both SAG and the DGA was more than a decade away at that point. “Rather, it
came from a realization on how their growing celebrityhood was being used to
create additional studio profits that they weren’t sharing in.”
Himself citing Studlar’s
five year old centennial tribute to UA (which would be pronounced deceased on December 31,
2019) he noted that her contention that “as Hollywood corporatized with
vertical integration linking production to distribution to theatrical
exhibition, the studios depended on ‘block booking,’ (as above) and Williams
further cited a posthumous tribute to UA’s intent and fou
nders on the Mary Pickford Foundation’s website...
“[The company] would
be created not by ‘moguls’ or bankers but by artists, by movie talent […] the
partners hoped the new enterprise would guarantee them both artistic control
and improved profits. An unprecedented declaration of independence by Hollywood’s
top talent, it was a business venture, but […] it was one rooted in
artistic idealism too.”
There
are many differences between the personae, mores and issues between Hollywood
today and of a century ago, but Williams chooses to compare the prototypical “block
booking” to the present practice of “bundling,” from cable providers – one of
which grew so prosperous it was able to buy Universal Pictures and NBC – The
bundlers marketed packages that, Williams contends, gave you “a package that
included the handful of networks you really wanted, say, ESPN, FX, AMC,
Cartoon Network and CNN (once upon a time, at least), and making you subscribe
to a whole menu of outlets you never watched.”
(Well, most subscribers – there are always those few weird watchers who
lay down the big bucks for access to obscure and/or “arty” productions).
What
Williams calls the “buffet” model, “allowing subscribers to simply pick and
choose which networks they wanted to pay for,” was and remains “vigorously
opposed by all those vending cable packages” and the producers of all that
largely unwanted content.
Streaming
initially multiplied the choices that viewers had, but the streamers wised up
too, promulgating audience “churn” “as a means of household budgeting survival
in the face of endless channel offering – creating a modified “buffet”, but
with many choices... “...you want to watch 1923? Andor?
Poker Face? Succession?” he asks,
answering that you will be continually required to subscribe to that
“one more streaming service.”
Back
to Studlar, who set down the founding of UA by its
four horsemen (and woman) on April 17, 1919 (cowboy icon William S. Hart had
briefly joined the conspiracy before riding back to the safety of the herd).
Pickford, many years after the
founding of United Artists, suggested this radical venture had been her brainchild... neither Chaplin nor
Griffith disputed and Fairbanks... by then her husband... know better than to
antagonize the wife. “The company would
distribute the films of independent producers, including those of the four
partners,” Studlar recalls, “block booking was
banned. Each film distributed by UA would sink or swim on its own.”
After Hart
rode off into the sunset and back to Studio Town inxoeporation
papers were duly filed and, when he heard about their scheme, Richard A.
Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, apparently said, "The inmates are
taking over the asylum."[10] The
four partners, with advice from William Gibbs McAdoo
(son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of
then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed a distribution company to market
their merch, hired Hiram Abrams as its first managing director, and
the company established its headquarters at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York
City.[8]
“The original
terms called for each star to produce five pictures a year. By the time the
company was operational in 1921 however,” Wiki noted, feature films were
becoming more expensive and polished, and running times had settled at around
ninety minutes (eight reels). “The original goal was thus abandoned.”
See a photograph of the
signing ceremony here.
UA's first
production, “His Majesty, the
American”, written by and starring Fairbanks, was a success, but funding
proved hard to acquire due to studio retaliation. Griffith dropped out – we’ll never know if
Pickford, Fairbanks and the Little Tramp would have appeared in the sequel to
“Birth of a Nation”.
The venture was a success – and it
terrified the suits in their studio offices.
“In the early 1920s, United Artists offered some big, bold box-office
hits, like Fairbanks’ The Mark of Zorro and Robin
Hood, and quiet, sensitive ones, like D.W. Griffith’s Broken
Blossoms. Pickford won over audiences with her film version of the
popular novel of girlhood, Pollyanna. Apart from the
popularity of individual films, UA would become a bulwark against the
overwhelming dominance of vertically integrated studios that sought to
eradicate competition, preventing independent productions from reaching movie
theater screens.”
But despite the popularity,
financing remained difficult as the studios leaned on banks and other sources
of funding to redlight the upstarts.
Griffith finally
left in 1924, and UA then hired veteran
producer Joseph Schenck as president.[11] He had
produced pictures for a decade. He
brought commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge,[11] his
sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge and his brother-in-law, Buster
Keaton. (Wiki) “Contracts
were signed with independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn,
and Howard Hughes,” (and, later, Alexander Korda
and David O. Selznick) and, in 1933, “Schenck organized a new company
with Darryl F. Zanuck, called Twentieth Century Pictures, which
soon provided four pictures a year, forming half of UA's schedule.”
Schenck also
avoided the block bookers in the cinemas by forming a separate partnership with
Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name.
They began international operations, first in Canada, and then in Mexico. By
the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.
But when he was denied an
ownership share in 1935, Schenck resigned. He set up 20th Century
Pictures' merger with Fox Film Corporation and so was formed the Fox-topus of entertainment (they’re still stuck in the 20th
century!), plus the newscasting and opinion pushing we all know and some of us
love.
So UA hired
veteran producer Joseph Schenck as president who quickly secured
commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge,[11] his
sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, and his brother-in-law, Buster
Keaton.[11] Contracts
were signed with independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn,
and Howard Hughes.[11] In
1933, Schenck organized a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck,
called Twentieth Century Pictures, and formed a separate partnership with
Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name.
They began international operations, first in Canada, and then in Mexico. By
the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.
Other independent producers who distributed through United Artists in the
1930s included Walt Disney Productions, Alexander Korda, Hal Roach, David O. Selznick, and Walter Wanger.[11]
If
nothing else, UA was a well watered and manicured
seedbed for some of the greatest talent of the twentiety
century.
In
fact, when denied an ownership share in 1935, Schenck resigned and set up 20th Century Pictures' merger
with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century Fox.[12] So, in a roundabout way, one of the more
bitter fruits of the talent-generated endeavor that was UA was also responsible
for Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity and... at least for a spell... Tucker Carlson!
The World War Two years impacted the firm as it did most world
enterprises. There were other
mistakes. MGM's 1939 hit Gone with the
Wind was
supposed to be a UA release except that Selznick wanted Clark Gable, who was under contract to MGM, to play Rhett
Butler.
Fairbanks died that year and UA’s fortunes declined through the 1940s –
potentiated by its failure to recognized the new television market and jump
into the fire before others had carved their initials on the medium.
But that
emancipation of the emanation of corporate and political greed was still far,
far off – well into the Twenty First
century, as a matter of fact, when UA founders and allies like Orson Welles,
Goldwyn, Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Hal Roach
also formed the more influential, if shorter-lived, Society of Independent
Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP). SIMPP fought to end ostensibly
anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios—Loew's
(MGM), Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal
Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros./First
National—that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion
pictures.
Their chosen
arena of combat was the courtroom, not the back lot. In 1942, SIMPP filed an antitrust suit
against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres accusing them of conspiracy to
control first-and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. This was the first
antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors that alleged monopoly
and restraint of trade. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount
Decision ordered the major Hollywood movie studios to sell their
theater chains and to end certain anti-competitive practices.
“This court
ruling ended the studio system,” according to an uncredited Wiki contributer and by 1958 SIMPP, having essentially achieved
many of the goals that led to its creation, ceased operations.
Citing the 1948 Paramount
decision, Miles Mogulescu of the Los Angeles Times
declared that the denial of streaming revenues to writers and actors meant
that: “Antitrust laws need to be invoked — as they were in the 1940s in U.S.
vs. Paramount — to break up streaming services that both produce content and
distribute it. This vertical integration has deeply changed the longstanding
entertainment industry ecosystem, which allowed employees to survive and
studios to prosper.” (Attachment Four)
Differentiating between
“horizontal monopolies” – as were banned in 1948 – and the present “vertical
monopolies: (companies that control the supply chain from production to
distribution, such as streaming services that also create content)” Mogalescu contends that the studios have been facilitated
by so-called “predatory pricing”… giving discounts to consumers without
compensation to the producers in the expectation of rising prices to come.
As Federal
Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan recently stated, this structure “can enable
firms to exert market power over creators and workers alike and potentially
limit the diversity of content reaching consumers.”
Throughout
the 50’s and 60’s, UA recovered some of the mojo it had lost in the war years
by compromising... joint venturing with John Huston (producing box office hits
like “The African Queen’, ”Moulin Rouge” and “High Noon”), Stanley Kramer, By
1958, UA was making annual profits of $3 million a year[13]
with Otto Preminger and
other independents producing critical successes like “Marty” and “12 Angry Men”
that also turned a profit. (Wiki, Studlar and Below the Line)
Afer going public with a $17
million stock offering, UA branched out into the music business, creating UA
Records, eventually merging with Liberty, Imperial and other labels. They finally crashed into the TV market with
successful series including Gilligan's Island, The Fugitive, Outer
Limits, and The Patty Duke Show., and, in 1961, bolstered their
theatrical roster by releasing West Side Story, which won a record
ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture).
But their $20
million Greatest Story Ever Told, while
winning critical acclaim and five Oscars, was unsuccessful at the box office
and, with the original founders long gone and corporatism oozing its way
into UA, the firm, in 1967, finally accepted a buyout from Transamerica and
became, Wiki noted, “just another studio – albeit with its own niche within the
Transamerica conglomerate. There were
more movies (some successful, others not) but, after Transamerica expressed
displeasure with spicy UA fare like the X-rated Midnight Cowboy and Last
Tango in Paris, they purged UA
management and installed new blood,” which spilled old blood (cash) on the epic
failure Heaven's Gate, the kill-shot to the the
aspirations of the four founders.
Wiki’s capsule obituary notes that UA died on December 31st,
2019, aged 103. Not so bad...
The company
brand was sold to MGM which closed its original headquarters at 729 Seventh
Avenue in New York. After several
changes in ownership, there had been a brief glimmering of hope for a comeback
when, on November 2, 2006, MGM announced
that Tom Cruise and his long-time production partner Paula
Wagner would be resurrecting UA.[61][62] This announcement came after the duo were released from a
fourteen-year production relationship at Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures.
Cruise, Wagner and MGM Studios created United Artists Entertainment
LLC and the producer/actor and his partner owned a 30 percent stake in the
studio,[63] with the approval by MGM's consortium of owners. “The deal gave them
control over production and development,” Wiki reported, “Wagner was named CEO,
and was allotted an annual slate of four films with varying budget ranges,
while Cruise served as a producer for the revamped studio and the occasional
star.”
Keeping it
real on the labor front, UA... or, perhaps, UA2? U2?... became the first motion
picture studio granted a Writers Guild of America, West (WGA) waiver
in January 2008 during that post-Reagan, pre-Nanny Writers' Strike.[64]
But as a
company... a profit-making studio... well, UA2 turned out to be less Bono and
more Bonehead
A history,
chronology and autopsy explained by by Simon Brew of
Den of Geek (December 14, 2017, Attachment Five) essentially complemented the Wikihistory, but with a few notable differences.
The beginning
of the end of UA’s comeback on Cruise control took place on August 14, 2008,
when MGM announced that Wagner would leave UA to produce films independently.[65] (Wiki,
Attachment One above) Her output as head
of UA was two films, both starring Cruise: Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie.
Directed by Robert Redford, and
with a cast that includes Redford, Cruise, Meryl Streep and a
then-relatively-unknown Andrew Garfield, Lions
For Lambs looked
on paper to be a heavyweight political drama, according to Den of Geek. “Its focus is on three stories: an ambitious
politician giving an interview to tough reporter, an army platoon being ordered
to go on a top secret mission by said politician, and a professor trying to
talk a promising student into turning his life around,” looked like Oscar-bait.
But critics didn’t warm to the movie, and attempts by MGM to half-sell it as a
blockbuster film didn’t work either. Costing roughly $35 million for the
negative, the film grossed $63.2 million worldwide and, said DoG, “turned out to be a footnote in the failure to
resurrect United Artists” and now can be found “lurking about” Netflix.
“Valkyrie”, based on a plot to
assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 by German soldiers directed by Bryan Singer
(“Apt Pupil”). Beset with production and
logistical problems and derided as Cruise’s “eye-patch movie”, “Valkyrie” still turned a profit as, Brew
opined. But UA’s next project,
“Pinkville” (starring Bruce Willis and directed by Oliver Stone) fell apart as
did others... Wagner quit and Cruise would wash his hands of the venture as UA2 deteriorated into
critical and fiscal mindlessness... the
ignominious last production of the UA/MGM deal being 2009’s Hot Tub
Time Machine,
In 2014, MGM,
the Hearst Corporation and a production team headed by the angelic Roma Downey
launched a sort of UA3... specifically the
United Artists Media Group
which produced what Wiki called “over-the-top” faith-based programming and
secular ventures like “Survivor” and the “Stargate” sequels. The MGM/UA film library was finally sold to
Ted Turner, its television properties parceled out and CBS acquired its music
division.
Still, the
ghosts of Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks, Griffith and the unknown, unnamed
workers who made UA and sustained it (even if bowdlerized in its dotage) for
nearly a century are whispering into increasingly receptive ears. Maybe an indie revival leading to some present day celebrity-coiffed corporation
could include a musician or two, or at least an opportunist familiar with the
industry. Singer Tony Bennett and/or
“Black Godfather” Charles Avant are no longer with us, but, despite his alias
as “The Boss”, Bruce Springsteen has always voiced an affinity for the working
man. Or, to lock down the limeys, how
about Sir Elton... or maybe a discordian distaffer: Lady Gaga, Queen Bee, Taylor? Dolly??
And with a validated subsidiary market for Latino, Asian and
African-American entertainment growing, Tyler and Smokey are still around...
and don’t forget actors like Morgan Freeman or The Rock...
Speaking of
the once-potent UAOne music catalog, maybe Sir Paul
could toss his hat (and a few pence) into the pot too. UA, after all, introduced American film
audiences to the Beatles by releasing A Hard Day's Night (1964)
and Help! (1965), producing the James Bond movies and
branching out into “spaghetti Westerns”.
But that may wait until the second, or fourth coming
of UA and The Hulk, below.
To punctuate
the incestivity of the SAG and WGA insurrection, Jane Fonda... seen “yelling for
fair wages through a microphone at Netflix’s C-suite” (L.A. Times, below) is
now on the opposite side of the puck from former hubby Ted (TCM) Turner.
Hollywood,
like most of America, even in tru-blue Hollywood, New
York or Washington D.C – just like the rest of American culture has been
turning sharply to the right up until a few weeks ago. (Alex Tabarrok in marginalrevolution.com,
June 23rd, Attachment Six)
Dating back
more than a decade, Tabarrok guides us through some of his previous screeds on
the dirty liberals and their slandering of capitalism (marginalrevolution
advocates a conservative revolution)
which took issue with Hollywood’s
“not so subtle attacks on capitalism with characters like Jabba the Hut in the
Star Wars universe and the Ferengi in Star Trek.”
Directors
and screenwriters see the capitalist as a constraint, a force that prevents
them from fulfilling their vision. In turn, the capitalist sees the artist as
self-indulgent. Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists
who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling
out. Thus even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has
“sold out” has succeeded, but an artist that has “sold out” has failed.
…Hollywood
share[s] Marx’s concept of alienation, the idea that under capitalism workers
are separated from the product of their work and made to feel like cogs in a
machine rather than independent creators. The lowly screenwriter is a perfect
illustration of what Marx had in mind—a screenwriter can pour heart and soul
into a screenplay only to see it rewritten, optioned, revised, reworked,
rewritten again and hacked, hacked and hacked by a succession of directors,
producers and worst of all studio executives. A screenwriter can have a
nominally successful career in Hollywood without ever seeing one of his works
brought to the screen. Thus, the antipathy of filmmakers to capitalism is less
ideological than it is experiential. Screenwriters and directors find
themselves in a daily battle between art and commerce, and they come to see
their battle against “the suits” as emblematic of a larger war between creative
labor and capital.
Instead Tabarrok states that
producers can bolster the Empire and make money doing so, if they would “only put aside their biases and open their eyes to the
world.”
“Like
many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for its villains people who strive
for social dominance through the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and power. But
the ordinary business of capitalism is much more egalitarian: It’s about
finding meaning and enjoyment in work and production.”
He
does take note of a few exceptions... “Flaming Hot” (Disney) which tells the
story of a janitor and his improbable rise to the top of the corporate world,“Air” (Amazon Prime)
about Nike’s efforts to court Michael Jordan and his family with a
record-breaking and precedent shattering shoe branding deal and “Tetris”
(Apple) about the race to license the Tetris video game from its state owned
enterprise in the dying days of the Soviet Union.
It’s
Peanut Gallery holds a few other examples of corporate heroism as well as some
juicy advice to liberals, unions and certain movie stars about how to insert
various sharp objects up their assholes.
Inasmuch as many
sources have researched their resources, sourced and sorted the data and
arrived at the conclusion that 2023, and especially our last two months have
been the “summer of strikes”... teamsters, teachers, Starbucks baristas,
airline and hospital workers and, for all we know, talking chimpanzees.
Disregarding
the admonishment of Lew Wasserman (and Ronald Reagan) to Spyros Skouros not to be “greedy” in the last double strike of
1960, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP),
the trade group representing major studios and streamers, originally
took an alternately militaristic and poverty-pleading stance as expressed by
Disney’s Bob Iger, warning that “content creators” must “be realistic
about the business”.
Unionistas took such umbrage
at this contempt that some have even floated the idea of forming an alliance
with Florida’s Disney-hating Governor Ron DeSantis!
Labor negotiations resumed last
Tuesday between the striking Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios,
but “despite some apparent concessions on both sides, the stalemate appeared to
be far from over.” (CBS, August 16th,
Attachment Seven)
The studios have not relented on
the union demand for higher compensation for writers on streaming programs that
have higher viewership but Bloomberg did reported that the studios' offer “also
included an agreement that only humans would be credited as writers on
screenplays, not artificial intelligence bots” -- a sort of ghostwriters for ghostbots provision.
“Many observers have expressed
optimism at the mere fact the union and studios had returned to the bargaining
table,” but writer, manwhile, (including cluemongers and “past contestants") took part in the
Culver City picket to protest the game show, "which began filming today
with recycled questions."
According to the online
entertainment news site Polygon, "Jeopardy!" showrunner Michael
Davies said on a recent podcast that the show plans to use "a combination
of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the
database, and material that is being redeployed from multiple, multiple seasons
of the show."
So obsessive followers with
photographic memories ought to rack up Ken Jenings-like
scores on topics like Spartacus or the Ludlow Massacre.
Other programming,
however, has benefitted from the so-called interim agreements awarded to “well over 100 film and TV projects
including Angel Studios’ Bible-based series The Chosen; the
A24 films Mother Mary and I Dream of Unicorns and
Apple TV+’s Tehran”
accorded to producers, mostly indies, that have reached accommodation with the
unions for one reason or another.
“A key element in our strike
strategy is our Interim Agreement, which is being granted to certain
vetted and truly independent productions. Along with the many other nonstruck contracts our members can currently work, these
agreements give journeymen performers and crew the opportunity to pay their
bills and put food on the table by working on these indie projects — projects
which are not only agreeing to all the terms in our last offer to the AMPTP,
but all the righteous proposals our members deserve that the studios rejected,”
President Fran Drescher and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told
Deadline (8/9/23, Attachment Eight).
“These interim agreements
demonstrate that the terms we proposed to the AMPTP are not ‘unrealistic’. They
are fair. And if these independent productions are able to agree to them, then
the billion- and trillion-dollar companies should be able to as well,” they
added.
Reuters (August 16th,
Attachment Nine) promoted the “happy talk that some of the writers expressed
about the resumption of negotiations. "They're talking again when they weren't a couple of
weeks ago," said WGA liaison and "Physical" writer K.C. Scott.
"That's what I'm holding onto."
Scott added that while he doesn't
know what AMPTP offered the guild, the WGA is preparing a counteroffer that he
trusts will be in the best interest of the writers.
On the other
hand, as we noted in last week’s Lesson, the studios
extending offers of more negotiations with their right hands could batter their
writers and actors into submission with their left by upping their foreign
content... assuming they were willing to embitter a generation of domestic
creators.
There hasn’t
been any rush to Russian police and secret agent dramas yet... let alone North
Korean rom-coms... but the AMPTP (especially streamers like Netflix) has found that viewers
like South Korean shows “and has
found that the cultural and legal environment allows for very cheap — some say
problematically cheap — production of shows.”
(Cougarboard, Attachment Ten)
There is a
sort of globaloney being sliced and heaped on Don Jones’ plate already, most of
which is Korean Barbie-cue of an appealing, but acquired taste... and that
source of programming is itself endangered by physical exhaustion of the production staff over
there who work at a “frantic pace.”
Writers often submit scripts an
hour or two before filming is supposed to begin. Production crews are paid a day rate, but a day
is defined as one unbroken stretch of filming, even if it lasted more than 24
hours. Some shoots log more than 130 hours in a week, “leaving crew members to
snatch a few hours of sleep in public saunas.”
South Korean content is likely to
become even more important to Netflix it seeks to weather the Hollywood
writers’ strike. But many writers and producers in the country feel exploited
by the streaming giant. Runaway
programming occasioned by the writers’ and actors’ strike has shined a harsh
light on labor tensions Netflix is facing in such countries as Korea,
home of the popular series “Squid Game.” Korean artists, including actors and
writers such as “Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, are pushing Netflix for more pay for creators — echoing demands of
writers marching outside the company’s Sunset Boulevard offices, according to
the various coverage in the Los Angeles Times. (See Attachment Seventeen,
below)
The Times’ Jonah Valdez toured a
trio of American picket lines, finding similarties in
the chants, but some differences in the physical circumstances of the
picketing. (August 16th,
Attachment Eleven)
Netflix...
“A foam middle finger stuck to a
window at Netflix’s posh L.A. offices had taunted picketers from above for
days, recalled SAG-AFTRA strike captain and actor Alan Starzinski.
“The foam finger was merchandise
for Netflix’s drama series, “Beef,” in which flipping the bird plays a crucial role. Starzinski
was unsure whether the message was an intentional jab from Netflix (the finger
was eventually removed from its window spot). But it seemed to reflect the tone
of the relationship between the streaming giant and the writers and actors
below.”
“On Sunset Boulevard, cutting
through the heart of Hollywood, the Netflix picket line is easily the most
visible. And it feels the loudest.” Like
the pop of illegal fireworks on July 4, honking from cars and trucks passing
along Sunset starts earlier than you’d think and ends later than you’d expect.
There’s a constant game of call and response: a honk, then screams from
picketers protesting that they can no longer pay their rent – others describing the mood as “a party”
with plenty of celebrities ranging from thespians Fonda (above)band Audrey
Plaza to Congressman Adam Schiff.
If the Netflix picket line is
indeed a party, it’s a rowdy one.
A sampling of the chants that ring
out:
“Hell no, shut it down, L.A. is a
union town.”
“No wages, no pages, no actors on
the stages.”
“Hey hey,
ho ho, Ted Sarandos got to go!”
“I wouldn’t say that we’re
necessarily angrier than any of the other picket lines, but there are people
that are adamant about showing Netflix what’s what,” Starzinski
told the Times.
The AI job listing in particular
seemed to hang over the Netflix picket line like a foul smell. Actor Aja Morgan
called it “a slap in the face” and “another example of their blatant disregard
for humanity.”
“This is David and Goliath 2023,”
said actor Victoria Smith.
Paramount
The more family-friendly picketers
at Paramount draws SAG-AFTRA and WGA members and even their children (at least
until warnings about today’s Hurricane ... actually only a tropical storm...
Hilary blew into NeverTrumpland).
Here, there are no corporate
offices to scream at; only large gates that provide a picturesque backdrop for
picketing. “The studio’s original
Bronson Gate — featured in more than a dozen films — is ensconced within
Paramount’s private property,” but it’s common for groups protesting together
to catch a selfie in front of the Melrose Gate. “Who doesn’t want a picture in
front of those pearly gates?” joked writer-director-actor Nicol Paone,
“With little ground to cover along
the Melrose Gate, picketers at Paramount walk at a leisurely pace to the sound
of pop hits blaring from portable speakers, such as NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” or Nena’s “99 Red
Balloons.” Last week, guilds hosted a karaoke day.
For those not driven to
desperation by the economics of the strike, the picket lines have “provided a
sense of community and belonging with other creatives.” Dan Aid, a bit-part actor has found balance
in his life, “committing more time to his music projects and family”, and
enjoying creative conversations with fellow strikers.
Jack Black dropped in for selfies
and stories, Lance Bass of NSYNC bought pizza for protesters and Seth Rogan
strolled by, as did Hillary (Duff, not storm).
The picket lines, Aid said, are a
place where creative people can still express themselves.
“You can show up with joy, and you
can wear a costume and you can sing and you can dance.”
Disney...
“The people at the top are making
more than their fair share off the people that are doing a lot of the work, and
we’re just fighting for more equality in the industry and other industries,”
said actor Jennifer Brian.
Those are the words she chose to
explain the historic double strike to her 4-year-old daughter before bringing
her to the also-family-friendly Disney Studios picket line for the first time,
earlier in July.
“Now, her daughter will chant
“union power” from her car seat. When asked how she wants to spend her morning,
she asks to picket at Disney.”
It’s not just the ambience... more
than a few of the marginal strikers cannot afford childcare, nor health
insurance. Some even walk their dogs on
the line – whether out of choice or necessiry.
Actor Trilby Glover, who also
brought her daughter, 7, and son, 5 cooled off against the studio’s fences in
the shade of trees and hedges, licking free ice cream cones served from a food
truck. Glover recently told her kids
about how studios might start using AI to write scripts and generate actors’
movements without their permission. “Well that’s not right,” they’d shoot back
in disgust, said Glover, who has been on shows such as “Scream Queens” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”
Strikers had also cooled off
beneath the trees on Universal’s lot... until tree-gate (wherein
Universal cut down all the trees).
Though his children are too young
to understand why they’re out there, said WGA member Evan Kyle, on leave from
“Riverdale”, it’s “a good excuse to get them out of the house.” Picketers are planning to host a day
specifically selected to encourage parents to bring their kids to the picket line.
“That day is for me every day,” Kyle
said, laughing, while he cradled his son in one arm, his daughter standing
nearby, asking him if it was time to go home.
Not that they’d admit so, but some
of the unions believe that the studios are also starting to feel a little
pain. Bob Iger
and Ted Sarandos (Netflix) are not going lose their homes and have to sleep in
their cars, but, the L.A. Times reported the day after their tour of the picket
lines, “it’s become increasingly clear that the major
studios and streamers, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and
Television Producers, are motivated to end the work stoppages that have roiled Hollywood.”
(August 17th, Attachment Twelve)
The actors’ strike “dramatically upped the
stakes, wreaking havoc on production plans and creating more economic uncertainty for the major companies,
including streaming giant Netflix, the Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. Discovery,
Paramount Global and NBC Universal.”
And it has aroused the attention
of politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to (so far, impotently) demand
an end to the strikes.
“With each day that goes on, the
economic damage is further intensified,” said Todd Holmes, associate professor
of entertainment media management at Cal State Northridge, who estimated that
the economic damage of the dual strikes on California was at least $3 billion so far and that it could balloon to $4
billion to $5 billion if the strikes were to stretch into October.
“Most network
executives say they have enough reality-type shows and sporting
events, including the NFL, college football and Major League Baseball,” (not to
mention Korean and perhaps other foreign programming) to take them through the
fall. Nonetheless, legacy companies, which rely on advertising revenue, are
eager to restart production of scripted programs to slow the decline of ratings
and pump the brakes on cord-cutting.
“You don’t want to give the
audience more reasons to leave,” one (anonymous) veteran executive told the
Timeservers.
So, in an
endgame of weeks or months, who will fold first?
The actors
and writers? (They can wait tables and
“escort” strangers they meet on the Internet.)
The
suits? (They can, like Spyros Skouros threatened, in his “struggle to the death”
editorial in 1959, “fold (their) tents in the U.S. for a while and work in Europe”
(until disabused of that fantasy by Lew Wasserman and Ronald Reagan – as we
noted last month).
The consumers? (Let them read books!)
At present,
it seems that the studios hold the hot cards.
Despite their pleadings of poverty, most remain solvent and their
executives... while perhaps deferring their upgrade from measly million to bold
billionaires... are not going to be lining up at the Midnight Mission for a
sandwich and a sermon.
The most
celebrated actors... and even a few screenwriters!... aren’t expecting a
sheriff to put them out of house and home (unless they have a cocaine or
gambling habit that has soared out of control), but the majority of those
walking the SAG and WGA picket lines are journeymen and journeywomen... many of
whom have to hold down side hustles and cannot even qualify for the company
sponsored health insurance as requires a minimum yearly income of $26,000 (from
their writing or acting, not Starbucks).
Before moving
on to a Hulking big prospect, we do have to mention that sort of UA4, in name only, as was opened as United Artists
Releasing by former MGM CEO Gary Barber, businessman and Open Road
Films founder Eric Hohl and Annapurna
founder Megan Ellison to commemorate 100 years since the founding of United Artists. Two years later, it was gobbled up by online
shopping and technology company Amazon which also swalloed MGM.
Wiki
pronounced UA “defunct” on December 21,
2019 (age 103).
The brand,
United Artists, is now jointly owned by Ellison and MGM.
Might not the
corpse arise from its coffin?
Perhaps, if Mark “The Hulk” Ruffalo’s vision revisits the past promises,
glory and ups and downs of UA.
Ruffalo is known for making millions
playing the Hulk, but that’s he came from Planet Indie – notably Kenneth
Lonergan’s sibling drama You Can Count on Me “which was reportedly
made for a mere $1.2 million but earned nine times that amount at the box
office, thanks to a boost from Sundance where it tied for the Grand Jury Prize
and won a screenwriting award. You Can Count on Me ended up
being nominated for two Oscars.”
No little gold eunuch for Ruffalo,
but he did find work thereafter and thereafter.
Deadline’s Soraya Roberts (August
2nd, Attachment Thirteen) first calls us to the communal conscience
of Judd Apatow who, after the cancellation of “Freaks and Geeks” seemed to
channel his anger “by making everyone on that show famous. And he did that by
using his ample producing powers to push their projects through the system.
Then this large group of filmmakers and actors created a kind of commune in
which they bolstered each other—when one was doing well, they put the others in
their film and vice versa. Unofficial or not, it was a collective.
“And it seems
increasingly that a collective is what is needed these days,” Roberts
contends, in which everyone owns a
chunk, and all successes and failures are shared. Safety in numbers. Sort of
like... oh,,, United Artists, circa 1919?
But is that even
possible on a wider scale?
After noting the
examples of... on the one hand, Andy Warhol, and, on the other, Roger Corman...
Roberts acknowledges that most indiecrats realky, really
just want just to be accepted into the system and so, independent filmmaking
has served as a path back to the studio system, bolstering the very exclusion
that produced it. Elaine May and Martin
Scorsese did it... “imagine a studio now having anything to do with Taxi
Driver,” Roberts asks. So did Fraancis Ford Coppola and George Lucas – both of whom were
“eventually folded back into the studio system.”
“I’ve always been an
outsider to the Hollywood types,” Lucas once told Time – a contention which
Roberts finds hilarious, noting that a real
outsider, David Lynch, turned down Return of the Jedi. “I realized
that his projects are entirely his projects, and I prefer to do my own,” he said of Lucas at
the time.
The studios, always
on the prowl around Sundance (less often Cannes) for cheap content, did finance
a few quasi-indies like Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino and, when they
became too un-independent to lowball, pursued other... most recently Greta Garwig (who will ascend that “golden elevator” to the top
floor of the pyramid now that “Barbie” has just completed its month-long run
atop the B.O. charts. (Look for a lot
more Toy Stories... here at DJI, we’re waiting for the hard-R version of Mister
Potato Head as a dirty old tuber!)
The distaff half of Barbenheimer was Universal’s $100 million biopic about the
man responsible or the atomic bomb, “helmed by a name director with indie cred
and sold as an action adventure when it’s really kind of a courtroom
drama.” It’s made back its nut but...
face it... there’s not going to be much demand for Oppenmerch
– which is increasingly where the auxiliary money lurks as independent movie
theaters fold, giving way to multiplexes, and an aging poplation,,,
spooked by crime and Covid... doesn’t really want to leave their houses anyway.
Imagine a collective
model, nonetheless, “which is owned by everyone equally, which keeps its costs
low. When there is success, everyone benefits, but so do their projects. When
there is failure, it’s never so bad that the whole thing folds, because of the
insulation from the larger group,” Roberts concludes – and where,
significantly, genuine artists prefer to hang around and make movies their way,
rather than selling out for a few more hundreds of millions.
Cue Ruffalo!
Below the Line News,
(July 21, Attachment Three, above) reiterated the story of United Artists...
birth to death... citing Studlar and the Mary
Pickford site and, thirdly, the Hulk expostulating a revolutionary new (or old)
doctrine.
“How about we all
jump into indies now? Content creators create a film & TV-making system
alongside the studio & streaming networks? So there is actual competition
[…] Then we just do what we always do—create great content & they can buy
it, or we take it out ourselves & WE share in those sales. They’ve created
an empire of billionaires & believe that we are no longer of value. While
they hang out in the billionaire boy summer camps laughing like fat cats, we
organize a new world for workers.”
How 1919! Or 1932!
Could unionization advance into collectivization (and without the
Stalinist “Dictators of the Proletariat,,, like Bob Iger?).
“Share
profits,” the Hulk declares. “If the project does well, everyone does well.
This will also help our fellow filmmakers... “The Crew,” who(m) we love... to
keep working. This is also part of #Solidarity. We have to take care of each
other.”
It’s
an admirable vision, Mark London Williams of “Below the Line” admits, but
wonders how creatives “get to a point where they can divvy up the pie with such
expanded egalitarian thoroughness – including, it would seem, to individual
crew members” – without also controlling some means of distribution, seems
a fairly fundfamental question.
Meaning
they had better start buying, or creating, the same sort of cinemas (or
multiplexes) as UA did a hundred years ago, maybe even starting an Independent
TV Network and getting it on the broadcast spectrum. Streaming is likely to be eastier,
but who wants to get lost in the crowd?
Could
Hulkamania last a hundred years? UA did... though, after its heyday in the 60s
and 70s (the Beatles, “Midnight Cowboy”, James Bond) it began to slide into the
decrepitude that old things and old people eventually experience – as Below the
Line concluded.
Eventually,
United Artists got folded into MGM – which had also become a landless, legacy
studio – and MGM, as readers know, was recently bought by Jeff
Bezos, and is now part of Amazon. Amazon Studios being, of course, one of
those streamers with its own distribution system built around the kinds of
screens you’re reading this on now. And also a part of the AMPTP.
What
Pickford, and her marquee male partners (she would famously marry Fairbanks
shortly after UA’s founding, but like so much in Hollywood, it didn’t last)
would make of their own studio’s eventual trajectory, and its absorption by one
of the planet’s richest men, is unknown.
But
it shows how much work would be involved in realizing even part of Ruffalo’s
vision. I wonder if he has at least three other creative partners lined up to
get something launched?
Finally, as one might
expect among and concerning persons who impersonate or mince words for a
living, the topic engendered a cornucopia of thoughtful, supportive,
questioning and mean tweets from several Peanut Galleries – some worthy of
being pounded into pulp and served up with bacon and bananas as Elvis
Sandwiches, other good only for using as bait in rat traps.
We reproduced them
all as Attachments Fourteen through
A majority, but not an
overwhelming majority supported the strikers.
But a vocal minority adjudicated them to be overpaid, undertalented...
deserving to be blamed for derivative, boring content as is being churned out
nowadays; blame as was frequently split between the studios, the writers,
actors and directors and the perception that Don Jones wants mindless
entertainment after a hard day’s work: Barbies, not Oppenheimers.
A few were jus’ crazy fun...
More
positive peanuts praised private enterprise, posting on marginalrevolution.com
(Attachment Fourteen)...
"The
Aviator" portrayed the rise of Howard Hughes (and only a little bit of his
fall).
"It's
a Wonderful Life" shows the positive side of mortgage lending.
“The
Hudsucker Proxy” about a guy who comes up with an idea for a new product and
becomes very successful by doing so.
Oskar
Schindler... but (see Attachment)
The
Chris Farley movie "Tommy Boy" is surprisingly pro-capitalist
“The
Pursuit of Happyness” was a good pro-capitalist movie
but worked because of the high drama of a man trying to escape homelessness and
a list of personal and professional failures.
Some
of the peanuts posted puzzles...
“The
fact that Hollywood - famously pacifist-inclined - is more comfortable
romanticizing war than entrepreneurship does in fact say something about it’s value system.”
Others
just trolled on...
“So
you’re a huge fan of the ‘mostly peaceful’ destruction of thousands of small
businesses by your friends in “antiFa”?”
And
others were not exactly mean... just strange...
“Hollywood
films (are) consistently orthogonal (octagonal, as in
MMA ring - DJI) or indifferent to capitalism, not why it’s consistently
antipathetic to it.”
Or
pessimistic...
“I
think you can interpret it as related to the fallacy Steve Jobs was peddling
when he told students to follow their dreams. But very few people are Steve
Jobs. The reality is, most wild dreams will fail.”
The
peanuts at mas.to (Attachment Fifteen) included wanna
movie critics...
“(O)ther than a few gems (spiderverse,
everything everywhere all at once), the quality of film writing has been pretty
weak. I’m not in favor or AI generated scripts but some shakeup might prove
better that what we’ve been getting recently.
And critics of outsourcing,
downsizing, globalization and AI...
“Turns
out the culprit, at least for Netflix, is leaning in on South Korean writers. Between
that and AI, it’s possible that this might be a turning point for the power of
creatives in Hollywood.
“Netflix
turns to South Korean writers and crews as Hollywood strikes. But they feel
exploited too
“It all comes down to labor
costs,” said Kim Ki-young, president of the Broadcasting Staffs Union, which
represents production crews. “There is a staggering amount of unpaid labor
being done.”
A
few of the nuts at Reddit glommed on to Ruffalo’s (and ours) suggestions that Artists (re- ) Unite. (Attachment Sixteen)
“There's
enough big names with 8-9 figure bank accounts that could pool together and
form a production company that accommodates 100% of the WGA/SAG asks, and then
begins to develop content on those terms (initially small scale and cheap to
produce, low vfx, etc.). Ideally, the operation
itself is owned by the unions themselves in a co-op model or something (X
portion of the profits allocated for benefits, pensions, etc.).
“A
surprising amount of movies ARE in fact being made this way. Have been for 80
years. And they get distributed. That’s why there are still so many movies
continuing to shoot while the strike is going on.
“Actors
& screenwriters should form something like the united artists alliance and
they have a council and their temporary studios are their homes. They negotiate
contracts for filming locations and theatres and if networks want scripted tv
series they have to be 5 to 10 year contracts. And if the network cancels the
series before the 5 to 10 contract ends they have to payout the alliance and
everyone involved in creating the show. I know this doesn’t sound very
realistic but it would be cool if it happened.
But there was also some anti-union sentiment from
partisans left, right and simply disgusted...
“...
(I)t took 63 YEARS for SAG-AFTRA and the WGA to go on strikes at the same time
which begs the question: How did they not notice how exploitative Hollywood
was?
A more militant goober groused: “Wall
Street parasites need not apply. There's no reason for them to be extractive
gatekeepers anymore, when all the steps along the way have been democratized.”
But a culture warrior expressed some sentiments that
Hollywood should just go out of business, and Don Jones go back to reading
Schopenhauer...
“Fuck
Hollywood and its endless cycle of (unnecessary and unimaginative) reboots,
spin-offs, and prequels that only exist to showcase useless children of rich
people.
The
culture wars also raged on the Deadline gallery (Attachment Seventeen)
“I remember that during the
pandemic, there were a multitude of memes saying that we did (not?) need actors
and writers. They said we needed doctors, nurses and truck drivers. I do not
agree with this statement. In my opinion, we do need them. I see them as
representatives of our creative spirits. They embody our hopes, our dreams, our
fears and everything that makes us who we are by creating entertainment
masterpieces.
Some tied the SAG and WGA strikes
to larger economic and equality trends.
“For 40 years, American workers have been hyper-productive at the
expense of our health, families, and socioemotional well-being. And we have
rarely shared in the tremendous revenue growth and profits seen across media,
entertainment, and many other industries. CEOs and other C-suite executives do
not deserve to make a thousandfold what the average artist makes.
And one even offered either a hard
truth or a conspiracy theory as regards the $26,000 minimum earnings for health
insurance... “An actor friend told me this week that there is a cap on
residuals of 25k – if so that would explain the checks for a penny.”
Plenty of conservatives – some corporate stooges,
some not – saw duplicity in the “interim agreements” hammered out with the
indies.
“I promise you,” contended a Unstooge, “I do not work in any affiliation with Hollywood.
I’m just a longtime nerd who is sick & tired of seeing the “writers” screw
up everything that came before. You failed at your jobs–Miserably.
“Independent rooms are not
agreeing to the terms because they are ‘fair’ but because they have no freaking
choice. SAG once again holding independent hostage.
Telling “All You SAG Members: Your
Shit Detectors Are Busted!” a patriotic peanut pointed out that “(m)ost of the projects that received interim agreements will
be filmed in significant tax incentive countries where there are also no
payroll taxes...”
“Canada, the UK, South Africa,
Romania for instance all the local cast and crew are loan outs – the equivalent
of 1099 workers AND even the PAs. That’s a savings of at least 20% per person
on payroll.
Some waxed personal...
Fran said the first day of the strike
in front of Netflix on camera 6 MONTHS she showed her hand.
Unfortunately, the only losers
here are the people that she’s trying to fight for. The cameraman, the key
grip, the journeyman, the extra on set. Those people that don’t make the big
bucks. Personally, if I was an actor and this was going on, I’d leave the union
first chance I get.
SAG has outsourced your jobs with
these agreements. Iger and Zaslav are laughing their
asses off on their yachts.
Put your signs down!
Others evoked the spirit of the union busters in the
farms and mines and factories of history...
“tay on
Strike. The audience has PLENTY of quality shows and movies, over half a century’s
worth, to choose from. Woke Propaganda will never be missed by the general
public. We won’t be brainwashed. All you’re doing is pissing us off.”
And finally...
“This sucks for everyone… so lets fix it.
“Just get in the room, compromise,
and get a deal done. How hard is that?”
|
Our Lesson: August Fourteenth through
Twentieth, 2023 |
|
|
|
Monday,
August 14, 2023 Dow: 35,307.53 |
Maui’s
deathtoll now stands at 96 and, with hundreds still
missing, is believed to be the deadliest wildire
ever in the United States. Horror
stories abound, people trying to outrun the flames and being overtaken and
burnt alive or jumping into the ocean to be drowned or boiled; survivors
searching refugee camps for relatives.
And there are some stories of heroism and Good Samaritanship
– first responders saving children from the ruins, celebrities like Mick
Fleetwood fundraising and the iconic 150 year old banyan tree of Lahaina
being scorched, but perhaps still living. On the mainland, scorching temperatures on
the West Coast spark more wildfires on the California/Oregon border. Temperatures in Portland pass 105° - in
Medford, 111°. With more charges still approaching,
former President Trump steals the show at the Iowa State Fair by denouncing
his persecuting prosecutors. Karen,
wife of former Vice President turned Republican primary challenger Mike
Pence, tells her story of running for her life with the children as the mob
crashed into the Capitol screaming “Hang Pence!” Ron DeSantis flips pork chops. On the Bad Donkey side, Aygee Merrick Garland, submitting to MAGApressure,
appoint special counsel David Weiss to investigate the life and crimers of Hunter Biden whose attorney, Abbe Lowell
admits that “we are at an impasse” regarding his rejected plea and likelihood
of a trial. Police arrest hitchhiker with an unusual
item in his backpack – a rotting, severed head. The driver who picked him up is unhurt but
complains that the man stunk up his truck. |
|
|
Tuesday,
August 15, 2023 Dow: 34,946.37 |
The Atlanta Grand Jury hands Trump Indictment
Four... ten counts, eighteen co-conspirators, 97 pages. The charges include “racketeering” and,
because lead prosecutor Fani Wallis is trying the
case in state court, not Federal, Trump, if convicted, cannot pardon himself
– setting up the enticing possibility of four more years of a Presidency
being run from a prison cell. Wallis
demands his surrender by August 25th and is pressing for a speedy
trial to begin next March, the day before the Super Tuesday primary.
Amongst the co-conspirators, former New York Mayor-turned-MAGGoid Rudy Giuliana expresses shock and awe at his
arrest, saying: “I never thought I’d be indicted for being a lawyer!”
With the Maui death toll rising to 99, survivors are still arguing
with police over refusal to return to see if their homes still exit. Some are blaming the local power company
for a downed line that sparked the blaze (still only partially
contained). Governor Josh Green, a Democrat,
proposes legislation banning hungry real estate speculators from buying
burned-out but still valuable properties and making a killing off the
killing. A
new species of snake is discovered and promptly named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi after Harrison Ford. Is it venomous? Herpetologists have not said whether it is
or is not. |
|
|
Wednesday,
August 16, 2023 Dow: 34,765.74 |
Maui
death toll reaches 106. The Government
defends its continuing refusal to allow survivors back onto the burn zone...
formerly saying they were protecting the dead burn victims whose bones were
crumbling under the feet of the anxious neighbors, now saying that the Burn
Zone is too toxic to perhaps ever be inhabitable again. Doesn’t stop the speculators. But if survivors can’t find out what
happened to their homes (and, perhaps, loved ones), the Government has a
solution: flying in teams of psychologists and psychiatrists to counsel the
victims and ask them: “How do you feel?” D.A. Wallis pushes indictment deadline
back a week, but still calls for trial to begin 3/4/24, the day before Super
Tuesday elections and condemns MAGAhackers who
publish the names, photos and addresses of the Grand Jurors on the Dark Web,
along with posts inciting the mob to exact justice. Trumps’s lawyers
continue to move to have the case transferred from state to Federal court. Girl Power continues to rule the artistic
roost... the World Cup introducing Americans to women’s soccer (even though
the American team has been knocked out), “Barbie” remains the top grossing
movie and Madonna turns 65. (Rather
than retiring on Social Security, she plans another tour.) |
|
|
Thursday,
August 17, 2023 Dow: 34,474,53 |
With the Maui death toll up to 111 and
authorities lifting the toll of the missing up from the hundreds to the
thousands, police are taking DNA swabs of the living in hopes of identifying
the dead. Camera reportedly catches
the moment that a tree fell across power lines, starting the inferno. Impromptu first response fire brigades
hailed, as are members who were cowboys, construction crews and canoeing
clubs. Help from outside includes the
Cajun Navy. In
other fire news – besides Hawaii and the Cali/Oregon border, flames break out
and force the evacuation of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. 20,000 evacuated and the smoke is back...
drifting south onto and over the Great Lakes states.
Prosecution and defense attorneys agree that the September 5th
indictment should be televised. So
far, there is no word on whether or not Trump will be handcuffed, mugshotted or even allowed bail. Former VP Pence and
current GaGov Kemp insists election results were
clean.
Aide to always-comical Rep. George Santos (R-NY) arrested for trying
to impersonate Speaker K-Mac. Why? is anybody’s guess! |
|
|
Friday,
August 18, 2023 Dow: 34,500.65 |
Happy birthday to Roslyn Carter, 96,
celebrating by eating peanut butter ice cream and releasing butterflies.
Herman Andaya, director of MEMA (Maui Emergency Management Agency)
resigns after excusing his failure to sound sirens he claimed would have been
mistaken for tsunami warnings and driven people inland and into the
flames. “People would’ve gone
loco!” And... here come the lawyers!
(And twenty more cadaver dogs, bringing their ranks up to 40.)
“Another day, another wildfire in Canada,” say weatherpeople
as British Columbia joins Yellowknife in burning. Fires in and around Spokane, WA produce
more misery and smoke. Hurricane
Hilary threatens to bring 6 inches of rain to parched California deserts, but
so fast that it will cause flooding and landslides. |
|
|
Saturday,
August 19, 2023 Dow: (Closed) |
It’s National Potato Day.
Maui death toll up to 114, but estimates of the missing drop to
900. Varying estimates say that 78 to
80% of the burn zone has now been searched.
On the mainland, California preps for Hilary by evacuating Catalina
Island while 290 heat deaths are recorded in Arizona in July. Somebody leaks names, addresses and photos
of Grand Jurors to the Dark Web – violence feared – and GA Gov. Kemp predicts
no trial until after the 2024 election and hey: What about Hunter?
Drought dries up the Panama Canal.
200 ships are waiting in line to cross – wait times are up to three weeks. The supply chain is snapped, and Don Jones
can expect to pay higher prices for gas, oil, food and anything else that has
to cross East to West or West to East.
(No Chinese toys for little New Yorkers or Floridians this Christmas!) |
|
|
Sunday,
August 20, 2023 Dow: (Closed)
|
Maui death
toll to-date holding at 114. Maui
Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) Director Andaya resigns after defending
his decision not to use warning sirens because people, thinking it was a
tsunami, would run inland into the
flames. On the mainland, Hilary is downgraded to a
tropical storm, but California panics because the dry, desert terrain will
easily flood and mud will slide. Gov.
Newsom evacuates Santa Catalina, no longer the Island of Romance, and warns
residents of San Clemente (Nixon’s hometown) and San Berdoo
to stockpile supplies, stay in their homes (until they slide away) and stay
off the roads. China holds military drills off Taiwan to
answer US/SoKo/Japan summit, so America
counter-answers by holding more drills and adding Australia to the mix. Rocket from Russia crash lands on the moon
where it shouldn’t, but rockets to Chernihiv land where they should and kill
more children. President Z’s European
tour includes stopoffs to acquire more F-16 planes
from Denmark and the Netherlands.
Sunday talkshows talk about Trump skipping
the first debate on Wednesday because he refuses to promise to endors any GOP nominee.
Christ Christie and Asa Hutchinson call him a coward. Informed sources say he’ll drag the rest of
the ticket down because “on election day, he’ll be under four
indictments.” Legal scholars debate
whether he can pardon himself if convicted in Georgia One Six trial (Federal
rules say he can, States say he’ll have to govern from prison). Gov DeSantis (R-Fl) ducks questions to
comment or commit to Never Trumpism; Mike Pence says “I’m just gonna be me!”, former DNC Chair Donna Brazile
asks about Tim Scott (as if the MAGAbase would ever
nominate a nword), Sarah Isgur
fantasizes about Christie and the liberals all agree with Gov. Kemp that the
Georgia election was “justified and
validated.” Spain defeats England 1-0 to seize the
women’s soccer championship, |
|
|
A good jobs report and a bad Dow that
dithered throught the week and then finally crashed
on Thursday resulted in another positive DJI report – by the slimmest of
margins It wasn’t the wildfires,
however, nor the threat of climate change or nuclear war as did the deed –
not even the political chaos within the Republicans, the ostensible party of
big business. Instead, the takedown
was wholly financial. Investors
realized that they could make more money with less risk by taking their funds
out of stocks, and buying mutual funds and bonds and the such which are
paying ever-rising rates of interest.
(Not so much as the homebuyers are being socked with, but getting up
there. And, important enough to re – reiterate:
Hawaiians still don’t feel so happy and the Squeamish might scream... but
Jack Parnell has issued a statement and plea to President Joe... fer Chrissakes, open up Pearl Harbor to the evacuees and
refugees. There’s plenty of space and,
being a naval station, plenty of ships to transport them to safety for the
time being. In the past month, we’ve
passed a lot of pro-military and pro-veteran legislation... can we deploy
these people to the burn site to help with the cleanup and pay them with
money for doing so to help finance rebuilding their homes? After all, they know the territory... |
|
|
|
CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000 (REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013) See a further explanation
of categories here… ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)
|
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|
SOCIAL INDICES (40%) |
|||||||||||
|
ACTS of
MAN |
12% |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
World
Affairs |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
+0.2% |
8/28/23 |
452.15 |
453.05 |
Argentina turns
right, electing fascists and Libertarians.
Ecuadorians hold elections after candidate assassinate but most people
afraid to vote. President Joe invites SoKo and Japan to Camp David to work on strategies to
fight NoKo and China. |
|||
|
War and
terrorism |
2% |
300 |
8/7/23 |
-0.2% |
8/28/23 |
292.77 |
292.18 |
After
police terror raid on Marion, KS newspaper kills publisher’s mother, they
fight back with the headline: “SCREWED – But
not Silenced.” Drones attack
Moscow – Ukes sa they “deserved it”, but the smiles
vanish when Putin launches more air strikes, killing more children. The war slogs on – Russias
minefields more lethal than its army... 500,000 have been killed to date. |
|||
|
Politics |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
+0.3% |
8/28/23 |
479.54 |
480.98 |
Bipartisan
bill mandates infrastructure conracts for disabled vetetans. Gov.
Josh Green (D-NY) proposes legislation to stop real estate scavengers from
lowballing Maui victims and tromping thru sacred burial grounds, waving
(small) checks. Wafflin’
Saint Ron’s left-handed defense of Trump earns contempt of Chris Christie who
tells him to drop out and endorse The Donald (who will skip the upcoming
debate for a special with Tucker Carlson). New CBS poll shows that... (let’s
just say Never Trumpers will not be encouraged). |
|||
|
Economics |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
+0.2% |
8/28/23 |
429.18 |
430.04 |
Maui merchers like Aloha Bear (beanie babies for charity) and
early Halloween-ists like black and orange Oreos
(for profit) hit the streets. Disney,
assailed from right (St. Ron) and left (labor) cuts hotel prices. Teamsters settle with UPS for $107K/year plus air conditioning. Summer of strikes continues with UAS
mean-eyeballing Big Three automaker.
Aldi’s (a German firm) buys out Winn Dixie and Harvey’s further
monopolizing American food. Inflation
still easing but gas is up 30¢ in July and mortgage rates at highest in 30
years. |
|||
|
Crime |
1% |
150 |
8/7/23 |
-0.3% |
8/28/23 |
252.25 |
251.49 |
Flash mob gangstas invading luxury stores to steal luxury
loot. Pilot goes crazy with axe at
Denver airport. FBI foreign oligarch
hunter busted for accepting $200,000 from oligarch. Eight shot on same block in Philly where
murder happened 2 weeks ago. FBI still
hunting Proud Fugitive Chris Worrell who got 14 years for pepper spraying a
cop on One Six, then rabbitted, |
|||
|
ACTS of
GOD |
(6%) |
|
|
||||||||
|
Environment/Weather |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
-0.2% |
8/28/23 |
403.51 |
402.70 |
Strange storms
strike – tornadoes in Providence, Rhode Island, Hurricane Hilary headed to
California and NOAA predicts busy hurricane season. Drought is drying up the Panama Canal,
backing up shipping and rusting the supply chain, leading to more inflation. |
|||
|
Disasters |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
+0.1 |
8/28/23 |
431.56 |
431.99 |
Pilots parchute safely after plane explodes at air show in
Michigan. Four missing divers rescued
from sea off Cape Fear. Orange skies
return as Washington State joins Canada in burning. |
|||
|
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE
INDEX |
(15%) |
|
|
||||||||
|
Science,
Tech, Educ. |
4% |
600 |
8/7/23 |
+0.2 |
8/28/23 |
634.77 |
636.04 |
Parents outraged
over Louisville school closings due to lack of bus drivers. Apple and Google settle litigation over
degrading customers’ phone service so as to make them upgrade for $500M. AI enemies propose Content Authenticity
legislation. |
|||
|
Equality
(econ/social) |
4% |
600 |
8/7/23 |
+0.1 |
8/28/23 |
619.77 |
620.39 |
NYC
reopens decrepit MCC jail to “house” migrants bused in from Texas while Starbucks
settles for $2.7M with employees fired for being white, and angry man murders
retailer for showing the Gay Pride flag. World Chess bans transgender Grandmasers (grandmistresses?). Ingrid Ciprian-Matthewsbecomes the first
Latina to head CBS News. Female gets 10th
hit in Little League World Series. |
|||
|
Health |
4% |
600 |
8/7/23 |
+0.1 |
8/28/23 |
470.14 |
470.61 |
Doctors
delighted that a man with a transplanted pig kidney has survived for a month,
with more xenotransplants to come.
(But what sort of beastly donors will they seek when it gets around to brain surgery?) Nestle’s recalls cookie dough with wood
chips, Trader Joe’s recalls heavy metal (literally!) crackers, Nissan recalls
cars with defective steering and FDA
recalls useless pregnancy tests. Bad
oysters kill three in NYC. (There’s no
“R” in August.) |
|||
|
Freedom
and Justice |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
-0.2% |
8/28/23 |
471.52 |
470.58 |
Trump’s
lawyers move to move the Georgia “find me a vein” case to Federal Court
which, they believe, will be more sympsthetic (and
also self-pardonable), as a Federal judge overturns the legalization of
abortion pills. On to SCOTUS with
these cases! Families protest plea
bargain with 9/11 terrorists still locked up and enjoying wateboarding
at Gitmo. Bad Mississippi cops
arrested for torturing black men. |
|||
|
MISCELLANEOUS and
TRANSIENT INDEX |
(7%) |
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Cultural
incidents |
3% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
+0.1% |
8/28/23 |
503.40 |
503.90 |
Barbie
blows away all BO competitors (again!).
Brittany (Spears) blows off her forever husband Sam Asghan; says she’ll buy a horse instead. Hip Hop Museum opens in the Bronx. Mick Fleetwood testifies about Maui fires,
then joins Sir Paul and Ringo backing up Dolly Partons
new album, Foo Fighters concert joined
by... Michael Buble?? Spain wins women’s World Cup, Messi-mania
causes men’s pro soccer tickets to rise from $20 to $400 (still not Taylor
Swift level). RIP: music producer Clarence “Black Godfather” Avant, Ron Cephis-Jones
(actor “This is Us”), Cetacian Lolita (57) in her
Miami aquarium (prison). |
|||
|
Misc.
incidents |
4% |
450 |
8/7/23 |
+0.1% |
8/28/23 |
484.76 |
485.24 |
TV’s ”Mama’s
Kitchen” recommends that roaster slap their turkeys around before consignment
to the oven. It will tenderize the
bird... and make it behave. |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
The Don Jones
Index for the week of August 14th through August 20th, 2023 was UP 0.06 points
The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New
Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack
“Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations
that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former
Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and
cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and
Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns
in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal
action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.
Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC
donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.
ATTACHMENT
ONE – From Wikipedia
United
Artists
See
Website for charts, graphs and photographs...
United Artists Corporation (UA) was an American production and
distribution company founded in 1919 by D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas
Fairbanks as a venture premised on allowing actors to control
their own interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.[2]
After numerous ownership and structural changes and revamps, United Artists
was acquired by media conglomerate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1981 for a
reported $350 million ($1.1 billion today).[3] On
September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a controlling interest in One Three Media
and Lightworkers Media and merged them to
revive the television production unit of United Artists as United Artists Media
Group (UAMG). MGM itself acquired UAMG on December 14, 2015, and folded it
into their own television division.[4]
MGM briefly revived the United Artists brand name under United Artists Digital Studios for the Stargate Origins web
series as part of its Stargate franchise but retired it after 2019 and used
their eponymous MGM brand instead for its new subsequent content releases.
A local joint distribution venture between MGM and Annapurna Pictures launched on October 31,
2017[5] was
rebranded as United Artists Releasing on February
5, 2019 in honor of its 100th anniversary.[6][7] However,
the new parent company of MGM, Amazon,
folded it into MGM on March 4, 2023, citing "newfound theatrical release
opportunities" following the box-office opening success of Creed III.[1]
Early years
In 1918, Charlie Chaplin could not get his parent
company First National Pictures to increase
his production budget despite being one of their top producers. Mary Pickford and Douglas
Fairbanks had their own contracts, with First National
and Famous Players–Lasky respectively, but
these were due to run out with no clear offers forthcoming. Sydney Chaplin,
brother and business manager for Charlie, deduced something was going wrong,
and contacted Pickford and Fairbanks. Together they hired a private detective,
who discovered a plan to merge all production companies and to lock in
"exhibition companies" to a series of five-year contracts.[8]
Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith incorporated
United Artists as a joint venture company on February 5, 1919. Each held a 25
percent stake in the preferred shares and
a 20 percent stake in the common shares of
the joint venture, with the remaining 20 percent of common shares held by
lawyer and advisor William Gibbs McAdoo.[9] The
idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford and cowboy
star William S. Hart a year earlier.
Already Hollywood veterans, the four stars talked of forming their own company
to better control their own work.
They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors
who were tightening their control over actor salaries and creative decisions, a
process that evolved into the studio system.
With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before
anything was formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures,
apparently said, "The inmates are taking over the asylum."[10] The
four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of
then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution
company. Hiram Abrams was its first managing
director, and the company established its headquarters at 729 Seventh Avenue in
New York City.[8]
The original terms called for each star to produce five pictures a year. By
the time the company was operational in 1921, feature films were becoming more
expensive and polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes
(eight reels). The original goal was thus abandoned.
UA's first production, His Majesty, the American, written by
and starring Fairbanks, was a success. Funding for movies was limited. Without
selling stock to the public like other studios, all United had for finance was
weekly prepayment installments from theater owners for upcoming movies. As a
result, production was slow, and the company distributed an average of only
five films a year in its first five years.[11][unreliable source?]
By 1924, Griffith had dropped out, and the company was facing a crisis.[citation needed] Veteran
producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president.[11] He
had produced pictures for a decade,[citation needed] and
brought commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge,[11] his
sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge,[citation needed] and his
brother-in-law, Buster Keaton.[11] Contracts
were signed with independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn,
and Howard Hughes.[11] In
1933, Schenck organized a new company with Darryl F.
Zanuck, called Twentieth Century Pictures, which soon
provided four pictures a year, forming half of UA's schedule.[11]
Schenck formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and
build theaters under the United Artists name. They began international
operations, first in Canada, and then in Mexico. By the end of the 1930s,
United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.
When he was denied an ownership share in 1935, Schenck resigned. He set
up 20th Century Pictures' merger with Fox Film Corporation to
form 20th Century Fox.[12] Al Lichtman succeeded
Schenck as company president. Other independent producers distributed through
United Artists in the 1930s including Walt Disney Productions, Alexander Korda, Hal Roach, David O.
Selznick, and Walter Wanger.[11] As
the years passed, and the dynamics of the business changed, these
"producing partners" drifted away. Samuel Goldwyn Productions and Disney went
to RKO and Wanger to Universal Pictures.
In the late 1930s, UA turned a profit. Goldwyn was providing most of the
output for distribution. He sued United several times for disputed compensation
leading him to leave. MGM's 1939 hit Gone with the Wind was supposed
to be a UA release except that Selznick wanted Clark Gable,
who was under contract to MGM, to play Rhett Butler.
Also that year, Fairbanks died.[11]
UA became embroiled in lawsuits with Selznick over his distribution of some
films through RKO. Selznick considered UA's operation sloppy, and left to start
his own distribution arm.[11]
In the 1940s, United Artists was losing money because of poorly received
pictures.[citation needed] Cinema
attendance continued to decline as television became more popular.[11] The
company sold its Mexican releasing division to Crédito
Cinematográfico Mexicano, a
local company.
Society of Independent
Motion Picture Producers (1940s and 1950s)
In 1941, Pickford, Chaplin, Disney, Orson Welles,
Goldwyn, Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Wanger—many
of whom were members of United Artists—formed the Society of Independent Motion
Picture Producers (SIMPP). Later members included Hunt Stromberg, William Cagney, Sol Lesser,
and Hal Roach.
The Society aimed to advance the interests of independent producers in an
industry controlled by the studio system. SIMPP fought to end ostensibly
anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios—Loew's (MGM), Columbia
Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal
Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner
Bros./First National—that controlled the production, distribution,
and exhibition of motion pictures.
In 1942, SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint
accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-and subsequent-run theaters in
Detroit. This was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against
exhibitors that alleged monopoly and restraint of trade. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the major
Hollywood movie studios to sell their theater chains
and to end certain anti-competitive practices. This court ruling ended the
studio system.
By 1958, SIMPP achieved many of the goals that led to its creation, and the
group ceased operations.
Krim and Benjamin
Needing a turnaround, Pickford and Chaplin hired Paul V. McNutt in
1950,[13] a
former governor of Indiana, as chairman and Frank L. McNamee as president.
McNutt did not have the skill to solve UA's financial problems and the pair was
replaced after only a few months.[11]
On February 15, 1951, lawyers-turned-producers Arthur B. Krim (of Eagle-Lion Films), Robert Benjamin and
Matty Fox[13] approached
Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for
ten years. If UA was profitable in one of the next three years, they would have
the option to acquire half the company by the end of the ten years and take
full control.[13] Fox
Film Corporation president Spyros Skouras extended
United Artists a $3 million loan through Krim
and Benjamin's efforts.[11][14]
In taking over UA, Krim and Benjamin created the
first studio without an actual "studio". Primarily acting as bankers,
they offered money to independent producers. UA leased space at the
Pickford/Fairbanks Studio but did not own a studio lot. Thus UA did not have
the overhead, the maintenance, or the expensive production staff at other
studios.
Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel and John Huston,
whose Horizon Productions gave UA one major hit, The African Queen (1951) and a
substantial success, Moulin Rouge (1952). As well
as The African Queen UA also had success with High Noon in
their first year, earning a profit of $313,000 compared to a loss of $871,000
the previous year.[13][11] Others
clients followed, among them Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions, and actors
newly freed from studio contracts and seeking to produce or direct their own
films.
With the instability in the film industry due to theater divestment, the
business was considered risky. In 1955, movie attendance reached its lowest
level since 1923. Chaplin sold his 25 percent share during this crisis to Krim and Benjamin for $1.1 million, followed a year
later by Pickford who sold her share for $3 million.[11]
In the late 1950s, United Artists produced two modest films that became
financial and critical successes for the company. The company made Marty which
won 1955's Palme d'Or and Best Picture Oscar. 12 Angry Men (1957) which
according to Krim before home video, was being seen
on TV 24 hours a day, 365 days a year some place in the world.[14] By
1958, UA was making annual profits of $3 million a year.[13]
Public company
United Artists went public in 1957 with a $17 million stock and debenture offering.
The company was averaging 50 films a year.[11] In
1958, UA acquired Ilya Lopert's Lopert Pictures Corporation, which
released foreign films that attracted criticism or had censorship problems.[15]
In 1957, UA created United Artists Records Corporation and
United Artists Music Corporation after an unsuccessful attempt to buy a record
company.[16] In
1968, UA Records merged with Liberty Records,
along with its many subsidiary labels such as Imperial Records and Dolton Records.
In 1972, the group was consolidated into one entity as United Artists Records
and in 1979, EMI acquired
the division which included Blue Note
Records.[17]
In 1959, after failing to sell several pilots, United Artists offered its
first ever television series, The Troubleshooters,[18] and
later released its first sitcom, The Dennis O'Keefe Show.
In the 1960s, mainstream studios fell into decline and some were acquired
or diversified. UA prospered while winning 11 Academy Awards, including five
for Best Picture,[11] adding
relationships with the Mirisch brothers, Billy Wilder, Joseph E. Levine and
others. In 1961, United Artists released West Side Story, which won a record
ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture).
In 1960, UA purchased Ziv Television Programs. UA's television division was responsible
for shows such as Gilligan's Island, The Fugitive, Outer Limits,
and The Patty Duke Show. The television unit
had begun to build up a profitable rental library, including Associated Artists Productions,[19] owners
of Warner Bros. pre-1950[20][a] features,
shorts and cartoons and 231 Popeye cartoon
shorts purchased from Paramount Pictures in 1958, becoming United Artists Associated, its
distribution division.
In 1963, UA released two Stanley Kramer films, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and A Child Is Waiting. In 1964, UA
introduced U.S. film audiences to the Beatles by
releasing A Hard Day's Night (1964)
and Help! (1965).
At the same time, it backed two expatriate North Americans in Britain, who
had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No in
1963 and launched the James Bond franchise.[21] The
franchise outlived UA's time as a major studio, continuing half a century
later. Other successful projects backed in this period included the Pink Panther series, which began
in 1964, and Spaghetti Westerns, which made a star of Clint Eastwood in
the films of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
In 1964, the French subsidiary, Les Productions Artistes Associés, released its first production That Man from
Rio.
In 1965, UA released the anticipated George Stevens' production of The Greatest Story Ever Told and
was at the time, the most expensive film which was budgeted at $20 million. Max
Von Sydow, in the role of Jesus Christ, led an
all-star cast which included Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowell, Martin Landau,
Dorothy McGuire, Sal Mineo, Ina Balin,
Joanna Dunham, David McCallum, Nehemiah Persoff,
Donald Pleasence, José Ferrer and Ed Wynn. The film did not make back its
budget and was released to mixed critical receptions. But it has since been
acclaimed as a classic by audiences around the world for being admirably
inspired in its attempt to be faithful to the four books of the New Testament
in the Holy Bible as well as the book of the same name by Fulton Oursler and
the radio program which
ran from 1947 to 1956. The Greatest Story Ever Told received five
Academy Award nominations in 1965 and was also listed among the “Top 10 Films
of the Year” by the National Board of Review.
Transamerica subsidiary
On the basis of its film and television hits, in 1967, Transamerica Corporation purchased 98
percent of UA's stock. Transamerica selected David and Arnold Picker to
lead its studio.[11] UA
debuted a new logo incorporating the parent company's striped T emblem and the
tagline "Entertainment from Transamerica Corporation". This wording
was later shortened to "A Transamerica Company". The following year,
in 1968, United Artists Associated was reincorporated as United Artists Television
Distribution.
UA released another Best Picture Oscar winner in 1967, In the Heat of the Night and
a nominee for Best Picture, The Graduate,
an Embassy production that UA distributed
overseas.
In 1970, UA lost $35 million, and the Pickers were pushed aside for
the return of Krim and Benjamin.[11]
Other successful pictures included the 1971 screen version of Fiddler on the Roof. However, the 1972 film version of Man of La Mancha was
a failure. New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sylvester Stallone, Saul Zaentz, Miloš Forman, and Brian De Palma.
In 1973, United Artists took over the sales and distribution of MGM's films in Anglo-America. Cinema International Corporation assumed
international distribution rights for MGM's films and carried on to United
International Pictures (made from CIC and UA's International assets being owned
by partner MGM) in the 1980s. As part of the deal, UA acquired MGM's music
publishing operation, Robbins, Feist, Miller.[22]
In 1975, Harry Saltzman sold UA his 50 percent stake in Danjaq,
the holding-company for the Bond films.
UA released One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in
1975, which won the Best Picture Academy Award and was UA's highest-grossing
film, with a gross of $163 million.[23] UA
followed with the next two years' Best Picture Oscar winners, Rocky and Annie Hall,
becoming the first studio to win the award for three years running and also to
become the studio with the most Best Picture winners at that time, with 11.[11][24]
However, Transamerica was not pleased with UA's releases such as Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris that were rated X by
the Motion Picture
Association of America. In these instances, Transamerica demanded
the byline "A Transamerica Company" be removed on the prints and
in all advertising. At one point, the parent company expressed its desire to
phase out the UA name and replace it with Transamerica Films. Krim tried to convince Transamerica to spin off United
Artists, but he and Transamerica's chairman could not come to an agreement.[25] Finally
in 1978, following a dispute with Transamerica chief John R. Beckett[11] over
administrative expenses,[citation needed] UA's top
executives, including chairman Krim, president Eric Pleskow, Benjamin and other key officers walked
out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures,[11] with
backing from Warner Bros. The departures concerned several
Hollywood figures enough that they took out an ad in a trade paper warning
Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.[citation needed]
Transamerica inserted Andy Albeck as UA's
president. United had its most successful year with four hits in 1979: Rocky II, Manhattan, Moonraker,
and The Black Stallion.[11]
The new leadership agreed to back Heaven's Gate, a project of director Michael Cimino,
which vastly overran its budget and cost $44 million. This led to the
resignation of Albeck who was replaced by Norbert
Auerbach.[11] United
Artists recorded a major loss for the year due almost entirely to the
box-office failure of Heaven's Gate.[26] It
destroyed UA's reputation with Transamerica and the greater Hollywood
community. However, it may have saved the United Artists name, as UA's final
head before the sale, Steven Bach, wrote in his book Final Cut that
there was talk about renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures.
In 1980, Transamerica decided to exit the film making business, and put
United Artists on the market. Kirk Kerkorian's
Tracinda Corp. purchased the company in 1981.[27][28] Tracinda also owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[29]
United Artists Classics
In 1981, United Artists Classics, which formerly re-released library
titles, was turned into a first-run art film distributor
by Nathaniel T. Kwit, Jr. Tom Bernard was hired as
the division director, as well as handling theatrical sales, and Ira Deutchman[30][31] was
hired as head of marketing. Later the division added Michael Barker and Donna
Gigliotti. Deutchman left to form Cinecom,
and Barker and Bernard formed Orion Classics and Sony Pictures Classics. The label mostly
released foreign and independent films such as Cutter's Way, Ticket to Heaven and The Grey Fox,
and occasional first-run reissues from the UA library, such as director's cuts
of Head Over Heels. When Barker and
Bernard left to form Orion Classics, the label was briefly rechristened in 1984
as MGM/UA Classics before it ceased operating in the late 1980s.[32]
MGM/UA Entertainment
Company
The merged companies became MGM/UA Entertainment Company and in 1982 began
launching new subsidiaries: the MGM/UA Home Entertainment Group, MGM/UA
Classics and MGM/UA Television Group. Kerkorian also bid for
the remaining, outstanding public stock, but dropped his bid, facing lawsuits
and vocal opposition.[11]
In 1981, Fred Silverman and George Reeves via InterMedia
Entertainment struck a deal with the studio to produce films and TV shows.[33][34]
After the purchase, David Begelman's
duties were transferred from MGM to MGM/UA. Under Begelman, MGM/UA produced
unsuccessful films and he was fired in July 1982. Of the 11 films he put into
production, by the time of his termination only Poltergeist proved to be a hit.[35]
As part of the consolidation, in 1983, MGM closed United Artists' long time
headquarters at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York City.[36] MGM/UA
sold the former UA music publishing division to CBS Songs in
1983.[37]
On March 1, 1983, United Artists filed a lawsuit against EMI Films whereas
EMI claimed they got financing and would receive international distribution
rights to the film WarGames,
and paid $4.5 million delivery to the film.[38]
WarGames and Octopussy made
substantial profits for the new MGM/UA in 1983, but were not sufficient for
Kerkorian. A 1985-restructuring led to independent MGM and UA production units
with the combined studio leaders each placed in charge of a single unit.
Speculation from analysts was that one of the studios, most likely UA, would be
sold to fund the other's (MGM) stock buy-back to take that studio private.
However, soon afterwards, one unit's chief was fired and the remaining
executive, Alan Ladd, Jr., took charge of both.[11]
Turner
On August 7, 1985, Ted Turner announced that his Turner Broadcasting System would buy
MGM/UA. As film licensing to television became more complicated, Turner saw the
value of acquiring MGM's film library for his superstation WTBS.[39] Under
the terms of the deal, Turner would immediately sell United Artists back to
Kerkorian.[29]
In anticipation, Kerkorian installed film producer Jerry Weintraub as
the chairman and chief executive of United Artists Corporation in November
1985.[40] Former ABC executive Anthony Thomopoulos was
recruited as UA's president[41] Weintraub's
tenure at UA was brief; he left the studio in April 1986, replaced by
former Lorimar executive Lee Rich.[42] In
anticipation, during the split, SLM moved its distribution deal to United
Artists, after leaving MGM/UA for a brief period of year.[43]
On March 25, 1986, Turner finalized his acquisition of MGM/UA in a
cash-stock deal for $1.5 billion and renamed it MGM Entertainment Co.[39][44][45][46][47][48] Kerkorian
then repurchased most of United Artists' assets for roughly $480 million.[44][45] As
a result of this transaction, the original United Artists ceased to exist.
Kerkorian, for all intents and purposes, created an entirely new company
implementing the inherited assets; thus, the present day UA is not the legal
successor to the original incarnation, though it shares similar assets.[49] United
Artists has plans to launch its new headquarters on Beverly Hills, which was set to take
effect on November 1, 1985, shortly before the Turner deal was finalized.[50] On
April 23, 1986, United Artists and Hoyts, the Australian
cinema chain and distribution company, inked a three-picture deal in order to
co-produce films, in order to serve as equal partners of the upcoming United
Artists motion pictures.[51]
MGM/UA Communications
Company
Due to financial community concerns over his debt load, Ted Turner was
forced to sell MGM's production and distribution assets to United Artists for
$300 million on August 26, 1986.[44][45][52][53] The
MGM lot and lab facilities were sold to Lorimar-Telepictures.[52] Turner
kept the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library, along with the Associated Artists Productions library,
and the RKO Pictures films that United Artists had previously purchased.[52] On
August 21, 1986, United Artists announced its re-entry to film
production; Baby Boom and Real Men were
the first new films to commence production, with a slate of 26 films to follow
in development.[54]
United Artists was renamed MGM/UA Communications Company and
organized into three main units: one television production and two film units.
David Gerber headed up the television unit with Anthony Thomopoulous
at United Artists, and Alan Ladd, Jr. at MGM. Despite a resurgence at the box
office in 1987 with Spaceballs, The Living Daylights, and Moonstruck,
MGM/UA lost $88 million.[11] That
November, Hoyts and
United Artists decided to pull their co-production partnership, with a majority
of the films will be now heralded directly to United Artists, which was
confirmed by Hoyts executive Jonathan Chissick.[55]
In April 1988, Kerkorian's 82 percent of MGM/UA was up for sale; MGM and UA
were split by July. Eventually, 25 percent of MGM was offered to Burt Sugarman,
and producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber, but the plan later fell through. Rich,
Ladd, Thomopoulous and other executives grew tired of
Kerkorian's antics and began to leave.[11] By
summer 1988, the mass exodus of executives started to affect productions, with
many film cancellations. The 1989 sale of MGM/UA to the Australian
company Qintex/Australian
Television Network (owners of the Hal Roach library, which both
MGM and United Artists had distributed in the 1930s) also fell through, due to
the company's bankruptcy later that year. On November 29, 1989, Turner Broadcasting System (the
owners of the pre-May 1986 MGM library) attempted to buy entertainment assets
from Tracinda Corporation, including MGM/UA Communications Co. (which also
included United Artists, MGM/UA Home Video, and MGM/UA
Television Productions), but failed.[56] UA
was essentially dormant after 1990 and released no films for several years.
The 1990s
Eventually, in 1990, Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti purchased
UA. He purchased a small company and renamed it Pathé
Communications anticipating a successful purchase of Pathé,
the original French company. But his attempt failed and instead he merged
MGM/UA with his former company, resulting in MGM-Pathé Communications Co.
During the transaction, Parretti overstated his own
financial condition and within a year defaulted to his primary lender, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio
in 1992.[57][28] This
resulted in the sale or closure of MGM/UA's string of US theaters. On July 2,
1992, MGM-Pathé Communications was again named Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. In an effort to
make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production and convinced John Calley to run UA. Under his supervision, Calley revived the Pink Panther and James Bond franchises
and highlighted UA's past by giving the widest release ever to a film with an
NC-17 rating, Showgirls. Credit Lyonnais sold MGM in 1996, again to Kirk
Kerkorian's Tracinda, leading to Calley's
departure.[28]
In 1999, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola attempted to buy UA
from Kerkorian who rejected the offer. Coppola signed a production deal with
the studio instead.[25]
The 2000s to the 2020s
In 1999, UA was re-positioned as a specialty studio. MGM had just
acquired The Samuel Goldwyn Company, which had been
a leading distributor of arthouse films. After that name was retired, MGM
folded UA into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. G2 Films, the renamed Goldwyn
Company and MGM's specialty London operations, was renamed United Artists
International.[58] The
distributorship, branding, and copyrights for two of UA's main franchises (Pink
Panther, and Rocky) were moved to MGM, although select MGM
releases (notably the James Bond franchise co-held with Danjaq, LLC and
the Amityville Horror remake)
carry a United Artists copyright. The first arthouse film to bear the UA name
was Things You Can Tell Just by Looking
at Her.
United Artists hired Bingham Ray to
run the company on September 1, 2001.[28] Under
his supervision, the company produced and distributed many art films,
including Bowling for Columbine, 2002's Nicholas Nickleby, and the winner of
that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film, No Man's Land; and 2004's Undertow, and Hotel Rwanda,
a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Entertainment, and made deals
with companies like American
Zoetrope and Revolution Films.[59] Ray
stepped down from the company in 2004.[60]
In 2005, a partnership of Comcast, Sony and several
merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for
$4.8 billion.[28] Though
only a minority investor, Sony closed MGM's distribution system and folded most
of its staff into its own studio. The movies UA had completed and planned for
release—Capote, Art School Confidential, The Woods, and Romance and Cigarettes[citation needed]—were reassigned
to Sony Pictures Classics.[28]
In March 2006, MGM announced that it would return again as a domestic
distribution company. Striking distribution deals with The Weinstein Company, Lakeshore Entertainment, Bauer Martinez
Entertainment, and other independent studios, MGM distributed films from these
companies. MGM continued funding and co-producing projects released in
conjunction with Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group on
a limited basis and produced tent-poles for its own distribution
company, MGM Distribution.
Sony had a minority stake in MGM, but otherwise MGM and UA operated under
the direction of Stephen Cooper (CEO and minority owner of MGM).
United Artists
Entertainment
On November 2, 2006, MGM announced that Tom Cruise and
his long-time production partner Paula Wagner were
resurrecting UA.[61][62] This
announcement came after the duo were released from a fourteen-year production
relationship at Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures. Cruise, Wagner
and MGM Studios created
United Artists Entertainment LLC and the producer/actor and his partner owned a
30 percent stake in the studio,[63] with
the approval by MGM's consortium of owners. The deal gave them control over
production and development. Wagner was named CEO, and was allotted an annual
slate of four films with varying budget ranges, while Cruise served as a
producer for the revamped studio and the occasional star.
UA became the first motion picture studio granted a Writers Guild of America, West (WGA)
waiver in January 2008 during the Writers' Strike.[64]
On August 14, 2008, MGM announced that Wagner would leave UA to produce
films independently.[65] Her
output as head of UA was two films, both starring Cruise, Lions for Lambs[66] and Valkyrie.[67] Wagner's
departure led to speculation that a UA overhaul was imminent.[65]
Since then, UA has served as a co-producer with MGM for two releases: the
2009 remake of Fame and Hot Tub Time Machine—these are the
last original films to date to bear the UA banner.
A 2011 financial report revealed that MGM reacquired its 100 percent stake
in United Artists.[63] MGM
stated that it might continue to make new films under the UA brand.[63] Currently,
however, UA itself functions in-name-only.
United Artists Media
Group and United Artists Digital Studios
On September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a 55 percent interest in One Three
Media and Lightworkers Media, both operated by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey and
partly owned by Hearst Entertainment. The two companies were
consolidated into a new television company, United Artists Media Group (UAMG),
a revival of the UA brand. Burnett became UAMG's CEO and Downey became
president of Lightworkers Media, the UAMG family and faith division. UAMG
became the distributing studio for Mark Burnett Productions programming such
as Survivor. UAMG was to form an over-the-top faith-based channel.[28][68]
On December 14, 2015, MGM announced that it had acquired the remaining 45
percent stake of UAMG it did not already own and folded UAMG into its own
television division. Hearst, Downey and Burnett received stakes in MGM
collectively valued at $233 million. Additionally, Burnett was promoted to
persident for MGM Television, replacing the
outgoing Roma Khanna. The planned over-the-top faith service (later to
be branded as a combined OTT/digital subchannel service known as Light
TV, now the TheGrio)
became a separate entity owned by MGM, Burnett, Downey and Hearst.[4]
On August 14 2018, The Hollywood Reporter reported that MGM
revived the brand as United Artists Digital Studios for
the Stargate Origins web series as part of
an attempted relaunch of its Stargate franchise which
also included a dedicated streaming media platform
known as Stargate Command, thus following in the footsteps of Paramount Global's CBS
All Access platform (now Paramount+).[69]
Main
article: List of United Artists films
A majority of UA's post-1952 library is now owned by MGM, while the
pre-1952 films (with few exceptions) were either sold to other companies such
as National Telefilm Associates (now a
part of the Melange/Republic
Pictures holdings owned by Paramount Global, with Paramount Pictures handling their
distribution) or are in the public domain.
However, throughout the studio's history, UA acted more as a distributor than a
film studio, crediting the copyright to the production company responsible.
This explains why certain UA releases, such as High Noon (1952)
and The Final Countdown (1980), are
still under copyright but not owned by MGM.[original research?] The MGM
titles which UA distributed from 1973 to 1982 are now owned by Turner
(under Warner Bros.).
UA Films on Video
UA originally leased the home video rights to its films to Magnetic Video,
the first home video company. Fox purchased Magnetic in 1981 and renamed
it 20th Century-Fox Video that
year. In 1982, 20th Century-Fox Video merged with CBS Video Enterprises (which earlier split
from MGM/CBS Home Video after MGM merged with
UA) giving birth to CBS/Fox Video. Although MGM owned UA around
this time, UA's licensing deal with CBS/Fox was still in effect. However, the
newly renamed MGM/UA Home Video started releasing some
UA product, including UA films originally released in the mid-80s. Prior to
MGM's purchase, UA licensed foreign video rights to Warner Bros. through Warner Home
Video, in a deal that was set to expire in 1991.[70] In
1986, the pre-1950 WB and the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television libraries
were purchased by Ted Turner after his short-lived ownership of MGM/UA, and as
a result CBS/Fox lost home video rights to the pre-1950 WB films to MGM/UA Home Video. When the deal with CBS/Fox
(inherited from Magnetic Video) expired in 1989, the UA released films were
released through MGM/UA Home Video.
Before the Magnetic Video and Warner Home Video deals in 1980, United
Artists had exclusive rental contacts with a small video label called VidAmerica in the US, and another small label
called Intervision Video in the UK.[71][72][73] for
the home video release of 20 titles from the UA library (e.g. The Great Escape, Some Like It Hot,
and Hair, along with a few pre-1950 WB titles).
United Artists Broadcasting
United Artists owned and operated two television stations under the
"United Artists Broadcasting" name: WUAB in Cleveland, Ohio (nominally
licensed to Lorain, Ohio) which the studio built and sign
on in 1968,[74] WRIK-TV in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which was purchased in
1969,[75] and
held a construction permit for a station in Houston, Texas.[76] In
1970, United Artists purchased radio station WWSH in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.[77]
United Artists left the broadcasting business starting in 1977 by selling
WUAB to the Gaylord Broadcasting Company[78] and
WWSH to Cox Enterprises,[77] followed
by WRIK-TV's sale to Tommy Muñiz in 1979.[79]
Main
article: United Artists Releasing
United Artists Releasing, LLC (UAR) was an
local film distribution joint venture between
MGM and Annapurna Pictures founded by former MGM CEO Gary Barber,
businessman and Open Road Films founder Eric Hohl and Annapurna founder Megan Ellison on
31 October 2017,[5] it
rebranded as United Artists Releasing on 5 February 2019 to
commemorate 100 years since the founding of United Artists,[6] it
operated within with offices of the headquarters of the respective companies
in West Hollywood and Los Angeles in California and
offered alternative services to the major film studios and streaming media companies[6] with
10–14 films released annually.[7]
On 26 May 2021, online shopping and technology company Amazon acquired
MGM Holdings, the parent company of MGM, for $8.45 billion[80] which
was completed on 17 March 2022[81] and
consequentially placed United Artists Releasing under the control of Amazon Studios.
Amazon then folded United Artists Releasing into MGM on 4 March 2023 in a push
towards cinematic/theatrical film distribution alongside their staple media
releases on their video on demand service Amazon Prime Video following the
box-office success of Creed III.[1]
1.
^ WB
retained a pair of features from 1949 that they merely distributed, and all
short subjects released on or after September 1, 1948, in addition to all
cartoons released in August 1948.
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of MGM (1st ed.). New York: Morrow. pp. 236–238. ISBN 9780671710606.
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44.
^ Jump up to:a b c Parsons, Patrick R. (April 5, 2008). Blue Skies: A History of Cable
Television. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
p. 507. ISBN 9781592137060. Retrieved October
1, 2017.
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^ Stefoff, Rebecca (1992). Ted Turner,
Television's Triumphant Tiger. Ada, Oklahoma: Garrett
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^ Storch,
Charles (May 7, 1986). "Turner May
Sell Equity In Company". Chicago Tribune.
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^ Balio, Tino (March 2,
2009). United Artists,
Volume 2, 1951–1978: The Company That Changed the Film Industry.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 343. ISBN 9780299230135. Archived from
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^ "UA
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^ Galbraith,
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Sell Mgm Assets". The New York
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Further Reading:
·
Bach, Steven. Final
Cut. New York: Morrow, 1985.
·
Balio, Tino. United
Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1976.
·
Balio, Tino. United
Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1987.
·
Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
·
Gabler, Neal. An Empire of
Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown
Publishers, 1988.
·
Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American
Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
·
Thomson, David. Showman:
The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1992.
External Links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to United
Artists.
·
Official website (archived)
·
Official website
for United Artists Releasing at the Wayback Machine (archived
2021-01-26)
·
United Artists
Corporation Records 1919–1965 Archived December
9, 2013, at archive.today — at
the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater
Research.
ATTACHMENT TWO – From Washington
University, St. Louis
ARTISTS, UNITED: THE
RADICAL ORIGIN of a FILM CORPORATION
By Gaylyn Studlar April 8, 2018
In 2019, United Artists celebrates its 100th anniversary.
One hundred years is a lot of history by American standards, but even more so
by Hollywood’s. The founding of United Artists was a radical act, one that
occurred early in the history of the American film industry. It was also one of
its most historically significant events. Movie studios had existed in
Hollywood for less than a decade when United Artists was created. William Selig
had opened a studio in 1909 in the city of Los Angeles, but it wasn’t until 1911
that the Nestor Motion Picture Company set up shop in Hollywood, in a rundown
former roadhouse, the Blondeau Tavern.
United Artists would be created not by “moguls” or bankers
but by artists, by movie talent — including a woman. In 1909 a young Canadian
actress named Mary Pickford made her first appearances in one reel
(eleven-minute) films made at Biograph studio in New York City. In 1911, she
received her first on-screen credit for a Biograph film called Their
First Misunderstanding. The American film industry had been resistant
to crediting actors; instead, it relied on studio branding as the main
marketing strategy. However, the importance of actors to audiences was
recognized in the 1910s. Even film style changed in response to popular actors,
who were recognized as “stars” that could sell movies week after week to the
public and fuel box-office receipts.
Known to her audience as “Little Mary,” “The Girl with the
Curls,” and “America’s Sweetheart,” Pickford became the biggest female star in
the first quarter century of American film history. Pickford’s only rivals in
box-office popularity were smiling action hero Douglas Fairbanks, who would
become her second husband in 1920, and Fairbanks’ good friend, Charles Chaplin,
whose “Little Tramp” comedy persona was beloved worldwide. During the 1910s,
Pickford moved from studio to studio to acquire more money but also more power
to guarantee the quality of her films. In 1916, she became the first Hollywood
star to produce her own films under a partnership agreement with Famous
Players-Lasky/Paramount. In 1918, she moved to First National, but by 1919, she
was fed up.
As Hollywood corporatized with vertical integration linking
production to distribution to theatrical exhibition, the studios depended on
“block booking,” which forced movie theater exhibitors to take groups of films
— sight unseen, titles unknown. Pickford learned that her spectacularly popular
films were used by Famous Players-Lasky and then First National to force
theater managers to commit to these large packages of films. Pickford had
enough of letting a major studio profit in the millions from her popularity and
even sell inferior films with it. She, Fairbanks, Chaplin, prominent director
D.W. Griffith, and movie cowboy William S. Hart joined together to form a
distribution company for independent producers. Hart dropped out of the radical
experiment, but the others stuck, and on April 17, 1919, United Artists (UA)
was incorporated. The partners hoped the new enterprise would guarantee them
both artistic control and improved profits. An unprecedented declaration of
independence by Hollywood’s top talent, it was a business venture, but, as
scholar Tino Balio, has noted, it was one rooted in artistic idealism too.)
With an adolescent screen persona to nurture, Pickford had
long been careful to give the impression that her mother, Charlotte,
financially managed her career, but many years after the founding of United
Artists, she suggested this radical venture had been her brainchild. The
company would distribute the films of independent producers, including those of
the four partners. Block booking was banned. Each film distributed by UA would
sink or swim on its own.
In the early 1920s, United Artists offered some big, bold
box-office hits, like Fairbanks’ The Mark of Zorro and Robin
Hood, and quiet, sensitive ones, like D.W. Griffith’s Broken
Blossoms. Pickford won over audiences with her film version of the
popular novel of girlhood, Pollyanna. Apart from the
popularity of individual films, UA would become a bulwark against the
overwhelming dominance of vertically integrated studios that sought to
eradicate competition, preventing independent productions from reaching movie
theater screens. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court would demand via the “Paramount
decrees” of 1948 that studios stop their widespread stifling of competition.
Block booking, vertical integration, and other policies like blind booking,
would have to end, but this was over twenty years away.
Faced with such daunting competition and internal
challenges, United Artists experienced financial instability for years. The
partners often failed to hit target goals for making films. D.W. Griffith left.
Reorganization was required, and producer Joseph Schenck was called in to be
chairman of the board. Other talent would come and go — like Gloria Swanson,
Buster Keaton, Sam Goldwyn, Walter Wanger, Alexander Korda, and David O.
Selznick — but with few trusted to become full partners. Pickford and Fairbanks
retired from the screen in the early 1930s, and divorced. Pickford assumed the
role of executive leadership at United Artists in 1935 but made mistakes, among
them the loss of UA’s distribution of Disney films. In 1939, Fairbanks died. In
1951, management was transferred out of Pickford’s hands, and she sold her
stock in UA in 1956, a year after the other remaining founder, Charles Chaplin,
had sold out.
In the 1950s, United Artists entered a new era under the
guidance of Arthur B. Krim and Robert S. Benjamin. This was an era of
international agreements, television, and the rise of independent producers in
the wake of the Paramount decrees that broke up the studios. In this very
different climate for organizing U.S. film business, United Artists became a
model for a successful Hollywood company. Its scope and success eclipsed the
vision of its four original founders, who had labored within and then against a
highly monopolist industry, but without the radical act of independence and
commitment to quality made by Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin,
and Douglas Fairbanks, United Artists would never have existed — or ultimately
flourished.
Gaylyn Studlar is the David May Distinguished University
Professor in the Humanities and the director of the Program in Film & Media
Studies.
ATTACHMENT THREE –
From Below
the Line News
SAG STRIKE: UNITING ARTISTS, FROM THE ERA OF SILENTS
TO DIGITS
By Mark London Williams July 21, 2023
“The trades called it a ‘rebellion against
established producing and distributing arrangements’ […but] the filmmakers
claimed [the move] was necessary to protect their own interests as well as to
‘protect the exhibitor and the industry from itself.’” 1.
“[The company] would be created not
by ‘moguls’ or bankers but by artists, by movie talent […] the partners hoped
the new enterprise would guarantee them both artistic control and improved
profits. An unprecedented declaration of independence by Hollywood’s top
talent, it was a business venture, but […] it was one rooted in
artistic idealism too.” 2.
“How about we all jump into indies
now? Content creators create a film & TV-making system alongside the studio
& streaming networks? So there is actual competition […] Then we just do
what we always do—create great content & they can buy it, or we take it out
ourselves & WE share in those sales. They’ve created an empire of
billionaires & believe that we are no longer of value. While they hang out
in the billionaire boy summer camps laughing like fat cats, we organize a new
world for workers.” 3.
Those three quotes span about a
century of Hollywood history. The first is from Gaylyn Studlar, the
director of the Program in Film & Media Studies at Washington University in
St. Louis. 1.
The second is a bit of history found
on The Mary Pickford Foundation’s website. 2.
Both are talking about the formation
of United Artists, that once-storied studio originally created
by first generation Hollywood luminaries Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, D.W.
Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks. The impetus behind these early
A-listers literally seizing “the means of production” wasn’t a strike – the
formation of both SAG and the DGA was more than a decade away at that point.
Rather, it came from a realization on how their growing celebrityhood was being
used to create additional studio profits that they weren’t sharing in.
If any of that should sound
familiar…)
As Studlar explains, “as Hollywood
corporatized with vertical integration linking production to distribution to
theatrical exhibition, the studios depended on ‘block booking,’ which forced
movie theater exhibitors to take groups of films — sight unseen, titles
unknown. Pickford learned that her spectacularly popular films were used by
Famous Players-Lasky and then First National to force theater managers to
commit to these large packages of films. Pickford had enough of letting a major
studio profit in the millions from her popularity and even sell inferior films
with it.”
Many decades later, that same
general strategy would be used to make cable TV profitable by “bundling,” from
cable providers – one of which grew so prosperous it was able to buy Universal
Pictures and NBC – giving you a package that included the handful of networks
you really wanted, say, ESPN, FX, AMC, Cartoon Network and CNN (once upon
a time, at least), and making you subscribe to a whole menu of outlets you
never watched. That was why the “buffet” model, allowing subscribers to simply
pick and choose which networks they wanted to pay for, was so vigorously
opposed by all those vending cable packages.
But then came our era of
connectivity and cord-cutting, and general resistance to incessantly rising
prices for all this alleged entertainment, and now, we have a certain version
of “buffet” viewing after all, except that many choices – you want to
watch 1923? Andor? Poker Face? Succession? – continually
require you to subscribe to that “one more streaming service.”
We might cue the conversation about audience
“churn” here, as a means of household budgeting survival in the face of endless
channel offerings, but let’s save that for down the road, when we see how much
audience or viewership is retained in the wake of the walkouts and the inevitable,
upcoming Hollywood reconfigurations, once a settlement settles.
Meanwhile, this brings us to the
third quote up top. It came recently from Mark Ruffalo, courtesy of his
Elon-be-damned Twitter account. The robust presence of ampersands in the
quote may have tipped it as being from the era of Tweets, rather than
flappers. 3.
“One sure way to strengthen our hand
right now,” Ruffalo continued in his thread, “is to become very supportive
& friendly to all independent projects
immediately. Push every SAG-AFTRA member to join the ones that get SAG-AFTRA
(WGA) WAIVERS immediately. The studios have no competition—this will
change that.”
He was referring to the slew of
independent films, some 39 as of this writing, including a pair from A24, that
were granted waivers to proceed, with the understanding that said productions
will abide retroactively by whatever SAG-AFTRA agreement is eventually reached.
Some actors, however, like Bob
Odenkirk, have called on fellow thespians to not even work on “waived”
productions. “’It’s a strike. Be on strike,” he said, as EW reported. “Sometimes
you have to do the hard thing,” His comments, by the way, came as he
was picketing in front of Paramount studios, which is what the Pickford-era
Famous Players-Lasky eventually became.
Meanwhile, Ruffalo added to his
particular vision: “Share profits. If the project does well, everyone does
well. This will also help our fellow filmmakers “The Crew,” who we love, to keep
working. This is also part of #Solidarity. We have to take care of each other.”
It’s an admirable vision, though how
creatives get to a point where they can divvy up the pie with such expanded
egalitarian thoroughness – including, it would seem, to individual crew members
– without also controlling some means of distribution, seems a fairly
fundfamental question.
Even United Artists – which
according to Studlar, may have been mostly Pickford’s idea all along (if you’re
looking for a bit of feminist history to unearth) – was originally set up, as
the other studios were, to distribute its own product: “Many years after the
founding of United Artists, [Pickford] suggested this radical venture had been
her brainchild. The company would distribute the films of independent
producers, including those of the four partners. Block booking was banned. Each
film distributed by UA would sink or swim on its own.”
UA swam for a long time, ranging all
the way with classics from the silent era like the
original Thief of Baghdad, and Buster Keaton’s The
General, and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, to producing or
distributing those in the 30s and 40s such as The Front Page,
Stagecoach, Scarface, and The Great Dictator, to
– long after the founders’ era, when it had become more of a producing entity
than a physical “studio” – movies like The Apartment and West
Side Story in the 60s, Oscars for Midnight Cowboy and In
the Heat of the Night, along with the launch of the James Bond series,
and the American versions of Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy,
and so much more.
There seemed to be a certain culture
set in motion, about the kinds of material UA would risk producing. And since
art – which this whole thing still ultimately is, despite all the attempts to
quantify it – is supposed to entail at least some risk (else,
you need to ask yourself why you’re really doing it in the
first place) that perhaps makes sense, given who launched it.
Eventually, United Artists got
folded into MGM – which had also become a landless, legacy studio – and MGM, as
readers know, was recently bought by Jeff Bezos, and is now part of Amazon. Amazon
Studios being, of course, one of those streamers with its own distribution
system built around the kinds of screens you’re reading this on now. And also a
part of the AMPTP.
What Pickford, and her marquee male
partners (she would famously marry Fairbanks shortly after UA’s founding, but like
so much in Hollywood, it didn’t last) would make of their own studio’s eventual
trajectory, and its absorption by one of the planet’s richest men, is
unknown.
But it shows how much work would be
involved in realizing even part of Ruffalo’s vision. I wonder if he has at
least three other creative partners lined up to get something launched?
ATTACHMENT
FOUR – From the Los Angeles Times
OPINION: HOLLYWOOD
STRIKES PROVE NETFLIX AND OTHER STREAMERS HAVE GROWN TOO POWERFUL. TIME TO
BREAK THEM UP
BY MILES MOGULESCU AUG. 15, 2023 3:01 AM PT
The Hollywood
writers’ strike is in its fourth month, and the actors’ strike is in its fourth
week with no end in sight. Many have called the stalemate an existential crisis
because it concerns new issues such as residuals from streaming services and
rules for the use of artificial intelligence. These go beyond the usual labor
issues such as wages and benefits and cut to the heart of an industry in which
streamers such as Netflix can dominate all aspects of the business.
It shouldn’t fall
entirely on labor to solve these problems, though. Antitrust
laws need to be invoked — as they were in the 1940s in U.S. vs. Paramount — to
break up streaming services that both produce content and distribute it. This
vertical integration has deeply changed the longstanding entertainment industry
ecosystem, which allowed employees to survive and studios to prosper.
In recent decades,
U.S. antitrust law has primarily taken aim at “horizontal monopolies” in which
one or two huge companies dominate an industry and can force consumers to pay
more. The vertical version — companies that control the
supply chain from production to distribution, such as streaming services that
also create content — hasn’t done that yet. In fact, subscription prices
may have been initially underpriced to drive up demand, a practice called
predatory pricing that also violates antitrust law.
Companies with
this structure can wield outsize power in the industry, including against
labor. As Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan
recently stated, this structure “can enable firms to exert market power over
creators and workers alike and potentially limit the diversity of content
reaching consumers.”
Opinion: Streaming
is TV’s future. Can the writers’ strike get executives to pay accordingly?
July 5, 2023
For most of the
first half of the 20th century, the major film studios also controlled both
production and distribution. The Justice Department sued the studios under
antitrust laws to break up these anticompetitive entities. In 1948, the Supreme
Court ruled against the studios, requiring them to divest themselves of their
movie theaters if they wanted to continue in the production business.
Shortly
thereafter, theatrical films began to be aired on television with no additional
compensation for creative talent. This led to the strike by both the Writers
Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild in 1960, the last time the two
struck simultaneously.
Miles Mogulescu is an entertainment attorney, former senior vice
president of business affairs at MGM/UA and a co-director/producer of the labor
history documentary “Union Maids.”
ATTACHMENT FIVE – From IMDB/Den of
Geek
TOM CRUISE
AND THE FAILED UNITED ARTISTS EXPERIMENT
In late 2006, with much fanfare, Tom Cruise was announced as
headlined a revived United Artists. But what went wrong?
By Simon Brew
December 14, 2017|
\
Lurking in the corners of Netflix UK is a
not-very-widely-seen Tom Cruise movie, that a decade ago was all set to herald
a new filmmaking dawn. Directed by Robert Redford, and with a cast that
includes Redford, Cruise, Meryl Streep and a then-relatively-unknown Andrew
Garfield, Lions For
Lambs looked on paper to be a
heavyweight political drama. Its focus is on three stories: an ambitious
politician giving an interview to tough reporter, an army platoon being ordered
to go on a top secret mission by said politician, and a professor trying to talk
a promising student into turning his life around.
It looked like Oscar-bait. It turned out to be a footnote in
the failure to resurrect United Artists.
United Artists was originally founded in 1919 by Charlie
Chaplin, Mary Pickford, D W Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks, with the ambition
of allowing acting and creative talent to have control over their work, as
opposed to being studio-dictated. In the decades that followed, the company had
a bumpy life, but not without successes. In the 1950s and 1960s in particular,
United Artists scored many successes, winning bags of Oscars too. It also,
presciently, picked up the rights to the James Bond novels. Not a bad business
move.
But the dramatic fall really came at the end of the 1970s,
with new owners Transamerica, and the decision to back Michael Cimino’s
notoriously expensive bomb, Heaven’s Gate. Heaven’s Gate bled
money out of the company, and a merger with MGM followed. MGM, too, would soon
face its own financing struggles.
Fast forward to 2006, though, and a promising future looked
on the horizon. Tom Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, had been
under an exclusive production deal with Paramount Pictures since the early
1990s – leading to the Mission: Impossible movie
franchise, among other projects – but when that deal came to an end, they
looked for other opportunities. This was around the time when Paramount’s
then-boss, Sumner Redstone, had made less than complimentary remarks about
Cruise’s declining box office draw costing Mission: Impossible III box office green.
A break was inevitable, and an opportunity developed. MGM
was looking for what to do with its United Artists label, and negotiations
began about an unusual deal. As such, in November 2006, a deal was announced.
Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise would take on a minority share in the latest
iteration of United Artists. The plan was that Wagner would act as CEO, whilst
Cruise would be expected to appear in its films, but wouldn’t be exclusively
locked to UA productions (it would have somewhat gone against the originally
founding principles of United Artists had he been). Cruise and Wagner would
then have autonomy over a slate of up to four movies a year, provided the
budgets were on the modest size.
At the time, MGM spokesman Jeff Pryor wouldn’t be drawn on
whether Cruise and Wagner had paid for the equity stake, or whether it was in
return for having the star power of Cruise involved in UA productions. “I wish
Tom and his associates the greatest good fortune on their new venture”, Sumner
Redstone said in a statement, whilst hardly battling to keep him on the
Paramount lot.
Even from the off, though, response to the new United
Artists was mixed. Some questioned whether Cruise had the box office power to
make it work still. Others wondered if it was a play by Cruise to show he still
had clout in Hollywood. Some, less cynically, suggested he just wanted to make
more of the films he wanted to see.
Whichever theory was subscribed to, though, all eyes would
inevitably be on the first picture from the new UA.
As it happened, a film was already deep into development. Based
on a screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Lions For Lambs already had Robert Redford interested in the movie as
his next directorial venture. He hadn’t directed a picture since 2000’s The Legend Of Bagger Vance at that stage, and was interested in a project that
went against the Hollywood trend for purely entertainment projects. He signed
on the dotted line, and filming began at the end of January 2007 – less than
three months after the new UA deal had been announced. It would be the first
picture under the umbrella of it.
Top of Form
Redford noted subsequently that it was the tightest schedule
he’d ever worked to, with less than a year between the film’s announcement and
release. But the bigger problem became how to sell it. MGM in the end was
insistent that this was a Robert Redford project, rather than a Tom Cruise
film, but one look at the poster showed it was also hardly downplaying Cruise’s
relatively modest on-screen involvement.
Beyond that, though, the film’s three stories – while
independently interesting – didn’t really convincingly gel into one coherent
feature film. As such, critics didn’t warm to the movie, and attempts by MGM to
half-sell it as a blockbuster film didn’t work either. Costing roughly $35
million for the negative, the film grossed $63.2 million worldwide. It would
only crawl towards profit on its home release, and even though, it’s not a
curio that too many seek out.
Still, Cruise had a bigger project for United Artists, and
this time he would take a starring role. Back in 2002, screenwriter and
director Christopher McQuarrie started putting together a film based on a plot
to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 by German soldiers. He’d subsequently shape
that into a screenplay for what would become the film Valkyrie.
McQuarrie interested director Bryan Singer, who had brushed
against the subject matter with his movie Apt Pupil. He agreed to direct, and McQuarrie suggested that the film
would be a project the new United Artists would be interested in. He was right.
Paula Wagner liked the pitch immediately, and in March 2007,
a deal was struck to finance the film. Cruise was asked to star, and agreed to
do so. Filming duly began in July 2007. But in the aftermath of Lions For Lambs’ disappointing box office, the stakes became a lot higher
for Valkyrie. At $75 million, it was a more expensive film for a
start. But this would also be a more telling audit of where Tom Cruise’s box
office power actually was at this stage.
The film, though, was soon in the crosshairs of the movie
press, with a volley of disparaging stories emerging while the film was being
made. Not that the constant shifting of release dates helped. Valkyrie was originally set for release in August 2008. Then it
moved to June 2008. Then it moved to October 2008. Then it moved to February
2009. Then it moved back to December 2008. At least one of the date changes was
to accommodate the filming of an extra sequence, but the others betrayed the
leaking confidence MGM had in the film. Once a movie it wanted to target as an
Oscar contender, it eventually figured awards wouldn’t be forthcoming, and went
to maximise box office instead. Furthermore, it reconfigured its marketing to
downplay Tom Cruise’s involvement, and the constant dismissal of the film as
Cruise’s “eye-patch movie.”
Contrary to some popular opinion, Valkyrie was a decent commercial success, too. The film has
problems, certainly, but reviews were okay, and the global box office of $200.3
million wasn’t a bad return, given the troubles the production had been
through.
However, even before the film his cinemas, the new United
Artists was crumbling. On August 14th, 2008, months before the film was
released, it was announced that Paula Wagner had left United Artists, and
instead would be developing films as an independent producer. She kept her
ownership stake in the movie, but according to a Variety report at the time, she “frequently butted heads with
MGM” when actually trying to get films greenlit. MGM itself had undergone a
change of studio head in the interim, and its new boss was more interested in
developing a slate of pictures himself, rather than pushing resources to United
Artists. For MGM’s part, it argued that Wagner “wasn’t developing aggressively
enough.”
Wagner had been hampered by the Writers’ Guild of America
strike at around the same time, that led to the collapse of what would have
been a further UA production, Pinkville.
Bruce Willis had signed to star in the movie, that Oliver Stone would have
directed. But when script problems sprung up, UA couldn’t hire writers to fix
it. The talent moved on. It also had a dance movie by the name of Move,
from Camp
Rock director Matthew Diamond, near
the starting blocks. That, too, fell apart.
The plan at the point of Wagner’s departure was said to be
for Cruise to take a greater involvement in the running of the studio. But
there’s no sign that ever came to pass. Valkyrie was
Cruise’s last project to date with a United Artists logo on it, and he would
instead focus on acting projects again, such as Knight & Day, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (that
revived that franchise back at Paramount) and Rock Of Ages.
The UA name would potter on. Its logo appeared on two
further MGM films: Hot Tub Time Machine and
the remake of Fame. By 2011, MGM had bought back full control of the United
Artists banner, but an annual report statement declaring it “may resume using
the United Artists banner to develop and produce new films” never came to pass.
Instead, United Artists is now a name without the original
company and its ethos behind it. Today, the United Artists webpage is a
competition to win a trip to the set of the new Stargate TV show, and that’s it. MGM has used the United
Artists name on a new television production deal it struck with One Three Media
and Lightworkers Media back in 2014. It’s a subsidiary label, and nothing more,
for MGM.
Ironically, since his last United Artists picture, Cruise
has been involved in six Paramount productions, including the two lined up for
release in the next two years. Lions For Lambs, meanwhile, a film once set to be the bold opening of a
revived artistic ethos, loiters around the corridors of Netflix…
ATTACHMENT SIX – From marginalrevolution.com
IS AMERICAN
CULTURE BECOMING MORE PRO-BUSINESS?
by Alex Tabarrok June 23, 2023 at 7:20 am
“In Capitalism:
Hollywood’s Miscast Villain”, a piece I wrote in 2010 for the Wall Street
Journal, I described the slew of movies and television shows featuring
mass-murdering corporate villains including “The Fugitive,” “Syriana,” “Mission
Impossible II,” “Erin Brockovich,” “The China Syndrome” and “Avatar,” and Hollywood’s
not so subtle attacks on capitalism with characters like Jabba the Hut in the
Star Wars universe and the Ferengi in Star Trek. I explained some reasons for
Hollywood’s antipathy to capitalism:
Directors and
screenwriters see the capitalist as a constraint, a force that prevents them
from fulfilling their vision. In turn, the capitalist sees the artist as
self-indulgent. Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists
who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling
out. Thus even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has
“sold out” has succeeded, but an artist that has “sold out” has failed.
…Hollywood
share[s] Marx’s concept of alienation, the idea that under capitalism workers
are separated from the product of their work and made to feel like cogs in a
machine rather than independent creators. The lowly screenwriter is a perfect
illustration of what Marx had in mind—a screenwriter can pour heart and soul
into a screenplay only to see it rewritten, optioned, revised, reworked,
rewritten again and hacked, hacked and hacked by a succession of directors,
producers and worst of all studio executives. A screenwriter can have a
nominally successful career in Hollywood without ever seeing one of his works
brought to the screen. Thus, the antipathy of filmmakers to capitalism is less
ideological than it is experiential. Screenwriters and directors find
themselves in a daily battle between art and commerce, and they come to see
their battle against “the suits” as emblematic of a larger war between creative
labor and capital.
However, I also
noted that some good stories could be told if Hollywood would only put aside
their biases and open their eyes to the world:
…how many [movies]
feature people who find their true selves in productive work? Not many, which
is a shame, since the business world is where
most of us live our lives. Like many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for
its villains people who strive for social dominance through the pursuit of
wealth, prestige, and power. But the ordinary business of capitalism is much
more egalitarian: It’s about finding meaning and enjoyment in work and
production.
Well, perhaps
things are changing. Three recent movies do a good job highlighting a different
perspective on capitalism: Flaming Hot, Air and Tetris.
Flaming Hot
(Disney) tells the story of a janitor and his improbable rise to the top of the
corporate world via leveraging his insights into his Mexican-American heritage
and culture. The details of the story are probably false but no one ever said a
good story had to be true. A standout aspect of the film is Richard Montanez’s
palpable excitement witnessing the Frito Lay factory’s operations — his awe of
the technology, the massive machines churning out potato chips, and his joy at
being part of a vibrant, productive enterprise, quirks and all. Montanez does
find meaning and enjoyment in work and production. Flaming Hot also skillfully
emphasizes the often-underestimated significance of marketing, which is
frequently brushed off as superfluous or even evil. Incidentally, does “Flaming
Hot” contain a subtle nod to the great Walter “E.” Williams?
Air (Amazon Prime)
is about a shoe contract. Boring? Not at all. The shoe was the Air Jordan and
Air is about Nike’s efforts to court Jordan and his family with a
record-breaking and precedent shattering revenue percentage deal. Nike was not
united on going all in on Jordan and at the time it was a much smaller firm
than it is today so a lot was at stake. Jordan wanted to go with Adidas. His
mother convinced him to hear Nike out. Jordan’s mother comes across as very
astute, as she almost certainly was, although it seems more probable that it
was Jordan’s agent, David Falk who engineered the percentage contract.
Regardless, this is a good movie about entrepreneurship. Directed by Ben
Affleck, who also portrays Phil Knight, “Air” showcases Affleck’s directorial
prowess, previously demonstrated in “Argo,” a personal favorite for personal
reasons.
Tetris (Apple) is
also a story about legal contracts. In the dying days of the Soviet Union,
multiple teams race to license the Tetris video game from Elektronorgtechnica
the Soviet state owned enterprise that presumptively held the rights as the
employer of the inventor, Alexey Pajitnov. Gorbachev and Robert Maxwell both
make unlikely appearances in this remarkable story. One aspect which was
surprising even to me, all the players take the rule of law very seriously. A
useful reminder of the importance of property rights and a sound judiciary to
the capitalist process.
While these films
may not secure a spot among cinema’s timeless classics, each is engaging,
skillfully made, and entertaining. Moreover, each movie offer insightful
commentary on different facets of the capitalist system. Bravo to Hollywood!
Addendum: See also
my review of Guru one of the most important free market movies ever made.
ATTACHMENT SEVEN –
From CBS
WGA,
HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS APPEAR TO BEND ON SOME ITEMS, BUT STRIKE CONTINUES
By KCAL-news staff August
16, 2023 / 3:41 pm / kcal news
Labor negotiations resumed Tuesday between the striking
Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios, but despite some apparent
concessions on both sides, the stalemate appeared to be far from over.
Neither side had publicly commented on the status of the
talks as of late Tuesday afternoon. Negotiators for the WGA and Alliance of
Motion Picture and Television Producers -- which represents the studios -- met
Friday for the first time since writers went on strike May 2, and the AMPTP
provided the union with some counterproposals to its demands.
According to Deadline, the sides met again Tuesday
afternoon, with a source telling the publication the session ended with
"mixed results." The trade publication Variety reported that the WGA
softened its stance on some items, such as reducing its demand on minimum
writing staff size for TV productions, but the two sides remain far apart in
other key areas.
According to the Variety report, the WGA was not bowled over
by the AMPTP's offer to give showrunners more authority over the size of
writing staffs, with the size increasing based on a program's budget. And the
studios have not relented on the union demand for higher compensation for
writers on streaming programs that have higher viewership. The studios have
reportedly agreed to provide the union with more data on the number of hours
that streaming programs are viewed, but they have not agreed to tie that number
to compensation.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the studios' offer also
included an agreement that only humans would be credited as writers on
screenplays, not artificial intelligence bots -- a move toward a union effort
to ensure AI does not undercut writers' compensation or credit.
It was not immediately clear when the two sides plan to meet
again. Many observers have expressed optimism at the mere fact the union and
studios had returned to the bargaining table, but it appeared clear that much
more talking is needed to reach an accord.
Meanwhile, writers continued to walk picket lines Tuesday,
including a march outside the "Jeopardy!" studio in Culver City.
According to the WGA, writers and "past contestants" took part in the
Culver City picket to protest the game show, "which began filming today
with recycled questions."
A report by the online entertainment news site Polygon
earlier this month indicated that the show invited some previous contestants to
take part in a "Second Chance" tournament. At least one of those
contestants told Polygon that while the offer was a long-awaited opportunity,
it would also force them to cross the WGA picket line.
According to Polygon, "Jeopardy!" showrunner
Michael Davies said on a recent podcast that the show plans to use "a
combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is
still in the database, and material that is being redeployed from multiple,
multiple seasons of the show."
Last Wednesday, the WGA marked the 100th day of its strike
-- matching the duration of the union's last walkout in 2007-08.
The last WGA strike, which lasted from November 2007 to
February 2008, was estimated to have cost the local economy between $2 billion
and $3 billion.
The impact of the current walkout is expected to be far
worse, with the WGA now joined by actors on the picket lines for the first
double-barreled strike to hit Hollywood in 63 years. The SAG-AFTRA actors union
went on strike July 14.
The WGA is pushing for improvements on a variety of fronts,
notably for higher residual pay for streaming programs that have larger
viewership, rather than the existing model that pays a standard rate regardless
of a show's success.
The union is also calling for industry standards on the
number of writers assigned to each show, increases in foreign streaming
residuals and regulations preventing the use of artificial intelligence
technology to write or rewrite any literary material.
The AMPTP has pushed back against some of the WGA's demands,
particularly around its calls for mandatory staffing and employment guarantees
on programs. AMPTP has also pushed back against WGA demands around streaming
residuals, saying the guild's offer would increase rates by 200%.
The studios have generally said they want the WGA and
SAG-AFTRA to agree to similar terms already approved by the Directors Guild of
America, which includes a roughly 12.5% salary increase and an estimated 21%
jump in streaming residuals, along with assurances that artificial intelligence
will not supplant the duties of human beings.
ATTACHMENT EIGHT –
From Deadline
SAG-AFTRA
SAYS INTERIM AGREEMENTS ARE “DESIGNED TO UNDERMINE THE PRODUCTION SLATES” OF
HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS & “ENSURE THEY COME BACK TO THE TABLE”
By Peter White
August 9, 2023 5:20pm
SAG-AFTRA has
revealed more thinking behind its interim agreements,
with leadership saying the initiative is “designed to undermine the production
slates and timing of the AMPTP companies and ensure that they come back to the
table”.
President Fran Drescher and Chief Negotiator Duncan
Crabtree-Ireland lifted the lid on the agreements, which have been awarded to
well over 100 film and TV projects including Angel Studios’ Bible-based series The
Chosen; the A24 films Mother Mary and I Dream
of Unicorns and Apple TV+’s Tehran, in a note to members.
SAG-AFTRA
Interim Agreements: List Of Movies And Series Granted Waivers
The comments come after much debate about interim agreements, from
the likes of Sarah Silverman, as well as producers, one of which told Deadline that
it was “the Wild West”.
“A key element in our strike strategy is our Interim
Agreement, which is being granted to certain vetted and truly independent
productions. Along with the many other nonstruck contracts our members can
currently work, these agreements give journeymen performers and crew the
opportunity to pay their bills and put food on the table by working on these
indie projects — projects which are not only agreeing to all the terms in our
last offer to the AMPTP, but all the righteous proposals our members deserve
that the studios rejected,” the pair wrote.
“These interim agreements demonstrate that the terms we
proposed to the AMPTP are not ‘unrealistic’. They are fair. And if these
independent productions are able to agree to them, then the billion- and trillion-dollar
companies should be able to as well,” they added.
The pair said that “we are living in a historic hour, as we
fight to achieve a seminal contract, the likes of which we haven’t seen in over
60 years” as the actors mark the fourth week of their strike, coinciding with
Day 100 of the writers strike.
The duo noted that the AMPTP “have not contacted us to
resume talks” as the organization did with the writers, leading to Friday’s
talks about talks.
“We find ourselves on the front lines of a global labor
movement. We are not alone. There are millions of workers across the nation and
around the world fighting similar battles against corporate greed who are
standing with us in solidarity. It is clear from your show of force on the
picket lines, your social media posts and the many interviews we have seen,
that our cause is righteous. Your determination will carry us to victory,” they
added.
Includes Peanut Gallery, see
Attachment Seventeen
ATTACHMENT NINE – From Reuters
OPTIMISM
EMERGES AMONG HOLLYWOOD WRITERS OVER TALKS WITH STUDIOS
By Danielle Broadway
August 16, 2023 5:08 PM EDT
LOS ANGELES, Aug 16 (Reuters) - After three months of
walking the picket lines, striking Hollywood writers expressed optimism on
Wednesday about the reopening of contract talks with major studios and the
possibility they could be back at work in weeks.
Details of the latest proposal from the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the trade group representing Walt
Disney (DIS.N),
Netflix (NFLX.O) and
other major studios and streamers, remain shrouded in secrecy. Still, members
of the Writers Guild of America see reason for hope.
"I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. I was here for the
2007-8 strike and talking can go very slowly, talking can break down or
talking, if they come with a real deal, can go pretty quickly,"
"Flashpoint" writer Pam Davis told Reuters outside Amazon Studios in
Culver City.
"So, I'm kind of in the camp where I think we're gonna
be back to work in September," she added. "But if we're not, we're
okay with that. If it's not the right deal, we're not going to take it,"
she added.
Writers went on strike on May 2 over an impasse on
compensation, minimum staffing in writers' rooms, residual payments and curbs
on artificial intelligence. They were joined on the picket lines on July 14 by
members of the Screen Actors Guild, effectively halting much of U.S. film and
scripted television production.
In what would be a sign of progress in
a months-long labor dispute, negotiators for the WGA and AMPTP met on Tuesday
to discuss the latest contract proposal, more than 100 days into
the strike.
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"They're talking again when they weren't a couple of
weeks ago," said WGA liaison and "Physical" writer K.C. Scott.
"That's what I'm holding onto."
Scott added that while he doesn't know what AMPTP offered
the guild, the WGA is preparing a counteroffer that he trusts will be in the
best interest of the writers.
While "Law and Order" writer and WGA liaison Terri
Kopp is also upbeat about talks with studios continuing, she is concerned about
information leaking from their confidential negotiating sessions.
"It makes us suspicious because the leaks are designed
to make them (the studios) look good and the WGA look bad," Kopp said. "I
think there's a possibility they're trying to get our hopes up and then pull
the football out like Lucy."
ATTACHMENT TEN – From Cougarboard
Interesting L.A. Times article about
the rise of K-Content on Netflix (Paywalled)
Basically, Netflix has found that viewers like Korean shows
and has found that the cultural and legal environment allows for very cheap —
some say problematically cheap — production of shows.
A 16-part miniseries, the most common format at the time,
would typically begin airing with only a few episodes in the bank before this
head start was depleted. To produce two hour-long episodes each week,
production staff worked at a frantic pace. Writers often submitted scripts an
hour or two before filming was supposed to begin.
Production crews were paid a day rate, but a day was defined as one unbroken
stretch of filming, even if it lasted more than 24 hours. Some shoots would log
more than 130 hours in a week, leaving crew members to snatch a few hours of
sleep in public saunas.
South Korean content is likely to become even more important
to Netflix it seeks to weather the Hollywood writers’ strike. But many writers
and producers in the country feel exploited by the streaming giant.
ATTACHMENT ELEVEN
– From
the Los Angeles Times
Pizzas and
protests: How Hollywood picket lines differ
BY JONAH VALDEZ AUG. 16, 2023 4 AM PT
Pass any major Hollywood studio on a weekday morning and you
will see a transformation take place on its empty sidewalks.
Pop-up canopies cast rare pockets of shade on pavement
scorched by summer heat. Plastic benches and chairs offer a place to sit.
Coolers with water and Gatorade are available to the thirsty. Tables unfold,
furnished with sunscreen and granola bars. First aid kits are on hand. Portable
speakers start to blast Beyoncé. Local restaurants deliver free iced coffee,
ice cream or lemonade. Sometimes there are burritos.
This daily metamorphosis sustains the well-being of
thousands of members of the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors
Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, who are striking
over wages, residuals, working conditions and the specter of artificial
intelligence. At the picket lines, members have spoken of struggling to pay rent or
obtain healthcare coverage, while some face food insecurity.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major
studios and streamers, says it has offered “historic” increases in pay and
residuals, improvements in benefits, along with protections against AI that
have been rejected. Though talks between the studios and
the WGA have resumed, there is no sign that the work stoppage will
end soon.
As the simultaneous strikes stretch on, the picket lines
have grown into fixtures of the Los Angeles streetscape, each its own mini
community. There are more similarities than differences between them. Yet as
with any neighborhood, the people within it color the atmosphere with their own
personalities and quirks.
Here is a tour of three of them.
Netflix
A foam middle finger stuck to a window at Netflix’s posh
L.A. offices had taunted picketers from above for days, recalled SAG-AFTRA
strike captain and actor Alan Starzinski.
The foam finger was merchandise for Netflix’s drama series,
“Beef,” in which
flipping the bird plays a
crucial role. Starzinski was unsure whether the message was an
intentional jab from Netflix (the finger was eventually removed from its window
spot). But it seemed to reflect the tone of the relationship between the
streaming giant and the writers and actors below.
On Sunset Boulevard, cutting through the heart of Hollywood,
the Netflix picket line is easily the most visible. And it feels the loudest.
Like the pop of illegal fireworks on July 4, honking from cars and trucks
passing along Sunset starts earlier than you’d think and ends later than you’d
expect. There’s a constant game of call and response: a honk, then screams from
picketers.
Starzinski, a 15-year veteran at the Upright Citizens
Brigade, improvises jokes through a megaphone and eggs on the cars to keep
honking. (He has taken to calling himself “the resident Honk Daddy.”) “I’m
trying to make it the least painful as I possibly can,” the “Impeachment:
American Crime Story” actor said, describing the mood at Netflix as “a party.”
If the Netflix picket line is indeed a party, it’s a rowdy
one.
A sampling of the chants that ring out:
“Hell no, shut it down, L.A. is a union town.”
“No wages, no pages, no actors on the stages.”
“Hey hey, ho ho, Ted Sarandos got to go!”
“I wouldn’t say that we’re necessarily angrier than any of
the other picket lines, but there are people that are adamant about showing
Netflix what’s what,” Starzinski said as Netflix’s high-rise office building cast
a shadow over the picket line. “They’re kind of the ‘big bad’ in this
situation, and everybody recognizes that — they’re the boss level of who we’re
fighting against.”
The WGA strike, now past its 100th day, has
come to be known as “the Netflix strike.”
It’s outside Netflix’s offices where high profile leaders have taken up picket
signs and marched, such as Rep. Adam Schiff, who ditched the halls of Congress
(and his suit) to don an
actors’ guild shirt in July. The morning after SAG-AFTRA
President Fran Drescher’ famous, fiery speech to
usher in the actors’ strike, the Netflix picket line was her first stop.
There’s specific anger at Netflix for what striking writers
consider its weak payments and residuals, its notorious mini-rooms and a recent job listing for a
manager to run projects related to its AI software, with pay between
$300,000 and $900,000.
“This is David and Goliath 2023,” said actor Victoria Smith.
The AI job listing in particular seemed to hang over the
Netflix picket line like a foul smell. Actor Aja Morgan called it “a slap in
the face” and “another example of their blatant disregard for humanity.”
What to know about the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike
But she and others kept their spirits high, dancing and
exchanging fist bumps with a street performer singing James Brown’s “I Feel
Good.”
Though celebrities such as Sarah Paulson, Aubrey Plaza and Hannah Einbinder had
joined the Netflix picket line in recent days, on this particular Friday, the
buzz was about the other unions, the Starbucks workers’ union and Service
Employees International Union, which recently took part in a massive one-day strike,
that marched in solidarity. SEIU strike captains, veterans in direct actions,
chanted, “If we don’t get it, shut it down.” Some actors and writers shared how
they too were Starbucks workers when starting out in the industry.
The joint picket ended with marchers spilling onto Van Ness
Avenue. LAPD officers promptly formed a line at the intersection of Sunset.
“Right now, this is for their safety,” a sergeant said when asked whether
police would declare it an unlawful assembly.
Following impassioned speeches, such as Jane Fonda yelling
for fair wages through a microphone at Netflix’s C-suite, picketers handed
their signs back to strike captains. Others hydrated, swirling electrolyte
packets into water bottles. The sidewalks cleared within minutes, replaced by
the steady hum and growl of traffic on Sunset. And honking continued, only the
casual L.A. road rage kind.
Paramount
(by Myung J. Chun)
Actor Brandon Morgan has been avoiding the Netflix picket
line after his WGA friend warned it was “too crazy” and “too high energy.”
Instead, three times a week, when he can arrange for childcare, the SAG-AFTRA
member has been picketing about one mile south at Paramount Studios. He
described it as “friendly” and “relaxed.”
“Striking is kind of hard, man — I mean, I’m in my 40s — but
to be out here in the sun, walking, I think I got like 8,000 steps in so far,”
Morgan said while on his way to his car. “This is hard work.”
Paramount — the last major studio to operate in Hollywood —
is far from the biggest name in streaming. Unlike Netflix, Paramount+ isn’t
synonymous with the upending of the Hollywood business model. And here, there
are no corporate offices to scream at. Instead, large gates provide a
picturesque backdrop for picketing.
It’s common for groups protesting together to catch a selfie
in front of the Melrose Gate. “Who doesn’t want a picture in front of those
pearly gates?” joked writer-director-actor Nicol Paone, who wrote and directed
the 2020 comedy “Friendsgiving,” as she marched at the Netflix picket line.
The studio’s original Bronson Gate — featured in more than a
dozen films — is ensconced within Paramount’s private property, protecting it
from any picket line social media posts. But it remains visible on a nearby
billboard, advertising studio tours at Paramount, showing a young couple
holding hands as they walk toward the historic Spanish colonial revivalist
archway. “Ready for your close-up,” the ad entices.
With little ground to cover along the Melrose Gate,
picketers at Paramount walk at a leisurely pace to the sound of pop hits
blaring from portable speakers, such as NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” or Nena’s “99 Red
Balloons.” Last week, guilds hosted a karaoke day. Strike captains orchestrate
crossings in front of the gate, careful to not obstruct the road. A man in a
black SAG-AFTRA shirt served as a de facto “walk” signal, beating his drum
whenever strike captains allowed the picket lines to pass.
Though Melrose carries less vehicle traffic than Sunset,
honks still come. And occasionally cheers, as a woman who claimed to be an
executive producer rolled by yelling in a beat-up sedan, fist shaking in the
air, “Don’t give up!”
Writers’ strike: What’s at stake and how it could disrupt
Hollywood
Catching some shade beneath the gate on a warm afternoon in
late July was Dan Aid, an actor and musician who lives nearby. Before the
strike, Aid had minor roles on the Showtime comedy “SMILF” and NBC’s crime
drama “Good Girls,” and was busy booking auditions and prepping for callbacks. The
recent time off has allowed him to find balance in his life, committing more
time to his music projects and family. The picket lines have provided a sense
of community and belonging with other creatives unlike any other space he’s
found since moving to Los Angeles two years ago.
“I love artists, I love creative people, I love getting
excited about the new things they’re bringing into the world,” Aid said. “And I
think those conversations definitely happen here, more than any place I’ve been
to.”
At the Paramount picket line, some of those fellow creative
people happen to be celebrities.
One week earlier, Jack
Black picketed while in town visiting his father. Black — a
SAG-AFTRA member “since before most of these strikers were born” (1983) —
marched, posed for photos with younger actors and fielded questions from
reporters. Some picketers observed that after Black’s appearance, attendance
doubled over the next several days.
That week, Lance Bass, a member of NYSNC and SAG-AFTRA,
bought pizza for protesters. The previous week, Hillary Duff joined
the picket line and was seen dancing
and singing along to her song “What
Dreams Are Made Of” from “The Lizzie McGuire Movie.” And on this
particular day in late July, Seth Rogen and Max Greenfield of
“New Girl” joined picketers, causing an audible stir among the line, and
attracting paparazzi to the studio. Morgan said their presence is important
because it “puts people in better spirits.”
Who’s on strike in Hollywood? Roll the credits and find
out
The significance of the celebrity presence at the Paramount line
isn’t lost on Isa Briones, who marched, for the first time, alongside fellow
actor and friend Miles Elliot. The pair marked the moment with selfies at the Melrose Gate,
which Briones later posted to Instagram. The daughter of musical theater and
screen actor Jon Jon Briones, she had recently landed key roles in the
Paramount+ series “Star Trek: Picard”
as android Soji and in the upcoming Disney+ “Goosebumps” remake.
“You’re seeing people with very different careers,” Briones
said. There are big names like Rogen and Greenfield, and people who “have done
some things here and there. But then there are these people who can’t make
enough to get health insurance with the rest of everyone. And so all of us are
here for the same thing, and all of us are united in this.”
With film production mostly halted due to the strike, the
picket lines can also provide a place where performers can do what they do
best.
“People who get into these performance industries have a
need to be witnessed and seen at the moment they are at in their lives,” Aid
said. “That’s why we’re drawn to it, because we need that reflection of
ourselves to check in on where we sit in the world.”
The picket lines, Aid said, are a place where creative
people can still express themselves.
“You can show up with joy, and you can wear a costume and
you can sing and you can dance.”
Disney
“The people at the
top are making more than their fair share off the people that are doing a lot
of the work, and we’re just fighting for more equality in the industry and
other industries,” said actor Jennifer Brian.
Those are the words she chose to explain the historic double
strike to her 4-year-old daughter before bringing her to the Disney Studios
picket line for the first time, earlier in July.
Now, her daughter will chant “union power” from her car
seat. When asked how she wants to spend her morning, she asks to picket at
Disney.
Brian marched with her friend and fellow actor Trilby Glover,
who also brought her daughter, 7, and son, 5. To cool off, they leaned against
the studio’s fences in the shade of trees and hedges, licking free ice cream
cones served from a food truck.
Hollywood actors on strike, but many A-list celebrities
still working. Inside side deals debate
Glover recently told her kids about how studios might start
using AI to write scripts and generate actors’ movements without their
permission. “Well that’s not right,” they’d shoot back in disgust, said Glover,
who has been on shows such as “Scream Queens” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer
Story.”
“It’s hard for her to see what I do,” said Brian. “She knows
I’m an actor, but this is like an overt way to see, ‘Oh, my mom’s a part of
something.’ I like that she’s having a memory of being a part of something with
me that I believe in.”
Like its theme parks, Disney’s picket line seems to draw the
largest crowds and the most families. “And this is a light day,” one strike
captain said.
Strike captains surmised the main draw for parents is the
wide sidewalks, as well as the towering pines, maple, ficus and eucalyptus
trees that offer shade along the route.
Unlike other picket lines, Disney’s functions as a
continuous loop (about 1 mile around). This appeals to dog owners. (Strike
captains had to post a sign asking picketers not to throw dog poop in the
provided trash bin: “The smell lingers.”)
Many WGA and SAG members with young children also tend to
live in Burbank, or adjacent neighborhoods in Glendale, Northeast L.A., the San
Fernando Valley or Studio City, according to some demonstrators. The long route
and large crowds also bring out a wide assortment of resource tents giving out
water, Gatorade, electrolyte packets, ice cream sandwiches, chips, first aid
kits and sunscreen.
In a city where walking can
seem like a novelty, Disney’s picket line is an example of what can
happen when you step outside of the car.
“We already ran into three people we know. And it’s like,
oh, we do have a community,” Glover said. “Even though it’s a humongous city,
the artistic community is there.”
A steady stream of picketers crowding near the studio’s
Alameda Gate can feel like Main Street in Disneyland. The crowd bottlenecks as
picketers wait for a crossing signal. To entertain the swelling crowd, the
unions have set up a karaoke station beneath a canopy where one picketer is
belting “What’s
Up” by 4 Non Blondes.
WGA member Lacey Dyer is drawn here because of her recent writing
work for Disney’s children’s shows, but also because of its organized loop,
which makes for “the most pleasant walk.” She moved to Los Angeles in 2007
during the last writers’ strike and called her picketing “full circle.” Her
1-year-old sat quiet in a stroller affixed with a small, portable fan. She’s
had to take her children out of daycare, which she can no longer afford since
the strike began.
“It’s just cheaper than keeping them at home right now,”
Dyer said.
Fellow WGA member Evan Kyle often brings his two young
children to the picket lines. He’s enjoyed the conversation, as well as the
shade, “especially after tree-gate.”
“It’s definitely just like more of a stroll in the park kind
of vibe,” said Kyle, who was recently in the writers room for CW’s teenage
drama, “Riverdale.” A
father of a 2-year-old daughter and a 5-month-old son, Kyle chose Disney
because of its “family oriented environment,” which he said differs from picket
lines in Paramount and Netflix or the nearby Warner Bros. Studios. “Places like
that are more like youngsters and partying and stuff like that,” the
29-year-old said.
Though his children are too young to understand why they’re
out there, he said it’s a good excuse to get them out of the house. The next
week, picketers would host a day to encourage parents to bring their kids to
the picket line.
“That day is for me every day,” Kyle said, laughing, while
he cradled his son in one arm, his daughter standing nearby, asking him if it
was time to go home.
ATTACHMENT TWELVE
– From
the Los Angeles Times
THE WGA AND
AMPTP ARE TALKING AGAIN. WHY THE STUDIOS WERE MOTIVATED TO RETURN TO THE TABLE
BY WENDY LEE and MEG JAMES AUG. 17, 2023 3 AM PT
When film and television writers went on strike 108 days ago, most
assumed the studios and streamers would hunker down for a long fight.
The companies, many of which are saddled with debt, could
save money by cutting costly producer deals and pausing production of movies
and TV shows. Industry news outlet Deadline quoted an anonymous executive who
suggested that studios were ready to hold out until writers
started losing their homes, which stoked outrage on picket lines.
As the negotiations resume, it’s still
uncertain how much the Writers Guild of America and the studios are willing to
bend to reach a compromise, or what precise shape a deal would take. Sources
close to the negotiations say the sides remain far apart on key issues.
But it’s become increasingly clear that the major studios
and streamers, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers, are motivated to end the work stoppages that have roiled Hollywood.
The SAG-AFTRA actors’ union joined the WGA by going on strike last month.
What changed? Several factors have prompted a new sense of
urgency, according to interviews with multiple people close to the negotiations
who were not authorized to comment.
The actors’ strike dramatically
upped the stakes, wreaking havoc on production plans and creating more economic uncertainty for
the major companies, including streaming giant Netflix, the Walt Disney Co.,
Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and NBCUniversal.
The economic reverberations have been felt throughout the
city, with businesses including prop houses and other small
firms struggling to make ends meet, prompting politicians such
as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to demand an end to the strikes.
Writers’ strike: What’s at stake and how it could disrupt
Hollywood
“With each day that
goes on, the economic damage is further intensified,” said Todd Holmes,
associate professor of entertainment media management at Cal State Northridge,
who estimated that the economic damage of the dual strikes on California was at
least $3 billion so
far and that it could balloon to $4 billion to $5 billion if the strikes were
to stretch into October.
Media executives, many of whom remember the bruising
writers’ strike 15 years ago, have
insisted that they never wanted a prolonged fight, for these very reasons. The
chief executives also recognized that they needed to be more involved after
weeks of little progress.
Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos and Sony Pictures
chief Tony Vinciquerra were initially among the most active executives to try
to facilitate compromises, but in the last two weeks other leaders, including
Universal’s Donna Langley and CBS Chief Executive George Cheeks — have helped
to find common ground among the various companies.
Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger has also taken a more active
role, along with producer and former studio chief Peter Chernin, who played a
prominent role in the previous writers’ strike.
Tensions from the last writers’ strike cast a shadow over
current labor fight
In recent weeks, movie studio executives have grown
increasingly worried about the threat to their 2024 release slates. The
studios need A-list talent to help them promote their projects, and they need
to finish the ones in production. Sony recently pushed back
the release of films including “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.”
Most network executives say they have enough reality-type shows and
sporting events, including the NFL, college football and Major League Baseball,
to take them through the fall. Nonetheless, legacy companies, which rely on
advertising revenue, are eager to restart production of scripted programs to
slow the decline of ratings and pump the brakes on cord-cutting.
“You don’t want to give the audience more reasons to leave,”
said one veteran executive.
Hollywood writers have been on strike for 100 days — and
there’s no end in sight
Streamers are also under pressure, but for their own
reasons.
Netflix’s Sarandos has advocated for renewing talks, sources
say, despite the fact that many writers blame his company for fueling the labor
dispute, which some have dubbed the “Netflix strike.”
In many ways, Netflix appeared to be the best positioned to
weather the storm, and the least likely to cede to the demands of the Writers
Guild. After all, Netflix had indicated that its vast library of movies and
shows might help the service withstand the labor disputes better than most.
But Netflix needs fresh content to support its global
service, which primarily relies on subscriptions. Without new shows, the
company could lose customers to competing services. The strike paused or
delayed production on some key shows, including “Stranger Things”
and “Cobra Kai.”
Also, the writers’ strike has shined a harsh light on labor
tensions Netflix is facing in such countries as Korea, home of the popular
series “Squid Game.” Korean
artists, including actors and writers such as “Squid Game” creator Hwang
Dong-hyuk, are pushing Netflix for more pay for
creators — echoing demands of writers marching outside the company’s Sunset
Boulevard offices.
Netflix turns to South Korean writers and crews as
Hollywood strikes. But they feel exploited too
In earnings presentations this year, Sarandos has struck a
conciliatory tone, saying he was “super committed” to getting agreements done.
Other executives have taken a similar tack to tamp down the rhetoric. Iger, who
previously took heat for describing union demands as “not realistic,”
more recently told investors that he was “personally committed” to finding
solutions to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
The alliance that represents the major studios met with the
WGA negotiating committee Tuesday, during which the union responded to the
companies’ latest proposals. The AMPTP declined to comment. The WGA has not
commented on any of specifics of the alliance’s new offer.
Union members such as “The Wire” creator David Simon have warned fellow writers against
trusting press leaks from studio sources, calling such disclosures “tactical.”
There has been movement on two major sticking points,
sources said, raising hopes that the two sides might finally find a path to a
deal.
‘A lot of blood in the water.’ Why actors’ and writers’
strikes are a big blow to Hollywood studios
The WGA has demanded that there be a minimum number of
staffing for TV series writers’ rooms. Writers said they have
suffered economically as the number of episodes in a season has gotten shorter
on streaming services, with fewer writers involved in development.
Studios have attempted to address that issue in their latest
proposal, which indicates a step forward. Variety reported that
showrunners would get “significant authority to set the size of the staff,”
factoring in a show’s budget. It is not clear, however, that such a system
would sufficiently address the WGA’s concerns.
The topic is fraught for studios, in part, because they
don’t want writers to set quotas on the number of people the companies must
hire. Studio executives said some writer-producers have indicated that they
want more flexibility to determine their own staffing needs.
Tensions from the last writers’ strike cast a shadow over
current labor fight
Studio executives say they want a solution that would allow
some leeway while providing more opportunities for early-career writers to be
more involved in the process to learn what it takes to run a show.
Streamers also have been criticized by actors and writers
for not providing enough data to explain how they determine success. Writers
are seeking a payment system that would reward them financially in the event
that their shows were to succeed. The studios offered to share data on how many
hours people watched programs on streaming services, Bloomberg first
reported.
Hollywood is calling it ‘the Netflix strike.’ Here’s why
Despite glimmers of hope, the strikes drag on.
Bryan Behar, a writer, executive producer and showrunner on
“Fuller House,” posted on social media this week that while a lot of his enthusiasm
had gone after 106 days of striking, his “resolve” hadn’t gone away.
“And it won’t,” Behar posted on X, formerly known as
Twitter, with a selfie at the Fox lot.
“Not until the AMPTP steps up to make a fair deal. Hasn’t happened yet.
ATTACHMENT
THIRTEEN – From
Defector
IS AN
INDEPENDENT HOLLYWOOD POSSIBLE?
By Soraya Roberts
12:25 PM EDT on August 2, 2023
When Mark Ruffalo suggested everyone “jump
into indies now,” following SAG-AFTRA’s announcement they would
be approving certain independent productions outside the studio system to start
up again mid-strike, it made sense. He is known for making millions playing the
Hulk, but that’s not where he came from. Ruffalo took off after appearing 23
years ago in first-time filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan’s sibling drama You
Can Count on Me. It was reportedly made for a mere $1.2 million but earned
nine times that amount at the box office, thanks to a boost from Sundance where
it tied for the Grand Jury Prize and won a screenwriting award. You Can
Count on Me ended up being nominated for two Oscars.
But that was a very different time. First, let’s make
something clear: an independent film is produced outside the studio (or
streaming) system—though it can be distributed by major companies—and it often
has a limited marketing campaign and release. One recent example is Nicole
Holofcener’s couple dramedy You Hurt My Feelings. That was
made by the indie production company Likely Story, reportedly for around $25
million (co-produced by the bigger FilmNation), and distributed by an indie outfit
we all know very well by now, A24. The film had its world premiere at Sundance
before being released (in theaters) in May. It also has a veteran director
(Holofcener had directed six features) and a big star (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
Yet You Hurt My Feelings only made $5.6 million, about a
fourth of its budget, at the box office. That’s half as much as Lonergan’s film
two decades ago, on a small fraction of the budget with no stars and an unknown
filmmaker.
What the fuck, right? This is why it’s incredibly
frustrating when you get famous filmmakers like Béla Tarr saying: “The thing is, you don’t need
money. Just go and work. When I was 22 and making my first movie, we didn’t
have anything.” OK, man, but it’s not 1979. Who the hell is going to see it?
Like, what’s the point if it amounts to a home movie? On Conan O’Brien’s podcast earlier
this year, Jason Segel described how after Freaks and Geeks was
canceled, executive producer Judd Apatow seemed to channel his anger by making
everyone on that show famous. And he did that by using his ample producing
powers to push their projects through the system. Then this large group of
filmmakers and actors created a kind of commune in which they bolstered each
other—when one was doing well, they put the others in their film and vice
versa. Unofficial or not, it was a collective.
And it seems increasingly that a collective is what is
needed these days, in which everyone owns a chunk, and all successes and
failures are shared. Safety in numbers. But is that even possible on a wider
scale? Historically, independent filmmaking has served as a path back to the
studio system, bolstering the very exclusion that produced it. How do you break
out of a cycle in which the way out is also the way back?
Basically, the studio system started out around 1908 as a
New Jersey cartel hoarding literal film, out of which the independents—who for
various reasons weren’t admitted into the family—were born and forced to move
to Hollywood, which wasn’t really Hollywood yet. Over time, the monopoly from
Jersey was simply replaced by an oligopoly in California, out of which
Classical Hollywood emerged. This studio system also became too powerful,
controlling all the cash but also the creativity, so a bunch of filmmakers
struck out on their own again. In 1919, silent film stars Mary Pickford,
Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed one of the first
independent production and distribution companies, United Artists, in which
they each owned 20 percent of the company (the remaining 20 percent went to a
lawyer). The head of Metro Pictures at the time (which would become MGM, which,
fittingly, would later acquire UA) responded: “The inmates are taking over the
asylum.” This is
reminiscent of Bob Iger lamenting the “unrealistic” demands of
the SAG-AFTRA union (historically, the easiest way to avoid your comeuppance is
to accuse everyone of being crazy—it works!). With no studio space, UA saved
money by shooting on location and proceeds went directly to the creators. But
making five pictures a year, as the terms stated, became impossible due to
expenses related to production and distribution (not to mention the bloating of
motion pictures’ lengths and audiences getting into a new thing called
television). So, in 1941, members of the UA formed The Society of Independent
Motion Picture Producers to instead wrestle back some power from the majors.
And they did. They won an antitrust suit against the reigning studios, who had
to sell their theater chains, which had allowed them to control all levels of
film production and distribution.
The ‘60s are when everything starts to look a lot more
familiar. Portable cameras meant anyone could make a film for no money, and the
incoming experimental filmmakers thought cinema was dead anyway, so they made
the art they wanted rather than worrying about being entertaining. Andy Warhol’s
films came out of a non-profit cooperative formed by avant-garde film PhD
favorites Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, with distribution through a central
archive, but that was real artsy stuff. The more mainstream youth audience was
going for the genre stuff by exploitation filmmakers like Roger Corman, who
realized they could be as gross and sexy and weird and horrific as they wanted
with no ratings board yet to stop them. Studios wanted what they had (the kids’
money) and this is when you start to see them hiring indie filmmakers kind of
like they do now—see Chloé Zhao for Eternals, Greta Gerwig
for Barbie, David Lowery for Pete’s Dragon, Barry
Jenkins for Mufasa: The Lion King—to give the studio some cachet.
This made the indie scene later play as a kind of inferior conduit to a
superior system. But back then, New Hollywood—from Martin Scorsese to Elaine
May—was born out of the execs relinquishing control. Imagine a studio now
having anything to do with Taxi Driver? The closest you get to
Travis Bickle is J. Robert Oppenheimer.
In 1969, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola created
American Zoetrope as an alternative to the studio system. And it proved for
many to be a big supporter of creativity. But the problem with these two
filmmakers is that their genuinely independent operation was eventually folded
back into the studio system. From where we sit now, reading Lucas say “I’ve
always been an outsider to the Hollywood types,” is very funny. Lucas parlayed
his indie-produced (I know) Star Wars film into an empire
which, rather than opening up the industry, calcified into an individualist
enterprise for his own projects. That’s the reason David Lynch, coming off the
success of the super indie Eraserhead, which got him the
studio feature Elephant Man, turned down Return of the Jedi.
“I realized that his projects are entirely his projects, and I prefer to do my
own,” he said of
Lucas at the time. Out of Lucas’s desire to make his films in a universe he
controlled outside of the older studio system, he ushered in an even more
divisive era of high-concept blockbuster IP, merchandise, and spin-offs,
ensuring that indie filmmakers of the future would eventually have no chance.
There was, however, a brief save from the Sundance Film
Festival in the ‘90s. Launching the careers of now-familiar names like Steven
Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, indies at the time became so popular that, of
course, studios wanted a piece of them. So studios started “indies” of their
own—art house branches like Miramax, Focus Features and, um, Marvel Studios—to
compete with true indies of $5-10 million.
But the last huge success out of Sundance was CODA, two
years ago. With a budget of $10 million, it sold to Apple TV+ for a record $25
million (before going on to win the Oscar for best picture). This kind of “golden
elevator,” as indie filmmakers Naomi McDougall Jones and Liz Manashil wrote in Filmmaker
Magazine in March, is near impossible to get into now.
“Critically, in almost every case we’ve witnessed, a project gets their ticket
onto the elevator before—often well before—the film is actually even made,”
they wrote, adding that it is a pernicious but persistent myth “that if you can
just scrape it together and make a truly brilliant film you can get into that
festival or sell to a streamer for serious money later. In our experience, this
is simply not true today.” CODA had many advantages: it was a
feel-good remake of a successful French film, director Sian Heder was known to
Sundance (Netflix bought her 2016 festival film Tallulah), star
Marlee Matlin is an Oscar winner and, perhaps most importantly, Apple’s
streaming service was still fairly new and needed to build a name as a place
for quality.
Festival indies no longer have this trajectory due to cost cutting,
focus on IP, and streamers being good for archives. Not only that, the kind of
older, wealthier audiences those movies appeal to are less willing to go to the
theater in a pandemic world. Even if they were, there aren’t many theaters left
for them (not to mention a ratings system unwilling to support them—see the
recent NC-17 rating given to Ira Sachs’s threesome romance Passages,
all but condemning
its release). It’s all megaplexes now, which killed off the small
theaters that couldn’t compete, and themselves now are saddled with massive
overheads requiring blockbuster after blockbuster to afford. Though indie
distributors like A24 are getting their films into these theaters, it amounts
to a smaller studio branding what would have just been standard mid-budget
films of the past as indies.
The most cooperation we have seen in this film industry
lately was last month. Universal’s $100 million biopic about the man
responsible or the atomic bomb, helmed by a name director with indie cred and
sold as an action adventure when it’s really kind of a courtroom drama, was
bolstered by an even more expensive Warner Bros. doll “biopic,” helmed by a
name director with indie cred whose kids-film-masquerading-as-adult-fare has
basically cut out the middleman and been itself sold as merchandise.
Together, Oppenheimer and Barbie made more
than $200 million in their opening weekend. This is the kind of corporate
synergy studios would no doubt be proud to brand as collective action.
Weirdly, this is the perfect climate for a collective. According
to Jones and Manashil, the best way to break even now, if you are not Oppenheimer or Barbie, is
to make a film for less than $50,000. They have observed that it’s ideal to
either have extremely famous actors or unknowns; anything in between doesn’t do
it in terms of revenue. They also champion self-distribution, which they guess
works because of a focused release package built into the production, rather
than outsourcing to under-resourced distributors too harried by the crazy
market to give anything much attention. “Know your film’s audience, figure out
on which platforms those viewers are watching films and get your films up
there,” Jones and Manashil wrote, adding, “it is far, far riskier monetarily to
allow your film to drift blindly into the current model—bloating your budget
with sort-of-famous actors, taking a deal with a distribution company because
that feels shinier than going at it alone.”
But it doesn’t have to be done alone. Imagine a collective
model which is owned by everyone equally, which keeps its costs low. When there
is success, everyone benefits, but so do their projects. When there is failure,
it’s never so bad that the whole thing folds, because of the insulation from
the larger group. Higher budgets, of course, could be possible if famous
members were willing to support those below them (like Apatow did). Ben Affleck
and Matt Damon, for instance, started Artists Equity, a studio in which members
share in the profits of the films. It is unclear, however, whether, like Lucas,
this is primarily a place for them to make their own films. Blumhouse has also
enabled union scale up front for more creativity and profit sharing, but,
again, without co-ownership.
Then there’s Steven Soderbergh, the indie king of the ‘90s,
who has seamlessly slipped back and forth between studios and indies and seems,
more than any of his contemporaries, always looking for a new way to move the
industry forward (he founded Fingerprint Releasing to distribute films
like Logan Lucky outside the studio system). Though it’s not a
movie but a series, his new project Command Z—a
fleet, (eight episodes at 90 minutes total) fun low-stakes little web series
about the climate change apocalypse—was entirely self-funded, can be purchased
on his site for $7.99, and is sending its proceeds to Children’s Aid and Boston
University Center for Antiracist Research. “How to stay engaged?” Soderbergh
asked in his director’s statement. “Well, I could have started canvassing for
various candidates—or running for office!—or otherwise taking DIRECT ACTION,
but instead I decided a story was in order. Long story long, you now have
before you that story. It’s a simple story with a simple message, in support of
two amazing organizations that DO take DIRECT ACTION. We hope you enjoy it.” It
was kind of hard not to.
ATTACHMENT
FOURTEEN – From
marginalrevolution.com
PEANUT GALLERY
"The
Aviator" portrayed the rise of Howard Hughes (and only a little bit of his
fall).
"It's
a Wonderful Life" shows the positive side of mortgage lending.
Pepé
Silvia2023-06-23 09:13:28
9 0
Good
point. Perhaps the first and only sympathetic portrayal of a banker in
film...probably enabled by the fact that he didn't make any money at it.
One
more: The Hudsucker Proxy is, among other things, about a guy who comes up with
an idea for a new product and becomes very successful by doing so.
M2023-06-23
09:35:36
3 0
A
very recent movie from UK about a well, small-time wannabe banker came to mind
when reading this comment - 'Bank of Dave'.
I'm
not sure how much Alex would find this film a positive sign in his terms,
because while the protagonist is a self-made businessman who aspires to set up
a bank, he also does so out of social impulses to protect his local community
and takes on some more caricatured bankers. Does it meet a test, or fail it
because the message is really that "bad" business has been redeemed
by a good man?
Also
springing to mind as another notable exception to the "Bad
Businessman" trope is obviously Oskar Schindler, but again you might say
this is story of a man trying to good "despite business" and the
despite the corrupt relationship between the Nazi government and German
business.
Pepé
Silvia2023-06-23 10:48:42
1 0
Haven't
seen it, but we can always award partial credit. "These finance people
aren't all domestic terrorists" is, I gather, valuable perspective for
some audiences.
Sman2023-06-23
11:38:19
2 0
Bankers
back then were bankers vs what we see today based on their activities and many
in the public seeing investment banker, fund manager of one kind or another
interchangeable with a classic banker definition.
Long
ago banking was a staid biz, but today more like a financial casino where
risk/reward to the risk takers of the firm asymmetrical .
Thelonious_Nick2023-06-23
11:36:29
7 0
The
Chris Farley movie "Tommy Boy" is surprisingly pro-capitalist, where
after his dad dies Farley has to go around and convince all the customers of
his dad's auto parts company that the company can continue to fulfill its
contracts under him. David Spade is the engineer who can talk about the
technical aspects, but it's up to Farley to make the sale.
Steve-O2023-06-23
13:09:29
2 0
Spade's
character is an accountant.
ckstevenson2023-06-23
13:45:06
0 0
I
don't see how that is pro capitalist, given that the inverse is Tommy would go
around telling customers to fire them? Or that he'd do nothing?
Asdf2023-06-23
10:06:08
3 0
In
both those movies it’s a David vs Goliath story. Good struggling small(er)
businessmen who doesn’t care about profits vs big(er) business run by profit
maximizing sociopaths that will cheat to win.
dan11112023-06-23
10:55:51
5 0
The
climactic scene in the Aviator featured the CEO of a large company heroically
skewering members of Congress for their corruption and ineffectiveness.
It
was refreshingly different for Hollywood, and doesn't really fit a standard
David v. Goliath narrative.
It's
a Wonderful Life--yeah, standard Hollywood tropes.
asdf2023-06-23
13:02:09
The
bad guy in The Aviator is Pan Am. A bigger and more ruthless company that wants
to use its cozy and corrupt relationship with a senator to pass unfair
regulation shutting their superior competition out of the market.
Howard
Hughes is portrayed as a genius eccentric artist/engineer who wants to build
cool planes and shoot beautiful movies for their own aesthetic value and is
annoyed that he has to make money along the way to satisfy his purer aesthetic
desires.
He
doesn't think "because I find making money annoying, the government should
provide for me". He is digested with Hepburns family for that attitude. He
accepts that if he wants to fund his passion, he has to go out into the
marketplace and earn it. But it's his passion that redeems him. The entity only
interested in money, Pan Am, is portrayed as evil.
peri2023-06-23
11:41:52
My
recommendation for something where the business aspect is not entirely
incidental, is the (BBC?) several-parter "North and South" based on
the Elizabeth Gaskell novel. It's very entertaining as well if you like period
movies, which I pretty much exclusively do.
Dino
the Isaurian2023-06-23 08:05:44
Another
reason that Hollywood’s product is anti-capitalist is that entertainment
requires conflict to be engaging. A story about how everyone worked hard at
mundane tasks and everyone was better off would be boring.
Engineer2023-06-23
08:25:56
As
they say, adventure is someone else in deep trouble a long way away or long
time ago, not the daily travails and incremental successes most people
experience.
One
is reminded of The Millionaire Next Door, the guy who lives quietly, drives a
12 year old F150, lives in the same house he bought 20 years ago with a paid
off mortgage, and runs his successful small business. While such people are
essential and should be honored, their stories won’t push The Lord of the Rings
off the marquee.
M2023-06-23
09:39:00
On
a smaller scale, consider sitcom, 'Kim's Convenience', about an ordinary
migrant small-businessman, whose son finds success working for an
auto-dealership despite dropping out of high-school. Only in Canada could such
a celebration of the small businessman flourish?
Asdf2023-06-23
10:04:11
Small
business has never had a bad rap. It’s big business people hate. I think in
general people hate large institutions because they are beuracratic and
faceless.
peri2023-06-23
11:38:40
That
reminds me of the by-now-an-institution rom-com "You've Got Mail".
Watching that in later years had the odd dissonance of knowing that the world-beating
MEGA CHAIN BOOKSTORE that represents villainous corporate indifference and
mediocrity - is about to be utterly destroyed.
Bernard
Guerrero2023-06-23 14:43:42
In
that particular case, it's part of the movie's in-joke. The battle between the
giant chain and the boutique book store is irrelevant, because they're both
about to be destroyed by the internet...and the two main characters spend most
of the movie communicating via email. (I mean, it's in the title.)
peri2023-06-23
16:23:14
"it's
part of the movie's in-joke"
A
sharper movie than I remember!
Skeptical
American2023-06-23 18:00:52
Asdf
absurdly comments that: “Small business has never had a bad rap.”
So
you’re a huge fan of the ‘mostly peaceful’ destruction of thousands of small
businesses by your friends in “antiFa”?
Makes
Sense2023-06-23 20:03:34
once
you hallucinate "antifa" you might as well hallucinate the
destruction of thousands of small businesses.
Asdf2023-06-23
08:41:55
That
movie is called “extract” by mike judge. Moderately amusing but had to generate
drama by having the wife have an affair because he is boring.
alz97942023-06-23
14:50:48
Technically
the husband set up the wife to have an affair by hiring a guy to be a pool boy
and asking him to hit on his wife.
Plus
there is the potential buyout from a larger company that is viewed as a
negative rather than a positive.
Flower
People2023-06-23 10:22:35
In
the event that they start making these sorts of movies, I'd like either Brad
Pitt or Keanu Reeves to play me. Kevin Costner and Matt Dillon are too old for
the role.
alaska36362023-06-23
10:29:10
Could
the Fellowship of the Rings be construed as a limited partnership? I probably
wouldn't have to try too hard to make that story a metaphor about using the
capital of the one ring and the expertise of the various partners to undertake
to defeat the market competitors (orcs) for dominance of the market (the fires
of mount doom).
M2023-06-23
08:16:21
Maybe
they could make exciting films about how globo-homogenization was furthered by
businesses getting people to eat at American fake Australian steakhouses
hawking a fake frontier setting to arguably the detriment of local culture?
Perhaps that could be a comment on capitalism that anti-globo-homogenization
folk would agree with as being a "double edged sword" with lots of
conflict...
Bernard
Guerrero2023-06-23 14:47:12
Eh,
I like Outback well enough. There's obviously nothing particularly Australian
about them, but the steaks and bread at the local one tend to be good. "Authenticity"
is the bugaboo of little minds....
Biggles
F'Tang2023-06-23 21:22:27
Yes,
but you overlook the fact that Australia itself is largely fictional.
M2023-06-24
03:00:20
Filtering
it through the perspective of another made-up country then squares the fiction?
Dino
the Isaurian2023-06-23 23:44:14
Now
that would be transgressive. So don’t hold your breath.
BTW
it seams like your are beginning to understand the dissident right’s pov.
M2023-06-24
02:59:09
"the
world is getting homogenised by American hamburger chains" is an argument
that goes back to the first McDonalds expansion overseas...
Dino
the Isaurian2023-06-24 08:21:00
Ha!
It’s
true, it was a complaint in Europe going back to WWII.
Some
Americans only came to realize it was happening to them too a decade or so ago.
The
other complaint that US foreign policy is driven by business interests is also
more than a century old - but used to be a left-wing complaint.
alz97942023-06-23
14:48:01
>
A story about how everyone worked hard at mundane tasks
While
not a movie, Barnwood Builders (which is essentially a renovation/relocation
show about barns) is pretty much exactly this, assuming one counts operating
some machinery as a mundane task.
I
was trying to figure out why I liked this particular show when I really didn't
care for other renovation shows and it had to do with most of the other shows
having people run around like crazy because they were going to miss a deadline
or something was going to cost $2,000 extra.
The
Barnwood Builders group could completely be putting on a show for the audience,
but it really seemed like a group of guys (mostly) who worked together to
renovate or relocate barns while enjoying and respecting the history and
craftmanship of the barns. The most drama on the show seemed to be if a large
beam was going to snap.
Ricardo2023-06-23
07:58:46
"how
many [movies] feature people who find their true selves in productive work? Not
many, which is a shame, since the business world is where most of us live our
lives."
Tyler
the economist appreciates that profit-maximizing firms are part of efficient
and mutually beneficial exchange but Tyler the thinker surely knows that the
pursuit of money is ultimately an empty one.
Few
people realize their true selves through the white collar professions. Some may
realize their true selves through hobbies, friends, or family that may be the
direct or indirect result of their careers. And there are plenty of movies
about ordinary working people and their lives but the focus is not typically on
the work that they do. There is just no there, there, for the most part. People
spend lots of time driving in their cars but that doesn't mean a film of
someone driving makes for engaging or entertaining cinema.
The
subjects that keep people engaged are personal relationships, tragedy,
conflict, danger and comedy. Good films about workplaces almost always focus on
one or more of these elements.
The
rate isn't bad2023-06-23 08:34:53
Few
people realize their true selves. Period. Of those that do, the rate that do so
through work isn't all that bad.
Scott
H.2023-06-23 20:30:16
And
if you don't realize yourself, getting people to pay you lots of money for your
valuable services and hard work isn't a bad way, societally, to get by in the
meantime.
Frank
Wrench2023-06-23 09:24:39
Yeah,
but work can also allow you to cultivate talents or skills you didn't know you
had or didn't know you were capable of developing; I think that's what is meant
by "finding oneself" here in a broader sense.
Ricardo2023-06-23
09:57:44
Cindy
from accounting overcoming her fear of public speaking and presenting the
year-end review of the company's financials to management doesn't have enough
of the elements I highlighted above to make a movie.
Most
talent development movies seem to need an element of danger, conflict or (I
forgot this one) overcoming adversity. The Pursuit of Happyness was a good
pro-capitalist movie but worked because of the high drama of a man trying to
escape homelessness and a list of personal and professional failures. Sports
movies and courtroom dramas work because they inevitably lead up to an epic
showdown and high stakes contest. Police and military movies work when there is
action and danger involved. One special forces guy I saw interviewed complained
that 90% of the job is training and powerpoint presentations but, of course,
films do not depict these aspects of the job in a proportionate manner.
Frank
Wrench2023-06-23 10:52:44
True
enough. The Controller's Presentation probably isn't going to rival The King's
Speech in terms of box office take. I just meant in real life...work is more
important to a lot of people than just a source of cash flow.
Mark
Z2023-06-23 15:30:59
This
might explain Hollywood films being consistently orthogonal (octagonal, as in MMA ring? - DJI) or indifferent to
capitalism, not why it’s consistently antipathetic to it.
It’s
also not true that movies are usually about people ‘realizing their true
selves.’ How many soldiers do you think view war as ‘the realization of their
true selves?’ Or crime movies, which are about people ruthlessly doing
everything they can to make money? Capitalism can certainly be romanticized,
e.g. entrepreneurship. The fact that Hollywood - famously pacifist-inclined -
is more comfortable romanticizing war than entrepreneurship does in fact say
something about it’s value system.
Dino
the Isaurian2023-06-23 08:00:42
I
think Hollywood is anti capitalist because the the business peculiarities of
the sector are the worst sort of caricatures of capitalism. So the people that
work there assume that all businesses are the same.
Dave2023-06-23
11:01:58
The
tournament nature of mass media is probably a factor. If you're a star actor or
a rock star, you probably sense that it's somehow unfair that you make so much
money while many other actors or musicians that are nearly as talented make
almost nothing.
This
could translate over to their view of capitalism in general. They probably feel
that the people running most companies just got lucky and they don't realize
that without the potential of high returns, many people would probably not have
built new companies.
ckstevenson2023-06-23
13:49:32
This
is an odd flex.
Hollywood
IS capitalist, that's how they make money! They sell what the consumer wants.
That's
how capitalism works, right?
Bernard
Guerrero2023-06-23 15:01:53
Yeah.
While I wouldn't discount any number of actors having guilt, I think they
ultimately make what sells, and that's that. The potential explanations
regarding conflict, large faceless entities, adventure, and the heroism of the
"little guy" ring more true.
I
think you can interpret it as related to the fallacy Steve Jobs was peddling
when he told students to follow their dreams. But very few people are Steve
Jobs. The reality is, most wild dreams will fail, while mundane businesses run
competently make money. People are generally not interested in either the
boring day-to-day or in failure, so what sells is the myth (or rather, the
long-shot) of the exciting risk-taker beating the giant institution. This
necessitates a lot of the stance taken by most stories, and obviously doesn't
reflect reality most of the time. But that's the nature of fiction.
Dino
the Isaurian2023-06-23 23:56:47
Some
of the peculiarities:
1)
The randomness of success. No one sets out to spend tens of millions of dollars
to produce a crappy movie. Or even one that’s just a dud. Everyone of them is
started with the hope of success. The product of hundreds to thousands of
professional crafts people - the producers, writers, director, actors,
filmographers, set hands, sound people, post production etc. No matter how
skilled or hard they all individually work the success of the film is a crap
shoot. That leads them to think that every business success is largely driven
by luck.
2)
Accounting in hollywood is notoriously opaque. And the industry is filled with
unethical sharks that smile to your face and stab you in the back. They all
push the ethical boundary to the edge of fraud - and quite often over it. So
the people who work in that environment thing that business ethics is an
oxymoron.
3)
The dynamics of the business give a few players enormous leverage - which they
ruthlessly exploit. The casting couch is a trope for a good reason. And other
gatekeepers lower down the food chain are brutal to the people seeking a gig.
Especially so as the talent is largely fungible and every job is short term. So
the people that work in the industry think that all businesses are dominated by
abusive power relationships.
ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN
– From
mas.to
Peanut Gallery
@carnage4life other than a few gems (spiderverse,
everything everywhere all at once), the quality of film writing has been pretty
weak. I’m not in favor or AI generated scripts but some shakeup might prove
better that what we’ve been getting recently
@carnage4life How rapidly can labor unions cross
national borders? Federate or conglomerate to match transnational corporate
employers?
Dare
Obasanjo@carnage4life@mas.to
This Hollywood
writer’s strike seems different from the last one because there seems to be no
sense of urgency by the studios to make a deal.
Turns out the
culprit, at least for Netflix, is leaning in on South Korean writers. Between
that and AI, it’s possible that this might be a turning point for the power of
creatives in Hollywood.
From Glass Wings:
(see aforementioned paywalled article in the L.A.
Times)
Netflix turns to South Korean
writers and crews as Hollywood strikes. But they feel exploited too
“It all comes down to labor costs,” said Kim Ki-young, president
of the Broadcasting Staffs Union, which represents production crews. “There is
a staggering amount of unpaid labor being done.”
And, when South
Koreans demand livable wages, will Netflix and others turn to North Koreans? Might look something like this (from last
weel’s DJI)?
Urban Girl Comes to Get Married (1993)
72 min | Comedy, Romance
A romantic comedy that tells the story of a
fashion designer from Pyongyang who comes to a small village to show her latest
designs. Since the fashion designer is young and attractive, the ... See full summary »
Director: Yun Jong | Stars: Yong-sin Han, Jun-nam Kim, Kun-ho Ri, Kyong-hui Ri
ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN
– From
Reddit
PEANUT GALLERY
sir_jamez 1 mo. ago
Been thinking about
this for a while. United Artists reboot for the 21st century.
NB: changed this
into bullet points to better reflect the brain dump that this was.
There's enough big
names with 8-9 figure bank accounts that could pool together and form a
production company that accommodates 100% of the WGA/SAG asks, and then begins
to develop content on those terms (initially small scale and cheap to produce,
low vfx, etc.). Ideally, the operation itself is owned by the unions themselves
in a co-op model or something (X portion of the profits allocated for benefits,
pensions, etc.).
In the meantime,
they hire a CTO and a tech team to develop a bare bones content website, like how
CrunchyRoll was when it started. Whether it's PPV or an unlimited stream model,
they have immediate and direct visibility on activity and usage data.
Creators >
production > consumers.
Wall Street
parasites need not apply. There's no reason for them to be extractive
gatekeepers anymore, when all the steps along the way have been democratized.
Outside investors
can fund projects based on clearly defined terms and returns (e.g. "X
points but no creative control"). Crowd funding options can even be explored
(even up to and including selling shares in individual projects but with zero
"voting" rights; creative control again rests with the creators
themselves).
Studios used to
have the monopoly on production experience, funding streams, and distribution
channels. None of those are uniquely held anymore.
‘Mark Ruffalo
Urges Actors to ‘Jump Into Indie’ Film, Exit the ‘Empire of Billionaires’ at
Studios
"While
[studio executives] hang out in the billionaire boy summer camps laughing like
fat cats, we organize a new world for workers," the Marvel actor tweeted
amid the SAG-AFTRA strike.’
u/DubWalt
avatarubWalt
1 mo. ago
A surprising
amount of movies ARE in fact being made this way. Have been for 80 years. And
they get distributed. That’s why there are still so many movies continuing to
shoot while the strike is going on. And not just ultra low budget to medium
offerings.
1 mo. ago
There's a LOT of
independent film makers that could flourish with this model. So many get
overlooked or never heard from because the big films spend 10's of millions on
advertising. When the independent film channel showed up on cable back in the
late 90's, I had it on almost 24/7. Now it just shows parks and rec reruns.
Create a new market and the people will come.
RedDurden
1 mo. ago
Actors &
screenwriters should form something like the united artists alliance and they
have a council and their temporary studios are their homes. They negotiate
contracts for filming locations and theatres and if networks want scripted tv
series they have to be 5 to 10 year contracts. And if the network cancels the
series before the 5 to 10 contract ends they have to payout the alliance and
everyone involved in creating the show. I know this doesn’t sound very
realistic but it would be cool if it happened.
Vaeon
1 mo. ago
Leslie Jones just
made a video that Ice T reposted where she said that people who are complaining
Hollywood is full of millionaires complaining they are getting paid enough need
to STFU. She goes on to say that she didn't achieve success until she was 47,
which made wonder how furious she must be to watch Timothee Chalamet and Lily
Rose Depp surpass her with zero difficulty.
Just like Billie
Eilish, Zoe Kravitz, Joe Hill, Jaden Smith, ad nauseum.
Fuck Hollywood and
its endless cycle of (unnecessary and unimaginative) reboots, spin-offs, and
prequels that only exist to showcase useless children of rich people.
Edit: Downvote me
all you want, it won't change the FACT that it took 63 YEARS for SAG-AFTRA and
the WGA to go on strikes at the same time which begs the question: How did they
not notice how exploitative Hollywood was?
ATTACHMENT
SEVENTEEN – From
Deadline
PEANUT GALLERY
·
Slipping Jimmy on August 12, 2023 9:52 am
Basically people defending the tech industry here who know nothing
about making pictures. And in a sense they are burning it all to the ground.
From the technicians who have careers in their craft to the performers and
writers whose creative work their making billions from to the frontline
infrastructure of independent sound stages, lighting and camera houses to
animal wranglers with farms of show animals to the independent truck companies
that do transport. All so people can subscribe to sites to save money by not
having cable. It’s that dumb. It’s a circle of stupidity and they won’t get
what they want until they go to the table.
Anonymous on August 10, 2023 6:51 pm
Independent rooms are not agreeing to the terms because they
are ‘fair’ but because they have no freaking choice. SAG once again holding
independent hostage.
·
Anonymous on August 10, 2023 10:32 am
The WGA should demand Paid Vacation Days while you’re On
Strike.
·
Anonymous on August 10, 2023 10:28 am
Stay on Strike. The audience has PLENTY of quality shows and
movies, over half a century’s worth, to choose from. Woke Propaganda will never
be missed by the general public. We won’t be brainwashed. All you’re doing is
pissing us off.
o
Maryeliseon August 15, 2023 4:32 pm
o
Crazy People On Hereon
(sic) August 12, 2023 5:22 am
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 (Apparantly
redacted. – DJI)
·
Tanya Granton August 10, 2023 9:45 am
I remember that during the pandemic, there were a multitude
of memes saying that we did (not?) need actors and writers. They said we needed
doctors, nurses and truck drivers. I do not agree with this statement. In my
opinion, we do need them. I see them as representatives of our creative
spirits. They embody our hopes, our dreams, our fears and everything that makes
us who we are by creating entertainment masterpieces. They have the ability to
take us places and show us worlds in a way that nothing else can. They provide
an escape for some while inspiring others and that is a gift. Every single
person on that picket line has value and I feel they deserve to have that value
recognized. America has been fighting for one form of equality or another for a
long time and will continue to do so as the need continues to exist. I support
what the people on strike are trying to accomplish.
·
Anonymouson August 10, 2023 6:36 am
Don’t be Fooled! This comment section is filled with STUDIO
EMPLOYEES.
This is brilliant! At the very worst, the money is being
spread out more.
o
Anonymouson August 10, 2023 10:36 am
I promise you, I do not work in any affiliation with
Hollywood. I’m just a longtime nerd who is sick & tired of seeing the
“writers” screw up everything that came before. You failed at your
jobs–Miserably.
o
Get A Clue on August 10,
2023 7:01 am
Right, no one is allowed to have an opinion. Anything
contradictory must be coming from the studios. They are running multi million
dollar corporations and I hardly doubt that they are even looking at these comments.
Maybe you need to start realizing not every actor and writer agree with their
unions and even if they do they want this to be over like the rest of this
world.
·
Johnny Football on
August 10, 2023 5:02 am
This Would be a perfect time to start a new Actor’s union
and leave SAG/AFTRA to the extras who make up 87% of the guild.
·
Julia on August 10, 2023 12:49 am
An actor friend told me this week that there is a cap on
residuals of 25k-if so that would explain the checks for a penny.
·
All You SAG Members Your Shit
Detectors Are Busted on August
10, 2023 12:46 am
Most of the projects that received interim agreements will
be filmed in significant tax incentive countries where there are also no
payroll taxes. Canada, the UK, South Africa, Romania for instance all the local
cast and crew are loan outs=incorporated=the equivalent of 1099 workers AND
even the PAs. That’s a savings of at least 20% per person on payroll.
Fran said the first day of the strike in front of Netflix on
camera 6 MONTHS she showed her hand.
You Day Players and BG who are based in the US no production
company like Apple Amazon and MRC are gonna pay for your visa, travel, housing
and per diem.
SAG has outsourced your jobs with these agreements. Iger and
Zaslav are laughing their asses off on their yachts.
Put your signs down.
·
Kris on August 10, 2023 12:32 am
Put the signs down SAG members. The interim agreements are
mostly going to projects that will film in tax incentive countries and where
there is zero payroll taxes. In Canada, UK, South Africa, Romania for instance
all the local crews are loans outs=incorporated=the equivalent of 1099 workers.
Even the PAs are loan outs. As I understand it, the strike is so Day Players
can earn a living but SAG has outsourced your jobs. No company is gonna pay for
your visa or your travel housing and per diem.
The studios have been outsourcing all our jobs since 1998
first to Canada. This is a whole new twist that a union is.
A strike means a strike. No means no.
Drescher on the first day of the strike said on camera at
Netflix “6 months.” She showed her hand.
Why is SAG so helpful to Apple and Amazon and MRC and saving
them money by giving interim agreements to shows that won’t be filmed in the
US.
This is so fucked and evil.
Eddy Hardy on
August 11, 2023 11:07 pm
You know nothing about working in Canada, genius. I get
payroll taxes off every check as an employee. I’m an AD
·
Jerald Wilson on
August 9, 2023 10:37 pm
Another fail by SAG/AFTRA/
Once these films and TV series get produced, where will they
air? Theatres? Maybe. Legacy netorks? Probably. Streaming services? Certainly.
Awesome. So 100 more units of content for the AMPTP.
How is this a positive development?
o
Anonymouson August 10, 2023 6:38 am
Productions aren’t made and sold/aired overnight…
o
Jacob on August 10, 2023 6:33 am
Because when the AMPTP runs out of shows and people start
dropping subscriptions bc the only place they can see quality content is in
indie theaters and eventually other small time streaming services… it will
choke them out.
o
Anonymous on August 10, 2023 5:22 am
They contain profit share requirements for streaming. So if
they air on streaming… Ooooohhhh, yea it’s more complex than you thought.
Get some more sleep.
§
Anonymous on August 10, 2023 7:00 am
That’s just dead wrong. They have to abide by whatever the
end deal is, so guess what? These will end up with the exact same terms as
every other major studio streamer
·
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 9:51 pm
Will the WGA be striking these productions?
·
Anonymous IIon August 9, 2023 9:26 pm
If the studios/streamers creators are striking against buy,
or license, the projects from independents, aren’t the independents responsible
for paying the creators a residual from that and however else they make money
from from those projects, if there is such a deal? Isn’t the strike mostly
against the major studios/streamers about getting paid a residual from what
projects those studios/streamers themselves commission into production?
o
Anonymouson August 12, 2023 6:31 am
Actually. The independents can agree to whatever they want.
Ultimately those residuals fall on the distributor to pay. Or a streaming
service when they air. It’s not like the small independent studio will pay
those residuals. So yeah, they’re going to agree to whatever. Now… will it get
sold with those terms? That’s the big question.
·
A NONNY MOUSE on
August 9, 2023 9:23 pm
They are mostly filming overseas with non-union crew, but
with SAG actors playing the lead
·
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 8:19 pm
Unfortunately, the only losers here are the people that
she’s trying to fight for. The cameraman, the key grip, the journeyman, the
extra on set. Those people that don’t make the big bucks. Personally, if I was
an actor and this was going on, I’d leave the union first chance I get.
·
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 7:17 pm
This wouldn’t be so bad if all these projects filmed here
and allowed crews to get some work in. But the reality is terrible when you say
things like it’s for the crews, and then the majority of projects don’t even
film here. Sorry, good for WHICH crews then?
o
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 9:02 pm
So, these projects are filming somewhere but not LA, NY, ATL
or Canada with a union crew? I don’t get it.
·
Lauralee Wiltsie on
August 9, 2023 6:39 pm
In all of this, the only people who are going to ultimately
suffer from this are the consumers by having to pay higher streaming, cable and
theater ticket prices. Ultimately, that will result in people dropping services
or not going to see a movie because of the price of the tickets. Who suffers
then? The actors? Hardly. It’s the crew. The technicians on the set, the
writers and such. They can’t make a living. Oh, but let’s remember, every
choice has consequences. Just think about all the people that go to work every
day who don’t get any benefits at work but they have to do it to support their
family.
o
Anonymouson August 10, 2023 4:56 am
Your comment is curious at best. Lay actors and writers
should not be paid a decent wage because “other people go to work every day who
don’t get any benefits…”? It is precisely this type of worker oppression that
both unions are pushing back against. For 40 years, American workers have been
hyper-productive at the expense of our health, families, and socioemotional
well-being. And we have rarely shared in the tremendous revenue growth and
profits seen across media, entertainment, and many other industries. CEOs and
other C-suite executives do not deserve to make a thousandfold what the average
artist makes. Moreover, it is not etched in stone that any additional costs
have to be passed onto consumers. By making better content decisions and
evolving the streaming business model, it is quite possible to generate enough
consumer demand organically to offset increased labor costs. Lastly, do you
think that it is fair for the media companies to capture an actor’s likeness
once and then use it for free on subsequent productions courtesy AI, or to
displace Writers with generative AI?
Anonymouson
August 10, 2023 10:12 am
Every streamer is losing money, except Netflix, who makes
most their films far away from these unions. Most movies being made are losing
money. This is about the worst possible timing for these strikes. I don’t see
this ending well, because I doubt the studios are going to cave in. So
everything shuts down for a long period to agree to something that is little
changed.
·
Gregory Lamberson
on August 9, 2023 6:20 pm
“Truly independent” my Aunt Petunia’s gall bladder.
o
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 7:05 pm
Hahaha
·
So Over This on
August 9, 2023 6:14 pm
These agreements might be the biggest joke in the history of
the Union labor movement. Every time SAG tries to defend them, they dig a
deeper hole for themselves. No one buys this explanation anymore. Just get in
the room, compromise, and get a deal done.
o
Also So Over This on August 9, 2023 10:17 pm
Just get in the room, compromise, and get a deal done. I
couldn’t agree more.
This sucks for everyone… so lets fix it.
Just get in the room, compromise, and get a deal done. How
hard is that?
·
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 6:06 pm
All it does is help the indie producers and their crews…is
SAG seriously expecting indie to steal market share? Something tells me these
negotiators are about as bad at negotiating and understanding the business part
of this industry as the artists they’re representing would be…
·
Anonymouson August 9, 2023 6:01 pm
These agreements are not good. On the face of it they are
unfair and arbitrary. The product made under them will be sold to all of the
places we are striking against. Too much of SAG’s time is spent talking about
them and determining who gets them – that is effort that should be put into
negotiating a deal. WGA tried these interim agreements in 2007-8 and it didn’t
work. Why must SAG continue to repeat mistakes (like the bs negotiation extension)?
·
Anonymouson August 9, 2023 6:00 pm
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
·
Freda on August 9, 2023 5:53 pm
Sure, Jan
·
If I Ran A Studio on
August 9, 2023 5:49 pm
I’d literally wait this out. Figure out how much product is
being made right now. Bleed you dry. Then right before we ran out of product
sign the agreement and buy up whatever we need. Obviously there will be holes
in the line up. But there’s still new product to release. It’s stupid. I mean
I’m here for it because I want an agreement. But man. It’s not smart.
·
Anonymous on August 9, 2023 5:48 pm
And how exactly are you doing this? By favoring “small indie
productions”, giving them this waiver/interim agreement as an excuse to rip
more people off on projects filmed outside the U.S? Hint… Millennium has been
stealing from the talent for decades, without a strike…. By staying mum on
major stars promoting their projects, in a middle of a clear ban on ANY
PROMOTIONAL ACTIVITY? Hint… Taylor Kitsch giving a big interview in NYT
promoting his Netflix show, David Harbour doing the same thing, in Variety,
regarding his “Grand Turismo” (and after using a photo op at the picket lines)…
People are not blind!! I mean, come on SAG!! Is the rest of us total idiots?
What are you doing up there on Wilshire?
o
Anonymous on August 10, 2023 9:26 am
I’m wondering the same thing. This is the most confusing
“strike” I’ve ever seen and clear the Union is not providing a solid united
front to win this.