The Hollywood Writer’s Strike: It should go on longer
December 31, 2007
…because the longer it goes on the more it reveals of the conniving, untrustworthy character of the corporate ownership and management of the art & entertainment industry. These guys have to be seen to be believed and you can do that from this article at the Huffington Post: Damning Evidence in their Own Words.
“The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.” - Clarence S. Darrow
What’s this strike about?
First, as always (and no surprises here), it’s about money.
Second, it’s about intellectual property piracy. That’s really about money too.
It’s about contractual partners abusing the rights of creators of original works of intellectual property. Sheesh, that’s about money too.
It’s also about economic democracy, not that anybody has put it in these terms yet. An economist whose ideas were nearly quashed, Henry George (1839 - 1897), who wrote Progress and Poverty which has been described as “a systematic explanation—logical and consistent—of why wealth is not distributed fairly among those who produce it” had this to say:
“There is in reality no conflict between labor and capital; the true conflict is between labor and monopoly… Abolish the monopoly that forbids men to employ themselves and capital could not possibly oppress labor… [R]emove the cause of that injustice which deprives the laborer of the capital his toil creates and the sharp distinction between capitalist and laborer would, in fact, cease to exist”
So, this strike is about control.
In my own time, many years ago, when I began to understand the nature of the art & entertainment industry and its problems, I came to my own conclusion and I put it this way, “He who creates the product should control their market.” In other words, “The creators, those who actually make the song, story, poem, fine art work, should be in charge of what they create.” Everything about Allforart is designed to help the artist achieve this and achieving that degree of control in part defines the Creative Artist.
In the case of the Hollywood Strike, the screenwriters should be in charge of the industry of film making and television production - it is their work that makes film making possible. No script = no movie.
It used to be that way, the writer-director made the movie and factually it turns out that the most successful movies are made by writer-directors and not Hollywood Hell developers as I mentioned in Code Point Article 8. Here and there you see that the most successful are the writer-directors, the writer-producers, the Hyphenates as they are called. The most successful are those independents who have retained their rights and built empires around their ability to create - for example George Lucas, who said
“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
As I mentioned in my article the Traditional Model Music Industry is Showing Increasing Signs of Collapse the real pirates are not the public, the real pirates who steal many more billions are the industry moguls. That’s really just the tip of the melting, crumbling mountain, for their corruption reaches deep into the heart of freedom, and shackles individual liberty making that same liberty their slave. Thus they shackle every one of us, for their reach is right into our lives and living rooms through radio, television and print, and they abuse the right of freedom of expression - they do not support it, as Martin Kaplan points out (see How does the current media…work? below). It’s about money… but how much?
“Apart from the fact that many, if not most, writers struggle to make a living, what’s at stake is an erosion of the fundamental right to be paid fairly for the work you do. To put “fair share” into context: the writer’s royalty from a $10 DVD is four cents. The studios have been trying to reduce this!” - Mark Burton, Screenwriter
In the comments, this amount is corrected by another writer.
Mark Burton’s number is inaccurate - the writer’s royalty from a $10 DVD would be TWO cents. It’s FOUR cents on a $20 DVD. Which is less than it costs to wrap the thing in plastic.” - Stephen, Los Angeles, California
So to screw writers already screwed by a miserly, cheating and corrupt system, the percentage of 0.2% is what they want to steal also! And this is called “good business”? Pfft! Economic democracy is a myth, and this strike among other factors points up the fact of that myth and just how far it reaches and who it touches.
How does the current media, art & entertainment industry work?
Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School of Journalism, has an excellent video epic (7 short vids) on YouTube which explains how the industry works from a political-cultural perspective. It’s an introduction to the current state of power and it demonstrates very clearly that the industry of creativity and communication is not serving the public interest. I could go on but there is more coming on this in our State of Our Culture and Civilization series.
Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke has reported extensively on the issue, and here too you can read about how the WGA’s president was duped by the studios. The corruption in Hollywood and the industry itself is simply disgusting. It goes on at every level. Do we wonder that the USA has so many lying presidents? Their entire culture runs this way, and it is a decaying culture from which we must learn with alacrity, that we may preserve the best parts, and extract the lessons of mistake from the rest.
“…the amount of cut-throat dishonesty that exists among leading industry producers is much worse. Without the Guild’s protection we really would have nothing.” - Alan Colosi, Screenwriter
There are other excellent comments written in response to this BBC article forwarded by our very own feisty writer wench, Emmah. You can get a taste of her thoughtful arguments and wicked humor at Engender Truth.
“You can’t put our stuff out there for free!” - Writers to Corporates who don’t want to pay the Writers for their stuff even though the amounts asked for are below pittance level
“You can’t put our stuff out there for free!” - Corporates to Public, that they are expecting to make $500M - $1 Trillion from through digital distribution
From the video Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer.
Who are the real pirates?
“You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.” - Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938)
In part, I left America because I could see what was coming, and because I had come to understand through the application of market research and cultural study, the nature of American culture, whose art for warfare includes the cultural war it carries on through information channels controlled and owned by just a handful of people through the corporations they purchased post the Sixties rebellion against the establishment.
“The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.” - George Lucas, Creative Artist, Scriptwriter, Author, Filmmaker
Yes, that’s my experience too.
Read on to part two: The Renaissance that Fizzled.
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[...] is part two of the Hollywood Writer’s Strike series. You can start from the beginning by clicking here. - Joel Falconer, [...]
Writers, like all employees are (or at least should be) paid to do a job. This job is generating content, be it jokes, a script, a book, etc. Once the writers have completed their work, they add nothing to the process. No matter how many times the content they wrote is read, watched, downloaded, copied, etc., they do no more work. Employees do not need to be paid multiple times. They have already been paid.
Mike, can you imagine what might happen if the standards in the Western world changed as far as employment is concerned?
Granted, not all forms of employment are similar to a writer’s job, where they produce stories that can make the company money centuries after the writer’s death (potentially). Your comment is based on a worldview that suits some jobs, like burger-flipping, where the value of the work is directly proportional to the time spent. Intellectual property is a whole different field that you may not be familiar with.
The writer creates a product for the company. The company creates an audience for the writer. It’s a business partnership in this regard, not an employment situation (the owner of that burger flipping joint could perform the task himself if he had to, but execs can’t write scripts).
In reality, the writer is creating the product and the companies are selling and marketing them. They should be sharing in the profit. Why does the company get all the profits, the writer only a few cents, and then nothing at all when the company feels like putting their work elsewhere? The writer did the real work here - but the company is taking all the credit and the money, when the company would be broke and out of business without the writer (who’s living off breadsticks while the exec who sits in air conditioned conference rooms and first-class planes all day, doing not much at all, has everything he ever wanted).
These writers want a bit of balance and fairness, and they are sure not asking much - nowhere near what they truly deserve.
So, the guy who is paid to design cars for GM gets paid for every car that is manufactured using elements of his design? Or the guy that figures out a good way to attach a light to a pole gets paid for every lampost a company produces? Or the person that designs a nice coffee table for a furniture manufacturer gets a piece of every table sold? Or the engineer that puts together a valve configuration for a refinery gets money for every gallon of gasoline sold?
Ridiculous. Get over yourself writers.
so now i know who is resposible for the drivil i listen to on tv. bring back game shows and reality tv, like ‘cops’. then i won;t have to listen to a bunch of babies crying about their wages. get a job.
My two cents…
AMERICAN PEOPLE’S REAL OPPOSITION SHACKLED ! With Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show”, “The Colbert Report” and Bill Maher’s “Real Time” out of the way, the 2008 presidential campaign can go on without being questioned outside the script. There is no more popular political education going on, this side of Bill Moyers and GoLeft TV. The joke is on America & we ain’t laughing.
WRITERS vs. THE MAN / ON STRIKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfeObquD9y8
The writers strike is crucial. Its resolution will determine how creative minds will be paid in the future. Intellectual property and publishing rights are sacred in civilized nations. When money is generated, content creators should be compensated.
So Big Media & The Man are perverting democracy beyond recognition… Business as usual ! But to have “The Daily Show” & “The Colbert Report” permanently on re-runs…That does it !
As far as writers go, Gonzo certainly had a way with words
“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. There’s also a negative side. ” - Hunter S. Thompson
@Robert - the guys that design cars for GM aren’t exactly desperate for cash. GM knows they are important and pays them accordingly. These are skilled, creative people and what’s more the company recognizes that fact.
The engineers who figure out a new way of doing things have the option of patenting their work so no one can copy it. I’ve worked with engineers who list the number of patents they’ve created on their resume, even in situations where the company they worked for has established terms of work where patents created then belong to the company. It shows that they are intelligent, skilled and above all creative people.
Writers are skilled, intelligent, creative people but they are seldom paid as well as the multi-patent holding engineer or the guy that designs self-assembly furniture for IKEA, or the guys that design cars for GM. Why?
Gee, if you assume that writing isn’t a job and is somehow easy, you should be able to throw together the pilot for a new TV series, or bang out a couple of monologues for Leno, so why not get cracking at that? You should be able to walk right up to the Networks and say “Hey! I’m not Guild and I can write stuff!”. It should be the fast track to the easy life you seem to be suggesting writers have, so what’s to lose?
Let’s all stop for a second and realzie that “Jim” actually said “let’s get more episodes of cops” and “writers should get a job.”
I live in LA and edit reality tv. And I’m sick of a lot of the BS arguments favoring the WGA written about in the media. The WGA has pissed on reality since it started during the last WGA strike. At every opportunity they’ve thumbed their nose and refused to recognize the “writers” of reality tv.
What people don’t realize is that the negotiations ended when the WGA demanded that the AMPTP recognize them as representing reality tv… ALL OF IT. WGA: In addition to a pay increase, I would like to be the King of France.
AMPTP: We don’t have the power to make you the King of France. And France doesn’t want you as their King.
WGA: King of France or no deal!
The point is the WGA wanted to represent the reality industry which it hates, not because it had a change of heart, but to make them join the picket lines as well.
Everyone talks about the conniving studio heads, but they don’t realize that the heads of the WGA are just as greedy and incompetent as they are.
The WGA is a guild supported by the ‘independent contractor’ film and tv industry. When a film is made it gives millions to (or to form) a production company to make it, above the line crew members retain some of the distribution rights to what they make. If the strike continues until the SAG contract is up in June as promised, I wouldn’t be surprised by another shift in the industry, back to the advent of film where a staff studio writer conceives a project, it’s produced on the lot, and is distributed by the studio. What does this mean? Goodbye WGA. Welcome back the Hollywood of the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc.
One of the points made, but often missed (it’s part of the marginalization of writers and other creators’ to deny the status of the work of writing and creating and thus justify rip-off practices) is that writing is a job, and actually more than a job; a profession requiring an incredible amount of skill and encyclopedic knowledge.
Another aspect being excluded by some readers here is this: A writer creates intellectual property, which at the moment of completion automatically accrues to it a set of intellectual property rights owned by the creator. The commercial exploitation of those rights enables the creator to earn many times over from the creation of the original work. The rights inherent in the work are then negotiated with production and distribution companies for delivery to the public. That’s the system-in-a-nutshell and describes how it is supposed to work.
Thirdly, writers do contribute to the process and usually are willing and able to do so, if permitted, and they should contribute to the process all the way through (Creative Artist Code Points 1, 3, 6, 7, and in particular 8, 10, 11, and 26 address these topics) for it is their work. But they are often not permitted to despite the fact they own the copyrights and have not given up all rights. The issue of ‘creative control’ is often taken away during the production process, or simply removed by the employment of various subterfuges, social-emotional manipulations and chicaneries (Dave Chappelle alludes to these in his statements about why he walked on a $55M contract, for example), The companies act as if acquisition entitles them to do whatever they wish; the words of the deals they make, in fact, mean little. Creators’ rights are repeatedly abused by the current system, who instead of dealing fairly and honestly seek to ignore the rights of the copyright owner and creator (Author’s Moral Rights, are a prime example of this). The primary goal of the current system is the disenfranchisement of the Creators’ from their rights; and the contracts and attitudes of the industry’s own boilerplate contracts demonstrate this.
[...] is part three of the Hollywood Writer’s Strike series. You can start from the beginning by clicking here. - Joel Falconer, [...]
Writers: this argument that you should somehow have control over your work after you give it to your employers isn’t a winning one. Other creative fields do not have that control. You do not deserve that control. If you want control and think it doesn’t require “real work”, why haven’t you already started a production company to manage the rights yourselves?
Until you internalize the value your employers provide it is going to be far more difficult to write a winning argument to them about your compensation levels. And I hope you get through to them (or them to you) soon. You’re sitting on something that is losing value every day
@Jason: fair comment read Code Point Article 11 “It’s Your Business”.