[B5JMS] WGA Strike 90%+ vote to strike

[b5jms at mail.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu]

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From: Charles French <charlesfrench at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000
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http://www.wga.org/subpage_member.aspx?id=2204

Prepare for a long, nasty fight folks.

Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
other writers in this.

STRIKE!!!!

Peace,
Charles




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From: "jmsatb5 at aol.com" <jmsatb5 at aol.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:43:17 -0700
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System keeps glitching mid-send...trying one last time.
jms

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Let me jump in here for a second to try and turn the discussion a bit,
in that the situation as it affects writers is vastly different than
in any other union.

First, to the non- or anti-union folks, a question: when you go into a
book store to buy a copy of a novel by your favorite author, do you
mind that roughly twelve percent of the price of that book goes to the
author?  Or do you feel that he's entitled to that royalty?

Most folks, I would suggest, are totally okay with that idea.  They
wrote the book, the publisher published the book, they're both
entitled to get something back from the publishing of it.  That seems
only fair.

The situation with the WGA is really no different.  It's a way of
ensuring that artists -- who live in a very different world than the
9-5 universe everybody else lives in -- receive some regular form of
compensation to keep them alive and solvent during the often very long
periods of time required to create the next thing.

Leaving off such catastrophic events as being laid off or fired...most
people go to work every day in expectation of a paycheck that will
come regularly.  Writers don't.  They get paid when they a) write, b)
finish what they write, and c) someone decides to *pay* for what
they've written.

It's not uncommon for writers to go a year, two years, even longer
without working in their chosen field.  Doesn't matter who you are.
After William Goldman won his first Oscar, he didn't work again for
almost five years.

The royalties formula in books, and the residuals formula in tv/film,
is all that allows writers to keep doing what they're in the period
when they're *writing* and not *selling*.  Take that away, and many of
the works of literature and film that we've come to enjoy would not
exist because the writers involved would not have been able to create
them, they would've been forced to go out and seek employment
elsewhere.

Prose writers have the authors' guild or SFWA or other organizations
that watchdog publishers and provide assistance and information on
royalties, contracts, health insurance and the like.

TV/film writers have the WGA, which is a much more complex
organization because the permutations and ways in which monies can be
hidden, and by which revenue streams are delivered, are all massively
more complex.

There was a time, back in the 30s and 40s, when writers got nothing
more than a script fee for their work, even though it might take a
year or more to write that script.  And a lot of talented writers fell
by the wayside.  The creation of the WGA changed that and brought into
par with the prose writers whose royalties you would seem to feel are
right and proper.

And those can't be negotiated person-by-person because the studios see
us as individually replaceable.  Only collectively can there be any
impact.

I've had my problems with the WGA over the years, some of them have
become nearly legendary with the WGA.  But if the WGA did not exist,
there would be no way for most writers to survive doing what they love
to do.

As to this coming labor action, when you go into the store next and
buy a DVD and a book, look at the two of them and know that the author
of the book gets a full twelve to fifteen percent of the price...and
the author of the DVD gets, *at most* four cents per DVD, and most of
the time literally and absolutely *nothing* for it...and ask yourself,
"Why the difference?"

That's the question at hand at the WGA as well.

jms



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From: "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz" <starfist at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:19:35 -0500
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Book and movies are very different.  Books don't involve talent from
hundreds or thousands of creators.

I'm all for royalties -- I earn them myself.  But the studio is the
entity taking on the risk of a project not achieving profitability.  I
wonder how many writers are willing to share the investment
consequences of a failed project with the studio?

Keep in mind that the studio has to show profit and loss to
shareholders, and people go to jail if they lie about those things
now.  If they're reporting profit on a movie to shareholders and a
loss to you as a writer, then they should be taken to court.

If the WGA succeeds in forcing studios to pay more than they think
writing is worth, or force the studios to take on even more risk
during investment than they already do, then the end result is
predictable: fewer and fewer executives will be will to take chances
on projects they don't *know* will turn profit.  In the end, this will
make Hollywood even more formulaic and boring.

-- 
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
Promote someone else.
. 


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From: "jmsatb5 at aol.com" <jmsatb5 at aol.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:16:02 -0700
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Assuming you're actually interested in a conversation rather than
staking out territory....

On Oct 21, 4:19 pm, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz"
<starf... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Book and movies are very different.  Books don't involve talent from
> hundreds or thousands of creators.
>

This is not a true statement.  Books involve publishers, editors,
assistant editors, proofreaders, typesetters, publicists, art
directors, photographers, and a host of others, all of whom in their
way "create" the book being purchased.

And in TV/film, the actors and directors who create the work are also
able to participate in the same kind of royalty as a book writer.

> I'm all for royalties -- I earn them myself.  But the studio is the
> entity taking on the risk of a project not achieving profitability.  

Also not true.  A writer can invest years into a project and his whole
livelihood is based on how that project goes.  Studios front dozens of
projects each year, and can write off the losses on one project
against the profits on another.  They do not take all of the risk.

> I wonder how many writers are willing to share the investment
> consequences of a failed project with the studio?

But this is what residuals and royalties ARE.  They are deferred
compensation that only kicks in if the show succeeds.  In other words,
the writer IS sharing the risk.  If the show succeeds, then by
residuals they share in the profit.  If the show tanks, then the time
they spent working on it dead-ends with no further compensation.

> Keep in mind that the studio has to show profit and loss to
> shareholders, and people go to jail if they lie about those things
> now.  If they're reporting profit on a movie to shareholders and a
> loss to you as a writer, then they should be taken to court.
>

You're talking apples and oranges.  There's the profit a studio makes
on a project in toto, and what it makes on the books for the writers.
When you sign a deal for a share of the profits, all but a very few
writers get a piece of the net...but the formula used in determining
what that net is, in other ways what point the project achieves
profitability, can be worked to show no profit *for purposes of that
deal*.

I have a share of the net profits of B5.  But by the terms of the deal
that was made, WB takes 60% of all monies in overhead, and can charge
almost anything they want against profits.  If a stage used on some
other WB project being shot in Bolivia burns down, they can charge it
against B5.  Consequently, B5 has never shown a profit even though
it's made half a billion dollars just in DVD sales, leavinng out
foreign sales, syndication, merchandising and so on.

And yes, individual writers can sue the studios, and never work
again.  That's why you need someone who can bargain collectively.

But residuals aren't based on net profit, they're based on a formula
that says you get x-percent of the original fee for the first x-number
of runs, then it drops for the next x-number of runs, then eventually
it runs out altogether.  The studios have been saying they want to
reduce or eliminate residuals.  That can't stand.

> If the WGA succeeds in forcing studios to pay more than they think
> writing is worth, or force the studios to take on even more risk
> during investment than they already do, then the end result is
> predictable: fewer and fewer executives will be will to take chances
> on projects they don't *know* will turn profit.  In the end, this will
> make Hollywood even more formulaic and boring.
>

Also not correct.  Studios must turn out x-number of films per year,
and x-number of TV shows per year, to continue their revenue stream.
And the amount of money being paid to writers is ridiculously small by
comparison to what's paid to actors and directors.  Nobody is asking
for big increases in writers fees, only to *not* have them
*decreased*.  It's quite literally small change by comparison.

Top-level A writers can earn as much as 500K-1M on a script (and there
are only about a hundred writers who fit that category).  Actors can
make up to ten million per movie, plus a piece of the gross, and many
directors get deals in the middle fo that.  Even if you doubled what's
paid to writers, it would have no significant effect on the output.

jms