
I'm hearing Monday through the grapevine; gives them the weekend to get organized.
minstrel wrote:Theta wrote:Oh, Jesus Christ, just give the writers their fucking dimes and move on.
This is where I stand. The writers' fees and percentages are very small compared to the sums that actors and directors get. And they are extremely small compared to the total productions costs. If the writers are given what they're asking for, it really won't affect anybody else all that much.
Theta wrote:Oh, Jesus Christ, just give the writers their fucking dimes and move on.
MasterWhedon wrote:Oh, shit... There's another guild getting into it now...
MasterWhedon wrote:No picket line this morning...![]()
I'm hearing Monday through the grapevine; gives them the weekend to get organized.
In a lively meeting of 3,000 guild members Thursday night, the WGA's negotiating committee announced its unanimous strike recommendation, a pronouncement that generated an enthusiastic response from the SRO crowd at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The decision also is sure to cause ripple effects within the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild as they negotiate their contracts within coming months.
A final decision on striking could come as early as today via meetings of the WGA West board and the WGA East Council. Leaders stressed throughout Thursday's meeting that they could not specify how soon a strike will start. Attendees were instructed that they should go to work today and wait for a call or email from strike captains.
But it's a foregone conclusion that the WGA panels will OK a strike and the consensus is that they'll probably select Monday as the starting day.
WGA has called a meeting for tomorrow night. You can read each organization's version of what's happening at www.wga.org and www.amptp.org. They both agree that they're sticking on the subject of DVD payments, but they disagree (not unexpectedly) on whose fault it is that negotiations have broken down.
MasterWhedon wrote:A glimpse at the future of scripted programming (courtesy of Moonlighting, circa 1988).
Defamer covers this strike like whoa...
Bob Poopflingius Maximus wrote:MasterWhedon wrote:A glimpse at the future of scripted programming (courtesy of Moonlighting, circa 1988).
Defamer covers this strike like whoa...
Wow. I watched that and sadly remember it. But I found THISbelow it and was really interested!! Sorry about the threadjack...
Leckomaniac wrote:Well the strike needs to last at least 3-6 months for it to have any effect on the film production side...and that is something that the writer's want to happen.
Fawst wrote:I weep for Lost.
bastard_robo wrote:This is why I would never join a Union.
Bunch of smarmy bastards....
I've seen frist hand how Unions fuck you over more than help you. (i've always been a firm beliver of not having to pay to work)
Not to mention that this is the same union that wouldnt originally give Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni writing credit on Fear and Loathing because they said their script was just like alex cox's script (apparently they didnt realize that its a fucking book)
Honestly, I think that this Wagering agaisnt the BO of films is getting out of hand.
Everyone wants a fucking cut now! What happend to just getting paid for a job that you do?
bastard_robo wrote:This is why I would never join a Union.
Bunch of smarmy bastards....
I've seen frist hand how Unions fuck you over more than help you. (i've always been a firm beliver of not having to pay to work)
Not to mention that this is the same union that wouldnt originally give Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni writing credit on Fear and Loathing because they said their script was just like alex cox's script (apparently they didnt realize that its a fucking book)
Honestly, I think that this Wagering agaisnt the BO of films is getting out of hand.
Everyone wants a fucking cut now! What happend to just getting paid for a job that you do?
Fried Gold wrote:What J. Michael Strazcynski posted on the newsgroups: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 he 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
.....which seems to make sense to me.
Lord Voldemoo wrote:bastard_robo wrote:This is why I would never join a Union.
Bunch of smarmy bastards....
I've seen frist hand how Unions fuck you over more than help you. (i've always been a firm beliver of not having to pay to work)
Not to mention that this is the same union that wouldnt originally give Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni writing credit on Fear and Loathing because they said their script was just like alex cox's script (apparently they didnt realize that its a fucking book)
Honestly, I think that this Wagering agaisnt the BO of films is getting out of hand.
Everyone wants a fucking cut now! What happend to just getting paid for a job that you do?Fried Gold wrote:What J. Michael Strazcynski posted on the newsgroups: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 he 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
.....which seems to make sense to me.
bastard_robo wrote:And this food for thought. What about all of the other people stuck inbetween this. The grips, production assistants and such. These people are fucked out of a job too thanks to this strike.
TonyWilson wrote:Totally with the writers on this one. Sometimes striking is the only way to make greedy fucks listen. At most it will last till the next sweeps, right?
instant_karma wrote:All that Serenity axample really says to me is that marketing departments are the ones that are being overpaid...
Leckomaniac wrote:And don't forget the inflating budget costs. I mean we are living in an age where a movie (Superman Returns) grossed $200 million domestic and an additional $191 million worldwide...and is regarded as a failure.
The economics of movies are so entirely out of whack, and yet it seems the writer's are the only ones NOT getting overpaid in the creative process.
MasterWhedon wrote:Leckomaniac wrote:And don't forget the inflating budget costs. I mean we are living in an age where a movie (Superman Returns) grossed $200 million domestic and an additional $191 million worldwide...and is regarded as a failure.
The economics of movies are so entirely out of whack, and yet it seems the writer's are the only ones NOT getting overpaid in the creative process.
See, but don't cry too hard for the writers of HUGE blockbuster movies. Big-time writers make close to $1 million per picture with bonuses, plus maybe 1% of the gross. Granted, that's compared to big-time directors who are making $10 million versus 10%, and actors who make $20 million versus 20%. It's still a huge disparity, but those writers are sitting pretty. It's the guys who write the medium- to low-budget movies--who don't work that often--that need those back-end points the most.
Leckomaniac wrote:No that isn't really my point. My point is that the studios invest a huge chunk of money into this films, that they often do not make back...which has an impact on what they invest in other films and the talent behind these other films. My point was merely that budgets all around are inflating which is having a huge drain on the amount of money flowing in and out.
Am I making any sense? Its late here and I have been drinking.
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