THURSDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Hollywood Writers Strike Called; Timing Announcement To Come Friday; Actors Agree To Walk WGA Picket Lines
I’ve obtained instructions issued tonight to WGA contract captains who turn into strike captains once the Writers Guild of America calls its walkout. That’s right: it’s not “if”, but “when”. Since there will be no bargaining talks on Thursday, a strike call could come Thursday night when the leadership meets with the general membership at 7 pm inside the incredibly inconvenient downtown location of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Picketing could start Friday or Monday. (See my previous: URGENT: Talks Come To An Abrupt Halt; Thursday Night’s WGA Meeting A Strike Call?) Here are memo excerpts:
Show captains need to compile a personal contact list for everyone who could participate in pickets (including actors, writers’ assistants, staff and crew, etc) or other strike actions.
Showrunners and all WGA members should assemble drafts of every unproduced script and other literary material for the so-called “Script Validation Program”. (Details here.)
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Showrunners, hyphenates with projects in development, and other hyphenates may want to speak to or write letters to the Producers they are working with “to make clear that our mutual goal is to negotiate a fair and reasonable contract. We welcome their support toward that goal.”
Before leaving their offices on Thursday, all Writers guild members should take their personal items home. “If you have an office on a studio lot, you may want to box up your personal items when you leave work on Thursday.”
There will be a WGA West membership meeting in Los Angeles tomorrow night at 7 pm. At the meeting, the Negotiating Committee will update members regarding the negotiations and make their recommendation as to how to proceed. The WGAW will send out another e-mail following the meeting with up-to-the-minute information.
There will be a captains meeting Saturday November 3rd at 1 pm. Agenda to follow. captains should plan to be on call this weekend. There will be a captains orientation session Saturday November 3rd at 11 am.
“If there is a strike, submit your scripts for validation. You have 4 days from the commencement of a strike to do this. Contract/show captains become picket captains immediately. Show up for your picket shift. Your captain will advise you where/when. Report any re-writing of your material, illegal demands, pressure to cross picket lines, etc to your picket captain.”




Today’s statement/offer by the AMPTP was an unbelievable fuck you to the WGA and… well, really to the whole town because the guild now has no choice but to strike. Very, very depressed. Not in my worst nightmares did I think the AMPTP’s offer was going to be this bad.
The AMPTP has counted on the WGA backing down all along, like we have so often in the past. The only way we can back up what we say now is by walking the picket lines. What’s the point of having a union if we don’t have the balls to stand up to Nick Counter and his insincere cronies? The sooner we strike, the sooner they will begin to take us seriously and, hopefully, show our union the respect it deserves. Anything short of striking now is voluntary servitude, and it will only get worse as time passes. Whatever muscles we have left, now is the time to flex them… or become the laughing stock of the industry. I don’t want to strike anymore than the next guy, but now we have no choice. Better to endure a few weeks/months of hardship than to capitulate ourselves into oblivion. This is a do or die moment for the WGA.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Paul. It’s a shame that this is where we stand after 4 months of meetings, but nothing’s going to change without a strike. And the time is NOW.
what’s going to change WITH a strike, LKB? I hope for the best for you all, but history stands on the other side…
that in mind, the AMPTP knows exactly what they’re (sneakily) doing.
First off, thanks, Nikki, for your reporting. It’s simply the most timely and accurate available.
We are at a terrible juncture, that’s for sure. I don’t mean to make too much of Paul’s comment above reflecting his fear that the writers, without striking, would become “the laughing stock of the industry,” but I can only hope that the WGA negotiating committee has more substantive concerns.
I’m an independent producer and a member of the Academy in the producers branch. I can name ten films I’m credited with and another dozen I’m not that wouldn’t have been made without my work. I get paid when a movie gets produced and I don’t get residuals, or health care, or pension contributions.
If the Guild is going to go out, and it looks like they will, wreaking devastation on a lot of families beyond their own, they better have a better reason than the collective self-image of their members.
Nikki or anyone else: what is “the number” (i.e., the comprehensive deal) the WGA would accept to avoid a strike? Does the Guild leadership have one? Wouldn’t it make sense rhetorically to offer it – something the membership feels is reasonable and that the AMPTP can say yes to – before we strike?
No offense CC, but you don’t get residuals because you don’t create or write. Producers are middle men. Valuable to the process, but middle men.
In my mind, especially on the the upper end, producers are ridiculously over-paid for what they do.
If “Dan In Real Life” and “Nightmare Xmas,” or “Cavemen” and “‘Til Death” are the best Hollywood can do, maybe it’s the viewers who need to strike for so writers and studios to be paid less.
Both sides have inflated their importance to the average Nielson viewer………anyone remember the NHL.
It will take alot longer for the AMPTP & the WGA to recover from this than their “leadership” believes.
I’ve been this route before, back the last time there was a strike. At that time, demagogery by WGA brass and staff made good people do and say dumb things, and I hope we avoid that this time around. There is nothing more ridiculous than watching, at a member/strike meeting, a 20-something young woman who arrived in a Mercedes citing John L. Lewis and other examples of Beverly Hills Bolshevism. Guilds are a good thing. Being silly never is. I live in hope, but I am not holding my breath for a sensible solution to this situation on EITHER side.
I’m a Director/Writer from Argentina and I want to send my solidarity to me fellow writers in the USA.
I know they will stand firm for their rights and fight for a fair recognition.
All the best to them and their families and the WGA.
What would happen if the writers went on strike and none of the viewers noticed?
It’s nice to know that when the writers go on strike they will be putting thousands of hard working people out of their jobs as well. Unlike the members of the Gentlemans Club, sorry I meant Writers Guild these people don’t get any residuals. So when their jobs go away they wont be getting a check every three months for work they did years ago. So thank you from the grips, electrics, hair and makeup, wardrobe, PA’s, craft service, construction, catering. office production, background, music supervisors, editorial, and on set medics. All of these people will lose work because a bunch of rich guys want to pretend that they are Julio Cesar Chavez. I’ll be watching Reality TV and playing video games.
Aspiring writers thinking this is their opportunity to get “into” the business will be sorely disappointed if they try, and end up being blacklisted. Because that is what would happen.
I am a WGA writer and I think we are striking for a bunch of millionaire showrunners and millionaire A-listers. There are just not enough of us who make that much in residuals to justify a prolonged strike. Sure, negotiate for more, but strike over it? Something is very fishy about that.
This a battle between rich writers and rich studios and us more “blue-collar” writers are the pawns in the middle. We’re the ones getting screwed. We do not have the cash to outlast a strike.
We got suckered into this strike by a bunch of egomaniacs who have some fantasy of “sticking it” to the man by inflating their own residual checks.
We will regret this strike very quickly. The studios and networks will find replacements for us but we will not find replacements for them.
CC,
I’m an independent producer and also a tv writer. I don’t think that it makes sense to hold yourself up as an example. You’re right, as an independent producer we don’t get health insurance or pension…but we also have an ownership stake in the finished product -something that writers typically don’t have.
But, as someone who believes in universal health care and pensions, I would be happy to join you in helping to unite independent producers behind these issues.
RCA
To Works for a Living —
Those jobs you mentioned wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for a writer. They work for a living too.
More reality TV. YAY!
Dear Works for a Living,
Calling the WGA a “gentleman’s club” obscures the truth, which is that the average annual salary of a WGA member is well BELOW that of the average gaffer, grip, or even PA.
None of us wants a strike…believe me. But don’t blame us. The unfairness is coming from the producers who don’t want to extend the current residual formula to the internet.
– Writes for a Living
I’m lol! Do you have any idea how low of an opinion most of us out in the fly over country (the ones who watch TV) have of ALL of you? Your industry is lower than malpractice lawyers in the rank of people the country could do without. I hope everyone in overpaid Hollywood loses their shirts. Maybe then you’ll all stop pontificating about political issues you know nothing about, because most of you never even bothered to finish college. You put shit on the tube and try to sell it with with surgically and chemically enhanced Barbie and Ken dolls espousing and doing the most amoral stuff I’ve ever seen, and you have the nerve to call it entertainment! Frankly, even your jokes suck, you are so out of step with the rest of us, yet you all somehow think you have a right to preach to the nation how to live. The only thing better than Hollywood going on strike would be if you fell into the ocean. And, you sanctimonious eco worshipers, think of all the electricity we will save by not turning our TV’s on! Good riddance.
Stacycy wrote: “Aspiring writers thinking this is their opportunity to get “into” the business will be sorely disappointed if they try, and end up being blacklisted.”
What’s with you people? Do you have so little confidence in your abilities that you need to resort to thuggery and bullying to make a living? You really need to stifle the competition? No wonder all the public gets in the theaters and on the small screen is low-brow schlock that panders to the lowest-common-denominator.
The time for unions has passed. Bring on the free market and let competition reign.
Based on the poor quality of most of the shows I see they have no right to strike. The top writers need to go and let some new talent rise to the surface. That’s why reality shows are already so successful because they don’t have much in the way of quality programming to compete with.
i don’t even know the bullshit story of why the amptp refuses to discuss the dvd and internet issue. they must have a reason… even if it’s a bullshit reason.
Dear No Offense:
On one hand, you are correct — producers are “middle men” who don’t create or write. On the other hand, we seek out, acquire, edit and shape material by writers who, generally, have no idea HOW to get a movie made. Once we’ve turned it into something commercially viable, we represent the material for years out of nothing more than passion for that writer’s idea, and the belief that it would make a decent movie. Far from a middle man, I would say the producer is often the only advocate the writer (or his material) has in this town.
And for this, we either get nothing for the years of submitting the material endlessly in an effort to get it set up, or a measly $12,500 development fee for what can often turn into decades of work and dedication.
As much as I endorse many of the WGA issues, at a certain point the producers — not the studios — will have to get their due for the work they put it.
And as a side note, I think the release of AMERICAN GANGSTER this weekend is testimony to the perseverance of Brian Grazer after the movie had fallen apart twice before, at an absurd cost. Sure, he’s revoltingly rich and powerful, but he also refused to give up on the movie.
Most writers would, I think, appreciate having someone like that in their corner.
Please, let’s try to deal with reality. If you say, “the annual salary of a WGA member who isn’t selling scripts is BELOW that of the average gaffer or PA,” then that’s true. Hey, guess what — the annual salary of a non-working gaffer or PA is BELOW the poverty level, which is where your strike is putting many of us.
The truth is, any WGA writer good enough to sell scripts makes a shitload of money, up front, and more down the road. We can read your contract minimums, and we can read the deals written up in Variety and HR. Your salaries support an army of managers, agents, and lawyers.
Sorry, gotta run now, I need to scramble to find a job on a reality show so I can feed my family while your fat strike fund continues to pay your mortgage.