As actors who signed SAG open letter explain themselves, it's clear that radical action can lead to real results.
BY ERIC KOHN
JULY 1, 2023 10:00 AM
Striking Hollywood writers are joined by a protestor holding a "SAG-AFTRA Supports WGA" sign as they walk the picket line outside Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, California, on June 30, 2023. Hollywood's summer of discontent could dramatically escalate this weekend, with actors ready to join writers in a massive "double strike" that would bring nearly all US film and television productions to a halt. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) is locked in last-minute negotiations with the likes of Netflix and Disney, with the deadline fast approaching at midnight Friday
(Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)
Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.
Suspense hovers around whether SAG-AFTRA could reach a deal with studios this week, as the union has flown past the June 30 expiration of its contract and extended negotiations to July 12. The next few days could determine the future of the business, but the situation only intensified over the past week with an unexpected update.
The last thing that SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members needed to see was Fran Drescher’s smiling face. When the SAG president and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland circulated a giddy update June 23 about an impending deal — one without specifics, beyond offering that it would be “seminal” — it didn’t catalyze the reaction they wanted. Rather than see the membership cheer its efforts, the union leaders received an urgent open letter signed by the group’s A-list members.
“We are prepared to strike if it comes to that,” they wrote in a letter signed by over 300 people in fewer than 72 hours, including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, and Ben Stiller. “We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union has been undermined in the last decade. We need to reserve those trajectories… This is not a moment to meet in the middle.”
In other words: Quit mugging for the camera and get to work. SAG members are ready to strike not only to make a point, but also because they know that it could yield results that the current WGA strike can’t do on its own.
“I really think that video was the impetus for the letter,” one actor who signed it, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me this week. “I think everyone’s feeling the heat. We should at least show that we’re willing to go on strike for the leverage. What will the directors direct if there’s nobody to write or act?”
SAG’s decision, whether it’s a strike, a transformative deal that upends the system, or one that sees only modest gains, may impact the next decade or more. The union has the power to rewrite the economics of Hollywood through severe disruption — or, to settle for an outcome that puts them at extreme disadvantage as residuals fade into the streaming ether.
There are genuine concerns around AI, too — how actors can maintain the rights to their likeness, now that technology exists to keep them performing after they die — but most SAG members I know say they’re less invested in those conversations; they want a deal that helps them maintain a stable profession. “A strike will suck, sure,” one prominent actor texted me this week, “but it’s remarkable how many films I’ve had on streamers, and I don’t get a dime for any of it.”
As I asked around this week, the word “existential” came up more than once. Another signatory of the open letter, an actor who has been in studio movies since the ‘80s, wrote me: “It’s at a crisis point. If the deal isn’t good, a lot of people will be forced out of the business. I see it as a national labor crisis, not just about our business. It’s the collision of big tech and oligarchs dismantling equal pay and protections.”
In previous negotiations, SAG has been badly burned. In August 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the SAG-AFTRA healthcare plan suddenly cut out anyone over the age of 65, eliminating thousands of older performers.
“I know actors in their 70s who are retired and make their living off their residuals because they’ve been working for 50 years or more, but they don’t have health insurance anymore,” one actor told me. “I had friends on the negotiating committee who defended themselves by saying, ‘Well, the AMPTP doesn’t want to give us health insurance because they’re bullies!’ Which is completely the case, but I’m sorry, you just can’t let them. You don’t get up from the table until they agree to pay this stuff.”
A strike would put a lot of people out of work, but it also stands a good shot at splintering the studios’ resolve. Consider what happened when the WGA went after agencies for intrusive packaging fees in 2020. Rather than rely on a single negotiating body like the AMPTP, the writers guild had to work through each of the big three talent agencies — WME, CAA and UTA — to arrive at an agreement that eliminated packaging fees. It was a messy, piecemeal operation that left a lot open to interpretation — and agents still seek workarounds that line their pockets. But it happened.
Since we can’t discern the specifics of what studios and actors want, let’s assume that one major disruptive streamer — cough, Netflix — may have less investment in an immediate deal than any other studio.
Apple and Amazon, the biggest companies in the world, could certainly pony up to a new financial reality around residuals that makes the actors happy without feeling destablizing the bottom line. Only Netflix has suggested that it could limp along more or less intact in the midst of a debilitating strike. And it’s true: Netflix can build a pipeline of low-cost unscripted and library content, doubling down on acquisitions, docuseries, and international productions.
Legacy studios aren’t built that way; they were forced into the streaming game to keep up with competition. They need the talent business and don’t want to lose that foothold.
So… maybe other studios could break rank and talk directly to SAG to sort out their needs. The outcome may not please all contingencies, but it would allow for some semblance of forward momentum. A few actors told me they would be happier with this scattered result than fighting against a single entity indifferent to their needs.
“I don’t think Netflix should’ve joined the AMPTP,” a SAG member told me. “They want to influence everyone to do what they’re doing because they’re on top of the world.”
And it could stay that way, no matter what deals come out of the current negotiations. If traditional Hollywood turned its back on the streamer, this cinephile would certainly embrace a new economic reality that forced Netflix to become the preeminent distributor for international storytelling. Buy up all the festival hits. Invest in auteurs worldwide. Everybody wins!
OK, too idealistic — but there are no rules mandating that SAG can only finalize a deal through the AMPTP. The WGA’s negotiating tactics have obscured this reality because its demands remain hard for any studio to get behind, particularly as it pertains to the minimum number of writers they want in a writers room. I would bet more studios want to reach a deal for streaming residuals than the AMPTP as a whole, and eliminating it from the equation would almost certainly yield better results.
There’s no guarantee something like that will happen if SAG goes on strike. However, it’s the kind of possibility that makes a strike feasible if the actors can’t make a good deal now.
Then again, consider the sunniest possibility. Perhaps Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland projected confidence in their video update because real progress is being made. “The Nanny” star might be close to negotiating a deal that sets the acting profession on a positive track for the next decade or more.
Such an outcome could at the very least create a roadmap for the WGA to see a way through its own conundrum in the foreseeable future. Nobody should hold their breath on that front, but one thing is clear: These negotiations will end not with a video, but a vision. If SAG leadership doesn’t provide that, then its membership will have to fill in the gaps.
As usual, I invite feedback to this weekly column: eric@indiewire.com
Last week, I wrote about the changing of the guard at TCM and its perilous situation at WarnerMedia Discovery. Here are a few of the responses I received:
Seems to me that with all the creative people who treasure TCM we should be be able to come up with a way to save it from the every day monetization pressures suffered by all networks. … TCM has been an integral part of the maintaining the history of America through the eyes of film. It’s almost like PBS — and perhaps should be funded in an alternative way where it is not subject to the whims of studio executives who are strictly interested in the bottom line. I see TCM as a cultural treasure. I imagine with the monetary support of directors actors and philanthropists as well as a structure that removes TCM from the competitive market — and perhaps looks at it more as an educational channel — TCM can be saved without being chopped down.—A TCM SUBSCRIBER
Your article is a perfect distillation of what our future needs. You speaking up on TCM’s behalf means the world to all of us.—A CURRENT TCM STAFFER
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