The Disruption Series: A 'Humorous' Memorial

 

Note: This piece will be different from the lion’s share of those in this series.  The tone is a satirical one. But whereas most satirical pieces on this column often list barely fictional things to express absurdity, unfortunately, all of the things I am about to mention in this blog have actually happened in the past two weeks in regard to the strike in Hollywood and, like so much of reality these days, is more absurd than any parody could be.

To be clear, I don’t find any of the events in this article the least bit amusing but considering how seriously so many of the subjects involved seem to be taking them when they say them, I feel the only way to deal with it is with the seriousness it deserves. For me, it is a case of laugh so you do not throw things in the screen.  I’m hoping writing this column will be therapeutic for me as it is entertaining for my readers.

 

We regret to inform our readers that this weekend Hollywood’s integrity and self-respect all died of several self-inflicted wounds.  It is unclear the exact age of the subjects were when they passed because, like everyone else in Hollywood, they consistently lied about their age and kept having work done to make it hard to tell how old they actually were.

Their respective passing was met with surprise from nearly every single media outlet in the world, and the reactions were divided between those had never believed they had existed in the first place and those who had thought they had passed away years ago.

Indeed neither has ever been incredibly healthy over the years and could never be taken seriously whenever either showed their faces. The only times they did were in the beginning of every year and occasionally in September and since each time usually correlated with certain individuals accepting worthless trophies at the time, few doubted the sincerity of its existence to begin with. Attempts to try and bolster it through social causes and politics were always met with cynicism and hypocrisy, both of which have made fewer public appearances but are in far better health at the time of this writing.

Over the course of the past year, both tried their best to put themselves back in the spotlight during contract negotiations with the studios and services, which would later lead to a work stoppage among the WGA which only ended a few weeks ago and SAG-AFTRA which continues to this day. Ironically, it was this attempt that would lead to the series of injuries over the last several weeks that would cause the mortal injuries that led to its expiring this Saturday.

The WGA was responsible for many of the injuries over the spring and summer of 2023. They publicly berated their members of the DGA  when they negotiated terms a full month before the WGA went on strike.  They referred to those members as ‘sell-outs’ and that the terms they received were ‘unreasonable’. When they went out on the picket line May 1^st, members of SAG-AFTRA went out to join them and offered support throughout the early weeks, though it would later be revealed though hypocrisy and cynicism publicly doubted their motives. “They’re only doing this to see if it will help them getting better terms,” both said in a joint statement. “They don’t respect these people to begin with and they’re only in it for themselves.” This statement, completely ignored by the liberal media, proved to be tellingly accurate.

Indeed, when SAG-AFTRA went on strike in mid-July, these prophecies quickly began to play out. SAG-AFTRA’s attempts at proving to be one of the masses proved to be among several small but still not-fatal wounds over the months. As millionaires Aaron Paul and Shawn Ryan claimed that they had been screwed by Netflix out of royalties and Billy Porter claimed he was hurting for having to sell ‘one of his houses’,  the blows were hard to deal with.

Whenever individuals tried to act to acknowledge that both these institutions were sick, they were quickly overridden by the membership of both guilds and abetted by the liberal media. Drew Barrymore made an attempt in August to try and help the health of both her personal industry and colleagues by starting her show again and arguing for it. Bill Maher, who has been railing about the poor health of integrity and self-respect for decades, publicly stated on air that both SAG and the WGA were showing none of the latter and doing so at the cost of hurting their industry.  An attack by social media forced Barrymore to retreat from her stand and Maher would only back down after negotiations with the WGA resumed. In both cases, the leftist media chose to show them as villains while allowing their own hypocrisy and cynicism to continue to flourish. (Attempts to reach either for comment were ignored.)

In mid-September, a tentative agreement was finally reached and voted on between the WGA and the studios. Members of the guild trumpeted this is as a victory for integrity and self-respect, which both the liberal media and members of the late night shows were willing to trumpet. Few noticed the joint statement cynicism and hypocrisy issued in which they pointed out the deal was essentially little different than the one the WGA had walked away from the table from in May. “We all hardly surprised at the shouts of victory,” they said in their statement. “This is a business that is superb as polishing turds.”

Still it is agreed that integrity and self-respect might have recovered from these wounds and managed to survive if not flourish, had it not been for SAG-AFTRA’s attitude when they returned to the negotiating table earlier this month. Over a week passed and it seemed like things might return to normal when the negotiations were suspended two weeks ago.

Ironically, the two lead representatives for SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, who many thought might lead to the restoration of both entities, inflicted the fatal wounds that led to its passing this weekend. The first occurred after Netflix head Ted Sarandos said that negotiations had fallen apart because the SAG-AFTRA head had demanded a ‘levy’ on every subscriber that would have cost the struggling industry nearly $800 million.  Rather than deny this statement outright, Drescher argued that ‘it would only cost each subscriber 57 cents.”

This was a blow that could have been fatal on its own – the health of both Hollywood’s integrity and self-respect have always depended on the average person not having to think that their lives will be impacted by actions in Hollywood, and admitting as much was a gaffe so virulent that it revealed the truth behind the curtain. But over the course of the last week, when members of their own guild tried to do whatever they could to preserve both of these fragile institutions, Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland not only rejected the care but made the existing injuries far worse.

It was not helped that earlier that seem week, members of the WGA issued a harsh statement against the union for not offering a statement of support of Israel after the attacks on Hamas the previous week. Both hypocrisy and cynicism actually offered separate quotes about the statements that were issued by SAG-AFTRA and the DGA and the ones the statement made by Joel Fields earlier this week.

“They’ve been in their bubble for too long,” Hypocrisy said. “If they really think that anything Tom Cruise or Martin Scorsese says matters to anyone outside of Hollywood, they lived a world as illusory as the ones they created.”

Cynicism pointed out the absurdity of Fields’ statement. “If Joel Fields truly has never experience anti-Semitism until now and considered Hollywood a safe-space, he clearly has not lived in the town for long.”

Both commented how quickly they were willing to turn on both integrity and self-respect now that they were back at work. “Not one month after getting the deal, and  now their attitude towards their union is ‘What have you done for me lately?’”

Perhaps aware of the injuries to both institutions, a group of actors led by George Clooney over $150 million of their own money if that would bring both sides back together. Within hours Crabtree-Ireland said: “that he did not think this would resolve anything.” Rejecting the kind of money that all Americans would kill for – including some members of the guild – was a blow so great that it is unlikely either could have withstood.

But the next day, a memo was issued that delivered a flow so fatal that integrity and self-respect in any institution could have handled it. Indeed, before lapsing into a Congressionally induced coma, political integrity heard the news and asked if that was a headline from The Onion.

With the arrival of Halloween quickly approaching the leadership of the guild publicly issued a memo that none of its members or their children should wear costumes for projects that are currently in the public eye such as Barbie or Wednesday Addams.  This blow was so deep and so quick that both expired even before last-minute attempts at resuscitation could be offered.

Mandy Moore and Ryan Reynolds both reacted as if this was absurd. Moore demanded they try and remember who they work for, and Reynolds told them that he would dress his eight year old daughter and say she was ‘a scab’. Previous SAG-AFTRA president Melissa Gilbert,  who tried her best to maintain the health of both institutions during troubling times publicly berated the leadership of the guild and the writers of the essay. 

These efforts proved to be too little, too late. And not content with killing both in one fell swoop, leadership issued another statement standing by the original noticed. Observers of the remains of both say that burial has been proven impossible because neither can stop spinning long enough.

There are few remaining relations or friends both still alive or have made any comments about the passing of both these institutions. Only Hollywood creativity, still recovering from a lingering illness, had any comments to issues.

“Those bastards!” they shouted. “Bad enough, that they put me on life support over the last five months. I finally wake up and I have to hear this! I knew this would be the death of them! I knew those SOBs never gave a damn about them! But they could have just them die a natural death!  An election was coming up. They could have died of their own terms! This – I’ve talked to every single muse that’s still working and none of them would have tried to put this in any one of their projects because no one would fucking believe it!”

“And of course they’ll walk away from it clean! They always do! It’s not like they ever gave a damn about them in the first place. All they cared about were the vices. They’ve owned this town since they got here! You know, the devil left this town in 1934. Said there was nothing to do here. No souls to sell because none of them had one to begin with.”

“And of course using them as shields when all they wanted to indulge was their vices. They didn’t need too! They’re rich! This town will always need them! Maybe not the same way they have for years but they’re always going to be a place for them! There are too many other businesses that depend on them for this place to ever  shut down and they know it! Hell, it’s not like any of them have to keep working here. Even the obscure ones never die in poverty or don’t have skills to fall back on!”

“But that’s the thing. All seven of them have done to a good job here. And they all work in concert so perfectly that none of the people who work here even think they exist. And they’ve collaborated so perfectly that these people really think that the world would stop if they didn’t do anything.”

“It hasn’t, of course!  The world has kept on spinning without them. Of course, every time a camera turns on them they’re convinced it doesn’t. Hell, even I know I’m not as vital as some of my colleagues in other fields. But I’m the only one working that people notice and care about. “

“But I know how this town works. No matter how many scenarios that I create for them, this town is pure formula.  They’ll come back to the table in a few weeks because they can’t live without a camera looking at them. They’ll accept a deal maybe two or three percent better than the one they walked away from this month. It won’t help the industry’s problems and hell knows, they’ve just made them worse, but they won’t care. They’ll use the names of my dead friends in vain as their shield and say they care about the future. The future never exists in this town. All they care about is more in the present.”

“And then I’ll have to go back to work. And people will forget. Those in Hollywood. The rest of the world has never cared about anyone involved, not my dead friends, certainly not me. All they ever care about is what appears on their screens. They never give a fuck about how it gets there.”

“I want to believe they died for something. But I’ve been in this town too long. One of my favorite colleagues once said this town has respect for dead but not for the living. That’s not true anymore. These days they don’t even notice the dead. They sure as hell won’t have a segment for them at the SAG Awards.”

Okay, that last rant wasn’t planned but it made me feel a bit better. I’ll have a more serious statement about this later on.