Those of you who are long time
readers of my column might be aware that in July of 2023 I began a series of
articles called the Disruption Series in response to what was quickly becoming
the longest work stoppage in Hollywood industry: the joint strike held by the
WGA and SAG-AFTRA.
These articles weren't directly
political – I still wasn't comfortable writing about politics in anything but
in an indirect fashion back then – but in hindsight they were for me the first
step that caused me to essentially begin to push back hard again the most
well-known left-leaning people in America. Most of my concern was about the
health of the industry that was the bread and butter of my columns and whose
work I still worship immensely. I knew that Hollywood was still struggling to
recover after the pandemic, that streaming was starting to undermine sources of
entertainment such as network and cable severely and that increasingly networks
were beginning to merge with studios and streaming services in order they could
survive financially. This was hardly the time to destabilize the industry
further with a labor stoppage.
And yet for the summer and well
into the fall that's what both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA chose to do. In doing so
they brought out all of the worst aspects of Hollywood's personalities and
perhaps for the clearest time yet demonstrated to outsiders that for all of
their so-called beliefs in liberal values and equality, at the end of the day that stopped at their own pocketbook.
For all the cosplaying they did as working stiffs on picket lines, what they
really were doing was portraying themselves as John Galts. In their minds they
were the job creators and the corporations needed to bow before them and pay
them what they believed they were worth. That the overwhelming majority were
already multimillionaires was irrelevant, that the industry might not have any
money to pay them from streaming was not even considered. Their logic
demonstrated that they couldn't understand economics at even a first grade
level; in their minds Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos were billionaires, so they must
be hiding the royalties from Black Bird and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel from
all of the hardworking people in Hollywood. The fact that many streaming
services were beginning to collapse because there was no money – Netflix would
reveal it had been lying about its ratings during this period and would have to
start both raising subscriptions and adding commercials to cover it – never
enters their minds at all. And they certainly didn't care how they were
affected the lives of all the other people who worked in Hollywood – caterers,
gaffers, set designers and everything else in the industry – who weren't like
Billy Porter and didn't have the benefit of a second house to sell to cover
expenses.
What's all the more galling is
that eventually both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA had to come back an accept a deal
that was, for all intents and purposes, not much better than the one the DGA
had accepted a month before both industries went on strike. Hollywood has gone
out of its way to polish the turd for its members and for the audiences they
have but I will be damned if I can see what they actually gained. A writer for Smash
said she got a 6 cent royalty check from Hulu and Mandy Moore said she got
one for 11 cents for This Is Us. The streamers were never underpaying
the talent; there was no money there to give.
If it anything the industry is
still recovering from the strike across the board and we continue to see
economic cutbacks everywhere. Hollywood, to be clear, sees no correlation
between their actions and these increasingly bad times for the industry, if
anything they've become more arrogant in their outrage towards the corporate
oligarchs in the aftermath of the 2024 election. What this has done,
increasingly, is make them sound even more tone deaf and out of touch then they
were during the strike as well as more ungrateful to the industry. The only
lesson they've learned is that they want to protect their own finances and
can't bear to lose even more money. So when time came to negotiate contracts
for both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA earlier this year there was none of the drama or
tension as before: all sides agreed quietly and with little reaction.
What almost nobody mentioned,
except in some journals during the industry is that there was a labor
stoppage going on involving one of the Hollywood unions that was vital to the
strike of 2023 and yet no one in any part of the industry wanted to talk about
it. The biggest reason is that it would lay bare just how selfish and ultimately
hypocritical the industry in a way that none of their tone-deaf performative
activism ever could.
On February 17th the
staff union connected with the WGA West, which is located in LA, went out on a
picket line demanding better wages and 'just cause protection'. The people who
were essential to so many aspects of the WGA West in LA – no doubt playing a
vital role in so much the work during the 2021 strike – are not rich people.
They have a salary floor of $43,000 which in California is horrible. They
wanted a work increase wage somewhere between 15-20 percent they settled for
four. They also wanted their salary floor increased to $57,000, longevity
increases for those who had worked at the union for five, ten or fifteen years.
They also wanted a labor-management committee and contractor protections.
The picket line became a staple
outside the headquarters on Fairfax Avenue and 3rd Street. To say
this was awkward for the WGA is putting it mildly because they were trying to negotiate
with the studios for a better deal for themselves. Now you'd think in an industry
that deals both with optics and trying to deal with negotiations they'd want to
put forth a model of being good management as well of progressivism.
Instead they have been accused of
terminating the employing of a union organizer and supporters, bargaining the
contract in bad faith, many staffers alleging they were stripped of their
health insurance and illegal surveillance of their employees. Indeed showing no
sense of optics at one point representatives of the WGA attempted to enter a
build for film and TV bargaining while they're protestors were present. The
fact that this took place just three years after accusing corporations of being
bad bosses shows a kind of bizarre lack of self-awareness. Writers have
actually called this strike 'embarrassing' and says this 'degrades the goodwill
we won during our strike'.
To be clear these writers mean
the goodwill they got with the corporate interests, not the people who don't
have jobs in Hollywood that isn't related to talent. They made it clear multiple
times during the strike they couldn't give a damn. The most obvious example
came when Drew Barrymore began her talk show because she wanted to provide an
income for the people who worked under her and were starting to undergo financial
strain due to loss of income. Everyone would immediate vilify Barrymore on
social media, eventually causing her to back down. This was the clearest example
to that point (there were far more to come, unfortunately) about the basic
selfishness of the industry and their lack of compassion when it came to so many of the values they preached.
Much of this took place during
the height of award season and while A-List talent was telling ICE to F---
itself, screaming at a man with Tourette's for being a racist and accusing the
men's hockey team of being sexist, there was no support among these speakers
for the people striking in LA. In an irony the writers themselves couldn't
script the WGA canceled its LA awards ceremony so that the dues paying members
wouldn't have to cross a picket line – and more importantly not get involved in
what would have been awkward conversation with the media about this. They held
the ceremony in New York where every winner would celebrate themselves away
from the ugliness of labor strikes. To be sure Hollywood had no problem
cancelling every awards show in the fall of 2023 until the strikes involving
them were resolved, something that I'm very sure no one wanted to talk about.
This deal, I should add is, the
exact same kind of scale that was arranged with WGA East which settled in
February of 2026, right about the time WGA West was rejecting it. The deal they
have is prohibitive and still needs to be voted on by the rank and file but I
have little doubt it will be approved.
My sympathy is far greater for
the staff members at WGA West that it ever could be for those who pay dues.
These people were vital to their industry in a subtler and more important way
and clearly make far less then the talent involved. It also shows the very real
contrast for what the writers and actors claimed they were doing. They were cosplaying
at being working stiffs; these people actually were – and they couldn't be
bothered to even wear a pin in solidarity. I guess they were too busy
make it clear that no one was illegal on stolen land to help people who were
having trouble paying rent.
If Fox News and right-wing media
hasn't been paying some attention to this story and using it as part of their
nightly broadcast for the last three months then they're clearly not as good at
their job as so many people have thought they were for this time. To be sure
much of Hollywood's actual behavior and the left overall has more than provided
multiple examples of their greatest hypocrisies possible and considering that
the GOP doesn't have the best relationship with organized labor these days this
would probably cause backlash on them from the left who will gladly point out
right-wing hypocrisy to cover their own any day of the week.
Yet this 'strike within a strike'
could not be a clearer example in microcosm of so many of the hypocrisies
within Hollywood's progressivism, not the least the way they have recent
decided that corporations are villains and rich people are the enemy. That
Sarah Paulson, while this strike was still going on, chose to spend $100,000 for
an invitation to the Met Gala, no doubt hundreds of thousands on a costume to
show she was against the one percent ,while so many of the people who had
played a role in her continued prosperity struggled for a working wage and
health insurance, is perhaps the most tone-deaf part of an excruciating level
of performative behavior.
Millionaire actors have been
jetting around the world protesting film festivals, attending awards shows
while wearing pins protesting the administration, calling their corporations
out for fascism, using the public airwaves to rail against all the evils Republicans
are doing to the average American all while a picket line is going on outside
negotiations to make sure they get more millions for themselves. This is the
kind of behavior you'd expect on Succession or at The White Lotus and
somehow the people who create and star in it are as blind to their foolishness
as anyone at Waystar Royco.
It is bad enough that Hollywood has
basically decided that terms like 'limousine liberal' are no longer slurs but
badges of honor that they were like the pins on their awards shows. That at the
end of the day they are just selfish when it comes to feeding off the fruits of
the labors and have no more problem ignoring the working stiff then the corporate
bosses that are on the sides of conservatives is the biggest sign yet of their
own hypocrisies. The WGA West strike and how Hollywood spent the height of
awards season pretending not to see the little people who put them where they
were should be the clearest reason yet for why anyone who still thinks it is
important for a celebrity to 'share the values that you do' is nearly as
clueless as the celebrities themselves.
Celebrities are a bunch of rich entertainers
who are very much part of the one percent themselves. They're performers who
can read a line of virtue signaling as well as any line of dialogue. They are
as selfish as the MAGA politicians they rail against as now being in line with the
values of the 'average American.' To be clear they haven't been an 'average
American' for a very long time. Average Americans don't go to film festivals,
have thousands of cameras pointed on their every move, get royalty checks from
movies they made twelve years ago that you didn't see, win shiny awards that
are gold plated or get paid a million dollars for appearing in a coffee
commercial. So why should you believe them when they say that they think that
the corporations are exploiting the average person? They've made a lot of money
because of these corporations and will do everything they can to get more money
from them.
But speak up for the people who help
them make their millions and who need health insurance and money for rent? Quiet,
we're too busy in an awards show surrounded by our fellow millionaires
screaming at the policies of another group of millionaires about how the
working people in states hundreds of miles away are suffering.
To be very clear I'm not going to
stop watching their movies and TV shows any time soon; I drank that Kool-Aid
long ago and I can still separate the artist from the art. Just try to remember
that these actors can't separate time from their busy schedules to support the
people who helped them get their 6 cent checks from Amazon next time you ask if
"they share your values"
They can afford to and they can
afford not to. I can't say the same for those who worked at WGA West –
and those are the ones you should feel for.
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