Television's favorite sweetheart receptionist is not finished speaking out on the Hollywood Writers' Strike. And I have to say - the more I understand the differences the more I am siding with the writers.
Hey everyone! Thank you for all of your support with the strike. Trust me, all of us want to get back to work. We are hoping for a speedy resolution. We love making the show. We love being together and working together. But more importantly, we need to get back to work so we can get this town up and running again. It is already starting to get ugly.
Who does this strike effect?
This strike effects so many people. I read a comment from a girl in Chicago who said that her internship in California was cancelled because of the strike. I guess the production she was going to work on was shut down. Now, she doesn't have time to set up a new internship in time to graduate and that means her student loans will be due. She'll have to get a job to cover the bills and that means, no time for an internship and no graduation. Like a vicous circle.
Every week that we don't produce our show is a week we don't get paid. We are weekly workers not salaried employees. No show, no paycheck. The actors and writers on the show can hold out. We have savings. We can afford to be out of work while we fight the good fight. But there are a lot of crew members who are going to be struggling through the holidays this year because of the shut down of production. This is true every time a production shuts down around town. And this breaks my heart. A lot of these folks live paycheck to paycheck.
Our crew is amazing. They have been dedicated to our show from the beginning often working long difficult hours without all the spoils of having your face on TV. AND, they continued to show their support even as the show was being shut down. Check out our PA Dan's blog about his last day at work...
Who benefits from the strike? Who are we fighting for?
Some people have asked if everyone will benefit from the strike or if only the writers benefit. The Writers Guild only negotiates for writers. However, they are the first union contract to be up with the studios. The Actor's Guild contract is up in June 2008 and you can bet we will be fighting for the same residuals. It is important to support the writer's strike because the results of this strike will trickle down to the other union contracts...just like how a court ruling effects future rulings. We are a union show and hire union crew members.
And, as James put it in his blog: "This is for middle-class writers – your regular TV staff writers and people who may have done one or two small feature films. Residuals are a way they can make perhaps a few thousand dollars a year between gigs. This is a way they can put food on the table and pay the rent during downtime – and downtime is something almost all writers (and actors and directors) have."
Let's say you write a movie script and you sell it for $100,000...that's GREAT money! Your movie gets made and yada yada. You start churning away writing more scripts. But it takes you 4 years before you sell your next script. That $100,000 windfall is now stretched to $25,000 a year for 4 years. (And, I'm not even counting the 30% that goes to taxes and 25% to your agent/manager.) If during that 4 years they sell your movie on DVD or run it on Pay-per-view you get little residual checks for $1,000 here or $2,500 there. That money is essential for getting by. This scenerio is what the majority of writers, actors and directors in Hollywood face. You have a few flush years and then a big drought.
The future of media is the internet. In a few years it is more likely that you will download a movie or television show than buy it on DVD. But as it currently stands, those downloads produce no residuals for the creative types that made them. All the profit goes to the studio.
This is a great video with snazzy graphics that helps explain the strike. The studios stand to earn a projected $2 billion over the next few years from internet downloads. But they dont' want to share.