Some More News - The WGA Strike, Streaming Villains, and Bad AI Scripts w/ Jen D'Angelo

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Hi. On today's episode, film and television writer Jen D'Angelo joins Katy and Cody to talk about the WGA strike, why pay for writers has declined, how giant corporations are killing creativity, and why AI will never replace human writers. Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews  Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949  SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh    Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  So protect yourself with the VPN that I use and trust. Use my link EXPRESSVPN.com/MORENEWS today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package. That's EXPRESSVPN.com/MORENEWS. Visit EXPRESSVPN.com/MORENEWS to learn more. If you want to take ownership of your health, today is a good time to start. Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/MORENEWS.

Hey Turkey Burgers! Booyah! This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN, the only VPN that currently exists. I can say that because time is an illusion created by our brains' ability to retain memories. But I assure you that the past and future have no physical reality. ExpressVPN doesn't log or sell your activity like a lot of cheap or free VPNs. They're extremely fast and easy to use on any of your devices. Just one touch of a button is all you need.

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Wait, my name is Cody Johnston. Hi. Hi, Cody Johnston. Joining us today for the first time, writer, producer, and comedian whose credits include Hocus Pocus 2, Young Rock, and Workaholics. That's right, it's Jen D'Angelo. Hi. Hello. Everyone's freaking out right now, I know it. Thank you guys so much for having me. We're thrilled to have you. I have been really, we're going to get to this. We'll talk more about this very soon, but I have been following your posts about the

writer's strike and everything. So we're very thrilled to have you here today. You've been very eloquent in how you discuss this. And so, yeah, we appreciate you taking the time because i know there's a lot going on right now no i am so thrilled i all i want to do is talk about the strike because i feel so strongly about it and every time i try to write about it i'm like oh wait i'm trying so hard to distill this into digestible it's really hard it's really complicated it's complicated and taking the time

distilling it into shareable bits is important coming on these shows is important because i know everybody has lots of questions and most we all work in the entertainment industry so we have access to more information but i think a lot of people at home don't necessarily have that there's a lot going on in the world so we'll unpack that but first we must celebrate some holidays oh good favorite part of the show good holidays oh yeah these are worth celebrating good holidays worth celebrating today may 25th thursday may 25th national tap dance day i quit tap dancing when i was i was a I don't want to say overweight child because I have lots of issues with how we classify weight and whatnot. But, you know, I also don't want to call a child curvy, but you know, I was, my first role was Mr. Beaver in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And my second one was the understudy for Augustus Gloop. in language in the wardrobe and my second one was the understudy for augustus gloop anyway i got i used to do tap dance but i quit because i felt really uncomfortable in my little

outfits oh no oh no i made it sad it's national tap dance day to all who celebrate to all who not you apparently i wanted to learn how to tap dance as a child so badly and never did. So that's its own tragedy. You know, it's like, why did I pursue my dreams from a young age? I know, but I think a lot of I mean, I was very taken with Shirley Temple. And I was like, I want to be on the good ship lollipop. I want to tap dance around. It just then I I became a more of an indoor kid. And I tap dance around it just then i i became a more of an indoor kid

and i tap dance every day so we have the whole spectrum of tap dance experience do you no i don't but i've known you for so long and i've never did yeah at one point for some show i don't know i'll still sometimes shuffle around like pretending but it's that counts can i share one sentence from the wikipedia page for national tap dance day yes please do this is a direct quote tap dance day is celebrated online with 27,518,521 mentions on social media in 2016 citation needed citation needed so someone just made that up that's so many mentions it's a big specific number that's also what happened in 2016 specifically that was just like a boom may 25th donald trump was running for office yeah he hadn't yet won so is hillary tapping

his way to the white house yeah uh apparently george hw bush signed this holiday into law that's correct oh so in 1989 a little piece of taylor swift was born oh so coming full circle connected yeah yeah she's famous tap dance or taylor swift Taylor Swift. Okay. May 26th, Friday, May 26th, National Title Track Day, a day to celebrate songs that share a title with the album they come from. Notable examples include the Beatles' Let It Be, the Velvet Underground's White Light, White Heat,

and Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin'. I would also throw out Dark Side of the moon not to fact check immediately but there's no song on that album called dark side of the moon oh title lyrics does that i think it's just a song on the album that shares the title with the album okay so take that back. Harvest Moon. Yeah. Gotcha. Longest pause in the world.

I had to go through. No, no, no. Oh, there it is. Old King. Yeah, why not? Why did he? American Idiot. Harvest Moon and Harvest, which I think is too similar. The Benz.

Neil Young, if you're listening. if you're listening to mess with you i know it's me specifically heroes heroes that's one of them thriller come on we can fill out an hour podcast with this yeah uh yeah i'm gonna continue reading this uh list that somebody else made of this is specific category there are 50 items so strap in everybody born in the usa jolene all right oh yeah oh jolene that's i mean this is like we do talk about the news and we're gonna get to that oh yeah but we also talk about purple rain and london calling this is like either i nobody's asked me this recently but i was thinking about the answer to what are your you know if you're stranded on a desert island you think it's an

impossible question to answer and if you only have one answer then i don't know so you're not gonna answer you're just gonna say that you don't want to answer. But I would say that Graceland, the White Album, you know, maybe like something else. I can't choose one. I would cheat and take like a, now that's what I call music compilation. Oh wait, that's a really good answer. Yeah. That's a really good answer. Different moods, different vibes.

Yeah. Yeah. I just kind of think that the key is to yes a box something big so there's lots of options yeah lots of b-sides to explore do the now this is now that's what they call music compilations have b-sides like deep cuts from those oh i mean probably at a certain point they're like i'll put this on it i guess running out of songs right that would be a good album or like playlist for them to release now it's just like songs that they were like you know what but we maybe missed it on this one this is the second marcy playground single i don't think we

needed to include that yeah these songs exist too yeah this music i don't know we'll work on the title but this is i think a really good idea for us to pursue. They're up to number 114, apparently. Wow. Allegedly coming out April of earlier this year. Wikipedia is not great, folks. We're not. Citation needed, please. Now I'm wondering, hey, gosh, there must be people that still buy those albums.

Gotta be. What, on iTunes or whatever iTunes is called now? Well, I mean. If they're coming out with another one i feel like streaming music is uh well didn't you just say so cody yeah i mean but april of this year allegedly oh well we've passed we blew right through that deadline vroom vroom that's the sound of healthy choices driving its motorcycle through the storefront window that is your life. Kaboom! Crash! Vroom! I'm talking, of course, about AG1 by Athletic Greens, a vitamin drink that will absolutely demolish you with nutrients.

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cool stuff of health okay jen now we get to know you a little bit what's going on how are you doing what's up um you know i'm on strike uh that's sort of like the main headline is uh yeah I've just been picketing a lot have you been out there every day I have been out there most days I have skipped a couple days I think a better way for me to phrase that is how often are you going because anyway yeah I know I am like I'm so sorry no no, no. Silly me. Yeah. Because I say that because I imagine and pretty soon SAG is going to hopefully be joining officially. And I just think that it's an unbelievable amount of pressure.

And to know like I should go and do this. And it's a sustained effort. This isn't something that's just a couple weeks, people are gearing up, and we'll get into this very short soon. But you know, for the long haul, and you have to protect yourself, you have to, to live your life, you have to run your errands, you have to take care of your body and your mind. Totally. I know, it's, it's really inspiring to be out there. And so like going out there does feel really nice. And it feels good to sort of like have that sense of community and you feel like you're doing something. Although sometimes you feel like you're not doing anything, but

it's important to push through those moments. But yeah, it's definitely everyone has been gearing up for like a long haul. people have been talking about the strike for months like it was it seemed like a foregone conclusion um you know definitely at the beginning of this year uh and people have also been talking about how it's probably going to go at least through the summer and so everyone was sort of prepared for like okay we're we're gearing up uh and this is the beginning of a marathon so yeah yeah, it's... But it's also cool because I think a lot of people have been going if not every day, most

days of the week and just taking maybe a day off. So yeah. Summer of protesting. It's going to get hot soon. I know. But there is something... Yes, community building. Not networking, but yeah, getting a chance to interact with other riders

you know because it can be not isolating but some rooms are in person some are over zoom the last few years have been very intense totally and i imagine that there is if there's a silver lining it's this opportunity to connect and talk to people and i'm sure that is a benefit um totally i mean there have been so many people that i've talked to like out on the lines that's yeah honestly been such a weird development is to be like oh now it's just in my vocabulary like oh i was on the line yesterday yeah where's our union bosses and yeah but yeah like so many people have been saying like that it's so nice to real have that moment of realizing like oh you know I've been really struggling and having a really hard time these past few years and it's really nice to sort of realize that that's not

just my personal battle it's not just like oh, I'm not good enough or whatever. That is just like, oh, everyone has been feeling the same problem just in different ways. And so that's, you know, a silver lining ish of just being like, yeah, we're all in this together. You are a writer and a performer. Yeah. How long have you been in the wga and have you seen this coming the writing kind of on the wall and in what ways how how am i phrasing this everybody's become more political over the last few years and uh which is a good thing but seeing that but like a lot of people we're in arts and entertainment and you don't enter this thinking like I'm going to need to just be fighting for, you know, a big picture cause like this is an existential threat to your career. And I don't know just how long has this been brewing? How long have you got?

Do you get what I'm saying? I totally get what you're asking. I need writers to write things for me. No, I totally understand. So, OK, bear with me because this might be a long answer. Because I've been thinking so much about sort of my relationship to the strike and like why I feel so strongly and why it's brought up such strong emotions in me. And I've been in the WGA for 10 years. Good job. for 10 years. Good job. Thanks. I know. I like any career in entertainment is always going to involve a combination of hard work, talent and luck. Yep. And I feel like I definitely have had quite a bit of luck because I got my first writing job when I was 24. I was a staff writer on

Cougar Town. And then I worked in TV until now or until the strike. And I then in the past few years, like in 2019, was when I started working in features also. So the past, you know, three ish years, like I, I have had both. And so I've gotten to see a really wide array of things in this industry and sort of many different facets of how it works. And it really has been just realizing that over the past few years, everyone has been feeling the same problem just in their own different way. Like IATSE, which is the largest entertainment union, and they represent like the crew, like stagehands and live theater and, you know, like camera people, editors, like they represent a wide array of people. And in 2021, for the first time in that union's history in 128 years, they voted to authorize the strike, which was a really big deal. And I was on set a lot that fall and hearing all of their stories was really inspiring and eyeopening because, you know, they would say the struggles

that they're having and they would oftentimes be blaming, not blaming, but they would, they would be framing it as like the writers and producers and directors are making us do this and work this way. And I was listening to it, just thinking like, well, yeah, but that's like a trickle down of how the writers, directors, producers are being forced to work by the studios, which is the trickle down of how the studios are being forced to work by their corporations, which are now completely focused on stock prices and subscriber numbers and no longer traditional profits and creating good movies and creating good shows. Their goal completely changed. And then that has just fundamentally altered everything and just made everyone work harder and faster for less and less. And that's been a noticeable shift in the last few years. And I think part of why this

strike is so, you know, it's gained a lot of momentum where we're getting a lot of support is because everyone can see that it's the same problem and it's a systemic problem. Yeah. It's a solidarity issue, sort of hearing like, oh, me too. But even though it feels like you're in different worlds, you're all in the same world and having the same sort of pressures and uh demands on you even though you're doing different things totally like the jobs are so so different that it's really hard to kind of recognize the parallels of them but then when you actually talk to people you're like oh we're all just being told to work as hard as humanly possible as fast as humanly possible for as little money as possible like as cheap as you can it does not just feel but is the reality that the whole industry has shifted uh not just i mean we'll get into streaming and we'll get into

what the issues at hand here but all industries capitalism all of it is built on growth and you have to keep growing. And if you're not growing, then you're failing somehow, even though you're still it's not about like maintaining a reasonable level of profits so that you're taking care of the people that work for you so they can continue to work for you. That doesn't matter. that work for you so they can continue to work for you. That doesn't matter. And the people who are in charge of studios and the heads of it are only focused on, yes, you know, share prices, stockholders, their own personal profits, and their profits are skyrocketing. And they're also sorry to interrupt.

No, no, you go. I was gonna meander my way to a stopping point. Please go. It's also like, it's not even just, because I think the thing that gets, that I get really self-conscious about when I talk about the strike is like, when you talk about writers and actors wanting to have, you know, some semblance of stability or wanting to have, you know, fair wages, it gets caught up in this idea of like the entertainment industry is an inherently very risky industry. Like, you know, when I was in college and telling people, you know, I was studying screenwriting and telling people I wanted to be a writer, everyone that I talked to that worked in entertainment, I would ask them for advice and they would be like,

my best advice is if you can do literally anything else with your life, do that because this industry is so hard. It's so unpredictable. The work is inconsistent. The hours are long. The pay is really low for a really long time. You know, sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. You can go years without working, blah, blah, blah. So there's always that element of it.

And so, you know, I think it's easy if you don't know a writer and you don't, you know, know an actor, you're not hearing their personal struggles. I think it's easy to dismiss our concerns as like, well, that's just inherent in the business. But the business has changed so much where it's like, it's not just, okay, yes, we are a capitalist society. This is a business. They need to make money. They need to make profits. Of course, that's what they're doing. Now it's just like they're trying to win and they're trying to beat Netflix. And so that's why all of these places poured billions of dollars into their streaming platforms without any clear sense of how they were going to make that money back. Like, oh, they could only really make that money back, I guess,

like if they remain the sole streamer, I guess, and the other ones fold and they become the only producer of entertainment. So it's not even like, it's not even capitalism. It's just like this, you know, crazy competition among these handful of multimillionairesaires billionaires or whatever at the very very top and nobody wins in it not even them like they're all you know these companies are struggling i think is what we can yeah assume based on uh what we're seeing like the layoffs

and uh the cost, the belt tightening. The constant changes of names of streaming platforms. Totally. The constant rebrands. Yeah. So it's just like, it's not even like this business is warping into something that I don't recognize where like the, just everything feels like it's all out of whack. just everything feels like it's all out of whack well and we're so far away from the goal which is to create art which is so fundamentally important to culture to our society um to blue collar

workers at the end of the day from everybody affects everybody everybody uh consumes entertainment and media and there is you, again, existential questions that are arising here is like, what is the future of this industry? What is, and if we allow the studios to get their way, what does that mean for what we're consuming 10 years down the line, 20 years down the line? I want to circle back to what you were saying about how, you know, there's this idea that this, we all understand that it's a risky business to get into. However, that has always been true. You know,

it's not a guarantee that you're going to find work or employment, but once you're in LA and in entertainment, and if you are able to stick it out and, you know, find your path, it used to be sustainable. It used to actually be a viable career. But now, even if you are one of the lucky people that have a job that gets staffed, it's not a realistic profession, especially if you need to be living close to Los Angeles or New York City, where the

cost of living is so high, you need to make an astronomical amount of money in order to actually feel secure. And, and it's, it's a huge problem. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's, it really is. You know, so when I first started out, one of my first jobs, I was a production assistant, which is the lowest, you know, so when I first started out, one of my first jobs, I was a production assistant, which is the lowest, you know, it's like an entry level job on a TV show. I was a production assistant on the Big Bang Theory for season five, which was the season that they hit 100 episodes. So I was there for the 100th episode party.

That was like a huge milestone because that means your show is going to go into syndication. It's going to be rerun. You get paid every time people, it's like, we're making a lot of money. And I got to see, you know, all the people that worked on that show, like the crew, I got to see what it's like for them

to have some semblance of stability to be on this long running show that did 22 episodes. They, you know, it was a job that they could count on and that was so rare but it existed now that doesn't exist at all no one is doing seasons that long uh you know syndication who even knows what that's going to be like who even knows what television is going to look like as the like these studios keep reinventing their streamers or whatever and funneling stuff onto that. Like you just watched, I've just watched all of the extremely rare life rafts that we had just sink. And now everyone is just kind of treading water, just like furiously trying to stay afloat as best they can.

of treading water, just like furiously trying to stay afloat as best they can. And then, you know, maybe you'll luck out. And for whatever reason, you'll find some way to support yourself, but it's becoming so rare. And now, you know, it used to be that, yes, it's absolutely impossible to get your first writing job, but then it's at least a little bit easier to get your second, and then a little bit easier to get your third. And now you have people with good credits and good reputations who are going years in between writing jobs just because the jobs aren't there anymore

because these streamers are saying, we're actually not going to give you a full writing budget for your television show. And the job that used to be done by 10 people, we want you to do entirely yourself or else we will not pick up your show. And the job that used to be done by 10 people, we want you to do entirely yourself or else we will not pick up your show. Right, despite the fact that there's more content out there than ever before,

yet fewer opportunities exist. And that's just a wild, such a weird way to run things. Yeah. We were talking about how streaming changed the landscape so much in terms of the jobs that are available. There are these mini rooms, which I want to ask about at some point, but I really am interested in how the residuals have changed because clearly people aren't getting residuals the

way they used to from syndication on streaming. And a lot of that is in terms of the transparency in that we don't know how many people are watching a specific thing. And you wrote a major streaming sequel. And I'm wondering if you have any idea how many people watched Hocus Pocus 2 on Disney Plus. No. Okay. So every time I talk about Hocus Pocus 2,

I will jokingly be like the allegedly successful movie. I have a sense of how well it did based on sort of just talking to people. And, you know, I know that people saw it and people liked it, but I have no idea how many people actually saw it. And no residuals for streaming for the WGA are based currently are based on viewership. They don't take viewership into account at all. It's wild. It's crazy. And so I got I got my first residual, my first and only so far residual check for Hocus Pocus 2. And I was just sort of like, I have no idea of knowing if this

is the correct amount or not. I have no idea what this is even based on. And then I, you know, I talked to a friend who had a movie released on streaming that, you know, definitely was not talked about as much as Hocus Pocus was. And their residual check was more than double what I got. And I was just sort of like, again, I have no idea of knowing if that's correct, what this is based on. And, you know, there's been the residuals system in Hollywood has always been, you know, it's, it's an open secret that when you have some part of profit share, you are probably going to have to force the studio to open their books for you either by like suing them or threatening to sue them to actually see that you are getting

the appropriate profit share because it's very easy. I mean, think of what a budget for a movie entails. It entails like an explosions budget. Like it entails like catering. Like, you know, there's, it's such a massive, you know, mountain of accounting. And so it's very easy to kind of be like, to hide your profits and be like, oh, well, this actually wasn't profitable. So the profit share that you got is actually correct. Like like it's that's been open secret for so long that it's just like you really have to force the studios to be honest with you and now we don't even have the ability to do that there's no transparency yeah there's zero because even back then yeah like they don't they wouldn't necessarily expect anybody to make a stink

about it because like oh i got a check finally. Like, you know, I'm so grateful for this money. Put people in these sort of situations of like desperation in some sense. And then you get a little bit and you're like, fine, whatever you say. And now there's not even that. Yeah.

Yeah. I should correct myself. Sorry. I did just say something incorrect. We do have the ability to sort of force the streamers to be honest with us. Like you can, like for Hocus Pocus, I contacted the ability to sort of force the streamers to be honest with us like you can like for hocus pocus i contacted the guild to be like what is this number that i just got and is

it correct like it feels low and uh they got back to me and they were like we looked into it and that is the appropriate amount based on the formula that we have viewership is not considered in that formula at all so you know you don't get compensated for the success of it at all what is but the deal does have the ability to look how is viewership not in the formula like what other numbers are there that's it's like it's some formula that's based on i think like the number of of i was gonna guess like subscribers within that period yeah like that's so i don't even know if it's within that period i honestly don't know what it is i mean look we're talking around something that it is incredibly complicated to wrap our minds anybody's mind around how you parse this out

it's a completely different technology than traditional you know and it's also like talking to people on the line um you know you get to talk to people who were here for like the strike in 1984 and the strike in 2007 and you know the strike in 1984 was over vhs tapes and like home video and wanting to make sure that we were involved in the in the success of our work in this new medium of home video and VHS. 2007, it was a lot about DVDs. And it was also about getting jurisdiction over things released on the internet. And so if we hadn't gone on strike in 2007, the WGA would not have any jurisdiction over these streaming platforms whereas we now have kind of like some jurisdiction but they can skate through by claiming their new media and so then they can

get these like low budget rates and undercut all of our protections because they're quote new media even though they're now even though the bulk of the business yeah and also like i would not obviously like streaming happens via the internet but i would not obviously like streaming happens via the internet but i would not categorize streaming services as like oh that like internet content like internet totally no i mean it's a new difference crazy is like i hocus pocus in terms of what the writer sorry this is like really nitty gritty so uh no this is great so the writers guild you know has very clear delineations between like how something is released so you know there's all these rules for like is this a television show that's released on network tv here's how you get paid here's what the

profit share structure is like is this a cable television show is this going to be released in movie theaters whatever blah blah blah for streaming it's this weird thing where hocus pocus 2 in the eyes of the wga was considered a tv movie and so that got into like weird stuff with like crediting the writers because you know it's different in tv versus movies and meanwhile it's the same of pages. You have to put in the same amount of effort. There's no difference between making a movie for streaming and making a movie for theatrical. You just get paid less. That's the only difference is that you get paid less and you don't participate in the success of it at all. Like the day to day of making it is the exact same. So there's so many stories being shared right now of people, you know, Emmy winning writers and literally are on food stamps or have negative account bank accounts.

And it's just I just want our listeners at home to be able to wrap their minds around it, because it's still I know that there are some people that say it's Hollywood elites or yeah but what you know you get yeah you'll get a paycheck for that might look impressive to somebody but then you have to make that last and like understanding some of the nature of this it's just I guess we've already covered it but yeah it's just impossible no I mean I think about that a lot when talking about residuals because, you know, residuals on the surface, you know, residuals for anyone that doesn't know, it's essentially just a royalty. So it's as if like you invented a product and then sold it to a larger company and you kept a piece of the profits.

That's all it is. Like it's, you know, books, like authors get a percentage of the sales of their books because they created that. Authors get a percentage of the sales of their books because they created that. And when we're talking about the residuals being taken away and that we want to participate in the success of our work, I think sometimes people can view that as us asking for just a bonus. We want the money. But residuals are truly a very important part of the economy of this industry because the work is so sporadic and there's so much stuff that's out of your control. You're not a full-time employee. You're an independent contractor. So there are times where you will just not be working through no fault of your own.

your own. And residuals allow for people to sustain those times that they are not working, which means that you can keep skilled people in the workforce. Like there are so many people who are leaving the entertainment industry. And this is happening in every industry. I mean, every industry is feeling this squeeze of like, what am I doing this for? The pay is getting lower. The work is getting harder. I don't want to stay in this. And so they're leaving. the pay is getting lower, the work is getting harder. I don't want to stay in this. And so they're leaving. And you're losing all of these talented, passionate people, your workforce is getting worse. And then, you know, you have these weird situations where you're like, why can't I find a good person for this job? And it's like, well, there's only five of them now, like the rest of them have left this business because it was too hard and that's why

residuals are an important part of this like they allow you to not have to be scrambling constantly if you have something that's successful you get to stay in the business and work on new things that eventually work on new things that become a job creator yeah and like to anybody who's still saying well still but that's extra bonus money no no no no we haven't even talked about the amount of unpaid labor which is 90 percent of i mean i'm not a wga writer i'm not pursuing the same exact career but even with acting there is a lot of work that goes into each and every audition you're going to. You have to treat that like that's already your role, that that's already your job. But for a writer, you're writing stuff on spec.

They're saying we generally want some we want to hire somebody to write this property. Give me your pitch. So you spend months developing a pitch and then maybe you're you know like you write it you don't know even if you sell a show or like you get it optioned and there's just so much unpaid work to with so many things that can explode you just have to do it because you want to keep doing it yeah so that's also part of what this is. And like you want these skilled, but the people up top do not care coming back around about the quality of the product at this point.

And this seems like a good time to bring up AI. This is another issue. Sorry, can I say one more thing on residuals? Because you're totally right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. The free work element of it is the most important part.

I can't believe I left that out. Because yeah, like writers and actors and directors and producers like the people that do get residuals like they have to do constant free work for you know they're looking for the next thing they're looking for the next idea they're you know yeah putting a lot of time and effort into every single audition that an actor goes on, regardless of whether or not they book it, and they're just doing free work. And, you know, that the residuals cover that lean time. And there's been, you know, some talk in the union and just in the industry about paying writers for development work to try to cut down on the amount of free

work that they're doing. And I actually am sort of like, I understand how that could actually be bad. For example, Hocus Pocus 2, that was an open writing assignment, which means that Disney, the studio put out the word like, hey, we're interested in looking at Hocus Pocus 2. Like, you know, they contacted agents of some writers that they liked. They had read a script that I had written for free in my own time while I was a TV writer, you know, in between seasons. I wrote a feature sample that got passed around. That's how they knew of me.

They reached out to my agent being like, does she want to be one of the people to come in and pitch? I was thrilled. I was so excited. I spent weeks working on this take. And I went in and I pitched it and I won the job. And I do know that there are other people that spent the same amount of time and effort developing their take. They went in and pitched it and they did not get the job.

And that is horrible. I've also been in that situation before where I haven't gotten the job and it's just been a waste. is horrible. I've also been in that situation before where I haven't gotten the job and it's just been a waste. But at the same time, I'm like, I at the time was a TV writer with no feature credits. If Disney had to convince people to pay me to develop an idea, I don't know that they necessarily would have hired me. They would have been hiring people with more experience. And so that might wind up, wind up like shutting people out unintentionally and sort of taking opportunities away from people, which, you know, it's a difficult situation because you don't want people doing tons and tons of free work. And that's why, you know, you typically are relying on your agent to kind of get

like a good sense of, okay, how many people are actually going in and pitching on this? Is it a hundred people or is it five? Because if it's a hundred people, it's not worth my time. How much do I really care about it? Blah, blah, blah. But you know, you're always doing that math, but I think residuals are a part of that. Residuals cover that downtime. And if you have an ability to continue making money off of something, if it is successful, then, you know, it takes the burden off of like the pre-work needing to be the thing that it's related to. I'm sorry. I'm reminded of a lot of these, like a lot of like Twitter blue, like old architecture, old painting accounts on Twitter that are like, why don't we, why does nobody make these like amazing sculptures anymore why does nobody make these like amazing things anymore well they were commissioned and like like they were paid like people paid you to like just do that live your life appropriately yeah right um because you have all this time and you can't you can't spend all

of your free time focusing on that you also used to have a job so you can like. No, that's what I mean. Exactly. I don't mean but get commissioned, but they also I don't mean Patreon, but just the whole concept of like the wealthy person is like my my patron, my sponsor to say like I get to go out and make art. OK, yeah. Live here and just make this. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it gets back to this thing of like, you know, we watched what happened to the music industry where all of a sudden it just became the idea of like, we don't pay for music. We don't want to and we won't. And that led to this situation in the music industry where artists don't make any money off of streaming. And that has decimated their industry and sort of made it a lot worse for indie bands and mid-tier bands. and sort of made it a lot worse for indie bands and mid-tier bands. And it's a nightmare. And, you know, they've taken away like the concept of paying for entertainment, which, you know, that is a cultural thing. Like that's a cultural seismic shift that you can't blame on any one individual. But I will say that like the studios, you know, the past few years,

like there's just been this constant refrain among everyone of just like, oh, well, the industry has changed. Like the business has changed. People don't watch things the way they used to. And it's just like, well, yeah, but you like that argument is just like, who would have ever thought that if we put all of your stuff on our platform and charge people $4 a month for everything, that we would make less money. Like, I don't know. Like, and now they're unwilling to pay more. Like, that's crazy. Yes. It's like, how did this happen? And what do we do about it? Yeah.

Well, think about it. What are they going to do about it? They're going to put ads and raise the price. Exactly. The people who made those decisions are the ones for whom there's not a complicated formula to figure out how many pennies they make they're the ones making tens of millions of dollars for their mistake running warner brothers into the ground totally yeah i just keep coming back to a real lack of respect for art and art forms and artistry to the same with the music i mean spotify is making a bank you know the ceos that have come in to streamline it and like you're trying to say that this is cheaper for the user which i guess in the music sense instead of going out and buying all those albums but then you don't

have those albums anymore like on your shelf which is like having art in your home but in terms of streaming i pay more now than i've ever paid in my life you know every year i'm spending more money on it and they keep removing things and they're also adding i think i'm paying for a service but i refuse to pay for the top tier one so i'm still getting commercials and personally i enjoy commercials because i like doing commercials so i don't have a problem with that but they're making i've actually been enjoying commercials too i have commercials on peacock and i'm like you know what i kind of like seeing them again i love seeing my friend in the commercial i like to see how people are a little pause yeah and personally i love when

i get to work on a commercial set i think it's the most fun I mean obviously you prefer to have something juicy part that you get but a commercial set no one is being you know no one's the star no one is like and everyone's excited to be at camp for a couple days anyway I digress not taking it too seriously yeah like coming back around to what you were saying earlier, the patrons and like have people commissioned for art that. At its core was a reverence for arts and the arts and artists, because that would make the donor look good. That wasn't just he's not been charging people to see his sculpture. This is a reflection of me and my taste and sensibility in the world. I see this as an important part of the social fabric.

I want this to be Mike. I know that I can't make it, but my contribution is, it's just a fundamental shift in how people appreciate it. You know what I mean? Totally. It's also just a fundamental shift in like, you know, the very simple idea of movies and television is like, the studios pay for us to make it and then they sell it. And that's where their money comes from. But now, the studios pay us to make it so that they can put it on their platform and then just like hope people stay on it. like there's no one is selling anything to anyone yeah it's this sort of reversal to like way way back in the day where it's like yeah you're you're

the studio is the distributor yeah and it's reaching the point dangerously so especially with like ai where it's like the studio is like right quote unquote writing it and making it and like they're just gonna be crapping things out. And it's the same people doing it. It's the studio heads who are also the distribution heads who are also the creative heads. And it's just this weird monopolization, like blob of not anything worth watching.

Yeah. And it's just like they're making decisions based only on how it affects their bottom line like they have no they're not accountable to anybody else like they are the yeah they're making it they're distributing it they're you know solely in charge of it um and so that means that they get to take these hard lines of just like no we don't want it unless you do it this way and if you don't want to do it this way you can walk because there's a hundred people out there who will create a show for us and we don't care.

Yeah, we don't care if it's good. I'm reminded of the funniest thing maybe somebody like running a studio has said recently, which is like the Marvel of it all. Obviously that's also doing a lot of stuff to sort of suffocate a lot of creativity, I think in a lot of ways but um they made disney plus was like we're gonna make as many things we can for marvel we're gonna do as many marvel

things we can and then they had to come out and say like actually so we we've heard your complaints and i think the exact quote is like we're going to focus less on quantity and more on quality like if you have to go out and say that you're going to try to make good things, that's a problem. That should be the thing you're starting at. Well, it's also like, you know, I can't speak too much on this because I only know a little bit,

but you know, the VFX industry is in shambles because they are so overworked. There's so much very VFX heavy stuff that needs their talent and their labor and they are being forced in these situations where it's just like you need to work as hard and as fast as you possibly can and you know it doesn't matter how good it looks or not like just keep working on it and make it look as good as you possibly can and don't stop working until right it's gotta be like really demoralizing too because then those things come out and like they're not as good as they could have been and so people like look at

this shit and then like well it's not my fault i wanted more time totally i was literally the money the resources to it yeah i was watching my husband and I put on The Mask yesterday. We were just like, haven't seen it in a while. What's this about? And I kept saying to him, I was like, honestly, the effects in this look great. And that is kind of sad because it's just like that movie came out in, I don't know, 96, 94. Yeah.

And it's just sort of like, yeah, we haven't necessarily gotten better. Like in some ways we really have. But in some ways people are being held back from innovating and from doing their best work because they're just under such a gun to get things out as fast as they possibly can. It's just all about the churn. And the churn hurts everybody. Yeah. it's just all about the churn and the churn hurts everybody yeah because also so many of these things are sort of like you know a lot of projects uh are kind of written before and after and during and like by committee in a weird way we're like well we we have this sequence we want to do that

we've been working on so it has to be in this or ah this doesn't work we're just gonna we're just gonna force this other like actor into this scene that wasn't there in the original script and things like that and then so you overwork everybody and then it's this mishmash of ideas to make it work but then it doesn't because totally art needs a perspective and like a focus and um this is like okay so this is why i feel like i get so angry about the strike is that everyone that works in entertainment literally everyone from people at the studio all the way down to like the pas like they came to work in entertainment because they love TV and movies. They love these things. They want to create them. And, you know, we're all out here doing our best and trying so hard. And we take so much pride and care in our craft and

our skill, and we want to put the best foot forward. And I think what's so frustrating is that, you know, these venture capitalists, tech guys, whatever, whoever they are that came in the top and changed everything. I think they kind of saw from the outside how the industry was working and they were like, okay, great. We get it. And we're just going to make everything a lot worse. And they don't understand that like, we're doing all of these jobs. We're doing all of these things in spite of the naturally difficult conditions of the entertainment industry like it is a hard job to be on set like that that's never going to change like sometimes you're you know shooting a movie that takes place in the winter and you have to be

outside all night in the snow you know like there's so much stuff that you and the hours are going to be long like and erratic too yeah and erratic yeah the hours are going to be long, like. And erratic too. Yeah. And erratic. Yeah. And there's going to be scrambling as well. Like, you know, you're you might be on set and all of a sudden like a location falls through. And so it's like, OK, now you need to rewrite it so that scene can take place here instead

of there or whatever. Or like, oh, we lost this actor, like make it so the scene doesn't include that person. You know, there's always elements of that. And instead of having a situation where it's like, okay, we have this script that we feel really good about, that we have budgeted, that we have planned for, that's what we're shooting. Here we go. And we're going to have the writer on set in case something goes wrong or in case something comes up that we need to pivot. Now it's just like, okay, we have this script that we feel like kind of okay about. We're going to keep working on it, but we need to just get the train moving anyway. So why don't the train start

moving? And then there's going to be constant scrambling and rewriting and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so again, it's like they saw an industry that had, you know, a lot of risk and that had a lot of sort of instability, and a lot of last minute changes and long hours and hard working conditions. And they were like, Okay, great, we're gonna make all of that worse. And we're going to remove all positive incentives. Yeah, that's really true. Like, it's something that you see, because like the stuff you're describing like the onset sort of stressors that also if you start with we want to make this story we want to make this here's the thing it's going to be that other stuff kind of drives the project in a way like you get like

kind of an adrenaline high from it you like oh i'm going to solve this problem it sort of creates parameters within the project but if you take that and you're like, what if the whole thing was that? What if like, it's just a constant like process for years of figuring out what you're doing instead of having something and then trying to make that and having to solve problems. Totally. It's also like, I have had jobs where not all of my jobs are on my IMDB, by the way. So if you think you know what I'm talking about, you might not. But I've had jobs where, you know, you're just constantly being asked to solve problems. And you do. You're like, hey, that massive problem that we have, I actually was able to solve it.

And everyone is like, oh, my God, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now you actually need to solve this massive problem. And if you push back at all, it's kind of just like, well, like, that's the problem. You need to solve it. You know, like you have there's just not a lot of like agency that you have and you're not rewarded for solving problems. You're just given more shit to do at on a tighter timeline i want

to i do want to talk about ai stuff but i think it relates to all of this because there's a a death of creativity is at the core of all this there's so many different people inputting when you talk about all these changes we just got to get started and but there's studios and people that are not creatives that are having a final say and like but i actually want explosions so can we make this romantic explosion comedy i don't know like it's whatever it is and it it just it kills the actual yeah it's like because it's a the death of creativity and sort of like all it's like a lack of reverence for it but also like kind of a jealousy of it like, it's like a lack of reverence for it, but also like kind of a jealousy of it. Like I see that with a lot of people trying to do the AI stuff where it's like, well, I don't need creative people.

I can do it. I'm creative. I can just tell the robot to do it. And it's just kind of this soulless mash of stuff. I would also love to hear an explanation of mini rooms before we go. Yeah, we do. We want to know mini rooms. And I want to hear about what's at stake with we go yeah we do we want to know mini rooms and i want

to hear about what's at stake with the ai totally of it all um so yes so mini rooms i will caveat by saying i have not been in a mini room uh so my experience is coming only from hearing about it but basically what happens is what used to happen what normally happens with writing a television show is that someone would work for free forever to develop an idea for a show, which is a tremendous amount of work, just to be clear. And they would then sell that show. The network that bought it would pay that person, the creator, to write a pilot episode, the first episode of that show. Then they would decide, OK, do we actually want to make this show? Then they would shoot it. And then once they had the full pilot, they would watch it and say,

okay, now do we want to make more episodes of this show? And then if they did, they would pick up that show and then tell the creator, now you get to hire a writing staff and they are going to help you write season one of that show, however many episodes they order. Now what's happening is they're saying, okay, we bought this pilot from you. We have this pilot script. We don't know if we want to spend more money on this. So we want you to hire, we're going to give you a development budget to hire a few writers for, you know, two weeks, three weeks, one week, whatever, to work with you to come up with the entire season so that you can tell us what the season will be.

And a lot of times it involves actually writing scripts and they're not paid for it. Like normally when you are a writer on a TV staff, you are paid a weekly fee. And then for all of the work that you are doing throughout the season. And then if you write an episode, you are also paid a script fee on top of that, which is also a good thing because it used to mean that if you wanted to give a writer's assistant a script, you know, to like someone who was not on the writing staff, if you gave them a script, they would get that script fee. That was another source of income for them. And also a really good incentive for people to take those jobs. And then they get to move on. It's experience. So all of that has been removed,

essentially, or it's vanishing. And a mini room is basically just a way for them to get an entire season of television written without having to actually pay the writers because the other thing with mini rooms is that they're like oh well you know it's just a development thing like we're just sort of trying this out we just want to see like what the show can be like we don't really know so we're just throwing a little bit of money at it so everybody is coming in at the same rate and so that means that people with you know 20 years of writing experience who have made shows before who have been on set, they're coming in and just getting paid the same exact flat rate as someone who maybe it's their first job. And it's, you know, significantly lower than what they would work for spending significantly less money and then also making it uh way harder for writers to qualify for health insurance because they're not making yeah enough money also seems like maybe a

way to make a lower quality season of television like in that situation like are you gonna be like doing your best stuff because you know you're not getting paid enough you're not gonna get this you're not gonna get this and you're just gonna be disposed of in a week are you gonna do your best stuff there and you're not gonna participate in the success of it at all so it's like who cares yeah like you're not even gonna be credited on it a lot of times and like that's what that's also what i get so mad about sorry i will get's also what I get so mad about. Sorry, I will get to AI, but I get so mad about it because if, you know, I was listening to Betsy Thomas, who's a WGA member. I think she might even be on the negotiating committee, but she was on a

podcast and she said it best where she was like, they prey on our pride and our work because they are basically just saying like we know that you care very deeply about the quality of the work that you do and so don't you want to work as hard as you possibly can to make this good in spite of everything that we're putting on you and more often than not the answer is yes like i do want my thing to be as good as possible i want it to be a reflection of my taste and you know my sensibility i want it to be uh meaningful and so you know we work so so so hard and they're just like great you take on all the onus of making it good and then we get all the benefit i uh somebody some studio exec said

literally that i think about the strike recently where oh love of working yeah yeah david zaslav said that yeah exactly yeah it'll end soon they love it piece of shit yeah i don't think he knew he was making himself like the villain of like he definitely does not know they don't get it did you see did he not get it now the commencement speech the commencement speech and then today there's a New York Times article that's all about like his like wonderful time at the Cannes Film Festival. And his party and the yachts. The yachts, yeah. Buddy, like you want to be around him so bad that you're just like, look at me.

I'm a hobnobbing Hollywood cool guy. Like it's just like you literally read the room and like save all that stuff for when the strike is over. Yeah. He stole $300 million so he could insulate himself from all the people he stole the money from. It's so bad. It is wild. It is. It blows my mind to see it.

They don't care? How do they not notice? They just don't care. They think they can get away with it, right? They think it doesn't. Is it trolling us? Yeah. That's what like I again, like I was not here for the previous strikes.

And so maybe this is an off base read. But I think that is what feels so different about this one, at least from what I've heard, is that the audacity, like they don't even feel the need to lie anymore. Like they're just like Carol Lombardini, who's the chief negotiator for the AMPTP, which is the bargaining collective for all these corporations. She literally said to the WGA negotiating committee that writers are lucky to have term employment. Like they are literally just like, we don't need you. We don't care about you. And stop asking for a living wage. We don't want to pay it to you like they don't feel the need to lie anymore which is kind of crazy but also i guess a good thing so that we

can yeah i was gonna say it's like it's alarming that they think they can get away with it but i do have hope that they won't i think like totally they won't they won't and even since like the previous strike i feel like there's not not just like within the entertainment industry but like just a general like sense that like things are bad situations are bad this relationship this like boss relationship is bad across many many all industries and i think especially in hollywood probably with like you know the director's guild might be joining sag all these being like, yeah, this kind of sucks, actually. And we're supposed to be artists. Yeah.

And I think that the sense even like just amongst the general population is like, yeah, people deserve more than they're getting. It's also, and here's where I'll get to AI. Transitions, we love it. It's also like we can all now see the writing on the wall. Like we've watched this happen to every single industry. And, you know, we see, everyone is just seeing like, we know where this ends and it ends with everyone losing except for whoever gets out at the right time up top. And with AI, we can see that new technology knocking on the door. And it's not a matter of, I don't think AI is ever going to fully replace creative writing,

like creative writing done by humans. Human, yeah. But it absolutely could very easily and probably pretty quickly become something that the studios can use to pay us less. So basically, you know, when you're a feature writer, you know, you get paid to, you know, either you write a script for free and then you sell it and then you're paid for that script or you get paid to write a script. for that script or you get paid to write a script. But that initial script fee or getting paid to write that script is usually the most amount of money that you're making. And then you have, you know, you might get paid to rewrite it, which is a lesser fee because it's less work than writing a script from scratch. And then there's something called a polish, which is less than a rewrite and you're paid even less than a rewrite. And so there's, you know, these steps that have corresponding numbers usually, or number

ranges. And it's, it's not hard to imagine that the studios would essentially like tell chat GBT, like, Hey, write to kill a monkey bird as a movie. And then they're like, Hey, we've got this horrible script that makes no sense but it is a script and we want you to just rewrite it so we're gonna pay you even less to just rewrite this script as opposed to write something new exactly and yeah do a quick polish yeah yeah and like or just being like oh like hey chat gpt like give me an outline for a movie about like a mermaid who goes to space or whatever and they're like here it is and it's like okay great we've got this outline like so now you don't need to do that step and you can just write this thing even though it's yeah and this one is wolverine

and yeah well so much of ai is that at least especially now but like just this sense of like you need humans to watch it make sure that it's doing an okay job um totally like human supervisors for the robots we talked about this in the movie in the movie in a meeting recently it's like people don't stop and think about that there are actually people maintaining the running chat gbt there are people it's not like this is just some program i don't know it doesn't matter it's like yeah and it's learning from work that people have done. Like, that's the big thing with WGA, where, you know, that was part of their proposal was like, you can't use AI. You can't use our literary material to train AI to replace us.

Right, because then you're going to have AI write a script that's like, well, these lines are from another movie. And like, it doesn't know that it's doing that. It's just sort of predicting like, well, this is the next sentence, but it's pulling from this other stuff. Also, and this obviously shouldn't have to be said, but when things like chat GPT are scraping from the internet and all this sort of language and now it makes stuff chat gpt isn't going out and like living a life it's not experiencing things it's not having unique experiences which so much of what goes into actual creative work is your like a unique experience and like a lived life and it's really depressing to see people dismiss that aspect of it and think that it's just like oh the words are there that That's how it happens.

Totally. And I think like the thing that I think is so upsetting about it too, is that, you know, all of these corporations like in the past few years have put, you know, a very strong emphasis on wanting to make the industry more inclusive and more diverse, which is amazing because it is a very white industry and it's really hard to break into if you don't have access to some kind of financial safety net, whether that's generational wealth or whatever. And so they're trying, you know, there, there's a lot of efforts and initiatives. And I know that individual people at the studios care very deeply about making sure that we're not just hearing stories from like one type of person.

But at the same time, they are completely eliminating all of our entry level, lower level, mid-level jobs that make it possible for people to break into the industry and climb their way through. As difficult as it is, it's still theoretically possible or it was and then with this idea of like you know ai kind of like around the corner and their unwillingness to say that they are not going to use it to replace writers actors and directors like that feels so gross because you can just easily imagine them being like hey chat gbt like give us a story about like uh you know like an african-american girl growing up in whatever time period and then it's just like the ai writes it and you're not actually getting the real experience you're not getting any story yeah like you don't actually care about kind of what we're actually trying to do here like enriching culture and yeah i could see how easy it would be for stereotypes and misconceptions

totally get looped in to completely cannibalize an actual event or story and make it into something else, which is very grotesque to think about. And just coming back around to what you were saying, yeah, the writer that gets hired for a fraction of what they should to clean up the AI's mess still is going to care. to clean up the ai's mess still is gonna care still is gonna want to make it as good as possible and they are going to be in a position where they have to accept pennies to not just write it but like fix it which is a whole other it's like honestly that could be more work than i've had friends come in get hired to come in and fix a movie and it becomes a whole can of worms instead of like just being able to start it better from the beginning you know like if adjusting a chat gpt like an ai script will in a lot of cases probably be like way more time than it would take to just write the script yourself yeah and the and the ai is pulling from the existing material so if they're trying to do you know a story that's

more diverse than hollywood has typically been it's scraping from stuff that was written by white people yeah yeah 10 exactly 20 years ago 30 years ago so it's going to be even less representative than it has been yeah it's a quote robot it feels very dystopian to think about how the way that it could go we should wrap this up because we've recorded longer than we normally do only because i really went on do not be sorry i was gonna say i just loved it i love talking to you i could talk another hour um we're not going to but i can't. Let our listeners know where they can find you, follow your work. I mean, obviously there's Hocus Pocus too. Yeah, I'm on Instagram at Jen underscore D'Angelo.

And yeah, that's my only social media. I deleted Twitter years ago and I don't look back. It's great. No, but you're using your Instagram very well right now. So I do encourage people to follow and, you know, and lots of writers follow writers that you respect and their work. And I'm sure that they will also be posting about what's going on. But I highly recommend Jen, because I started off some very eloquent posts that are shareable and good. Thank you. Yeah, there's a lot of really great

strike content out there uh so yeah i definitely recommend just like following whatever writer you like or find for the little red avatar is there something that you all want on the picket line more than pizza and water because i feel like you're probably overloaded with pizza and water there's a lot of pizza and water which is really like you're probably overloaded with pizza and water. There's a lot of pizza and water, which is really honestly incredible. Thank you so much to people who've been donating. I've also seen people are starting to bring popsicles out, which is really nice. And that's going to be clutch as it gets hotter and hotter. We should buy you all sun hats, like the big brimmed kind.

I have a sun hat and I'm just like everybody get sun hat and good shoes because you're gonna hurt your back walking around on this pavement okay that does it for us this week we'll be back next week and what else is it that I'm supposed to say there's

something else that I always end the show with what oh that's right we love you very much