Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 5/02/2023 – Our First Strike

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Tonight we're talking some good ol fashioned reefer madness in Minnesota and the ongoing insanity of Ron DeSantis, then breaking down the first strike we've covered on the show that we're actually a part of: the WGA. Join us.Support the show

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Happy Skews Day to you. It's May 2nd, 2023. I'm T. How you doing? Mark? We're both a little under the weather, I think, today, and producer Matt. The whole skews crew has got a little sniffles and stuff going on, but that's okay. yeah luckily we don't have to call and stick to work because we're on fucking strike uh so we're talking about that a little bit uh i hate talking about showbiz stuff but it uh this is what's going to air industry is sort of like relevant to what's going on a lot of industries and it's sort of like the inshittific to borrow a line from uh cori dr rose or writer i read a lot of lot of everything uh downstream from tech and finance it's a lot of fun um before we get to that let's talk about uh do you watch any of the white house correspondence at dinner, Jerry? I saw some clips online, you know. I saw Biden doing dark brand and stuff like that. Roy hosted it, which is great. But I didn't watch the whole thing, though. Yeah, I helped Roy out with his speech when he did the congressional

correspondence dinner a couple of years ago. And he hit my manager up to see if I was available to work on this. And I was like, oh, we should hope to get to work on the White House correspondent dinner. And then I saw that it happened. I was like, oh, I guess that's how I find out you didn't get any of everything in this business. You see it happen. But it was Roy Knotts out of the park.

I was hoping, like, to get it so I could go and burn the building down because I find the whole thing gross. But the people who did it were funny. Biden's speech was pretty good. So this news dropped. The Supreme Court just fucking keeps getting grosser and grosser. So John Roberts' wife, Jane, she apparently has made over $10 million the last few years as a sort of a headhunter for high-priced law firms. Now, the order of events here is fucking crazy because she was a big time lawyer, but she pivoted to this role because she said, she told a friend that the change was motivated but a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given their husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country. So instead, what she did is got a job placing lawyers at these half-price law firms who all have business before the court.

And so if you're in charge in one of these white shoe law firms and the chief justice, the Supreme Court's, wife comes to you and says, you should pay me to do its job for you, I'd cost a million dollars a year. Would you interpret that as extortion? Right. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, there's definitely the appearance of some impropriety there, but turns out that's like chapter one of the Supreme Court's playbook, evidently. It's like, I wonder, when the first, when the Clarence Thomas stuff was first happening, we were talking about it on a Patreon episode, I think, and I was saying, like, that wouldn't be surprised if they're all. doing something like that or if it, you know, like continues to come out. And so, you know,

here we are. They had a hearing, they sent in held a hearing about all this stuff today. And one of the guys testifying was George W. Bush's former attorney general who's now a judge somewhere, Michael McCasey. And John Ossoff asked him, like, do you think, would you take a ride in a private jet with the billionaire? And the guy's like, well, I feel like it'd be basically said, I'd be endangering their friendship. It'd be rude to not accept. to ride on a private jet to a high price communication. It's like, what? Yeah, you've got

to understand. Like, it could have hurt that billionaire's feelings, Mark, which we don't want that to happen. Nobody wants a billionaire to have their feelings hurt. So, really, he had no choice in the matter. He had to ride on the private jet. Yeah.

By the way, this news came out because of a whistleblower who used to work with Jane Roberts. I quote for her name's Kendall B. Bryce, and he quote from her right here. When I found out the spouse with his chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong. During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue and the clients that were her law, these are not, these law firms are not people you should otherwise ever feel sorry for. They're taking money from like Monsanto. If you've seen Michael

Clayton, you know this game works, right? They're trying to defend clients who put poison kids to that. Right. Yeah. But she's like, these law firms have nowhere to go. There's no, like, there's no like controlling authority for this. And if you're wondering, even for this field, Robert's $10.3 million in compensation puts her toward the top of the pay scale for legal headhunter. So, like, she's very, very good at her job,

I imagine. So, yeah. It's just one of those things which, like, it just seems like that's just how it all works at that level, like in the upper echelons of society. They're all,

like, you know, they got board seats or whatever. It get like, you know, like in name only jobs, consulting work or whatever. You're making hundreds of thousands of,

a dollar years in consulting work and it's all just like you know under the table glad handing bullshit between them they just you know scratch each other's backs all the time that's part of you know to them i'm sure it's like well you know why even be in the upper reaches of american society if you can't you know profit off of the networking in that way it's a uh it's a big club of win in it buddy uh also nobody wants to work anymore trade none of these jobs are real the the uh fuck i was thinking the other day about like you know because we're headed towards a debt ceiling crisis like sleepwalking towards it to the collapse of you know everything and uh no one seems to be doing much about it except the public has passed like a do nothing

messaging bill that would uh cut uh every dollar for poor people in america and um i was like well that's a really weird fight because the law requires Congress to raise the debt ceiling but the Constitution requires the President to defend the full faith and credit of the United States government. So those two things are kind of at odds. And I was like, what did Biden just unilaterally raised it saying the Constitution required him to? And of course, it would go to the Supreme Court. And I was like, well, maybe the federal government stops paying the judiciary branch's paychecks because they're cash strapped that would make the reissue real to them. But I'm like, they don't even need their 300 grand year base salary because they're all at side gigs as billionaire house pets.

So this is all so fucking stupid and gross. uh anyway i don't know indeed it is well uh let's get into it with us as always is producer matt behind the scenes pulling the strings this is weekly skews i do want to remind you before we continue of course a couple items of business number one if you'd like to see me perform live and you should go to tray crow crowder.com check out my upcoming dates got a couple uh coming up in the next month or two it's a little light but then in the summer moving in the fall i'm going to be going all over the place and still adding all kinds of dates for beyond so please come and see me tracrouter.com get you ticket now uh number two you can check out my special available on

amazon called damn boy if you want to do that corey and dros specials on there too you can get them all together or individually whatever you want to do and then lastly if you enjoy this program and would like to show your support you can do so by signing up on patreon weekly skews.com slash more or you can go on Patreon and look me up. You'll find it either way. $5 a month gets your access to full-link bonus episodes like the one we did last week, part one of a skew in a taking the burning questions and comments from all the skewers out there. And we're doing the second part of that later this week.

We've got a whole bunch of episodes in the archive and plenty more to come. So we hope you'll check it out and support the show in the process. Okay. As for the show tonight, Mark mentioned it up top. The Riders Guild is on strike. I don't think this is inconsistent for us at all. Matter of fact, all contrary, quite the opposite. We're very labor-friendly podcast here, Mark.

We've covered all of the big labor disputes in this country over the past few years, you know, very proud to do it, solidarity and all that stuff. It's just that this one happens to be the only one with which we are in direct participation. The Writers Guild has walked out and is on strike, and it's all the news in Hollywood right now. We'll talk about it a little later. before all that, we begin with the Daily Dumbass.

Mac, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., this Minnesota Republican for apparently being willing to pay $350 for three joints, Warren Limer. It says it can have, any person can have eight plants at home.

Now, I've seen some of the videos of DEA raids. Some of these plants are eight and ten feet tall. you can have eight of them you can have a privacy fence made of these products in your backyard privacy vents of

two ounces just two ounces is equivalent to three joints and you can possess you can hear people in the state house start laughing when he says that which is funny to me

I don't know if that was the Democrats in attendance or what but either way it's like clearly there were people there who were very aware of the blunder he had just made, yeah, two ounces is a shitload of weed. Yeah. I mean, it's like not even, not even those like Cheech and Chong fucking cigar-sized joints.

I don't think, you know, wouldn't make up three of those for two ounces. So they were debating weed legalization in Minnesota. It looks like it's going to happen, although the bill, the Senate, he's in the Senate. The bill, the Senate pass is different than when the House passed. They got to do one of those conferences and work out the kinks and the bills before they have to repass them. and then the governor could sign it. So who knows if there's any bumps along the way in that. But I try to figure out Warren Limer's whole deal.

It's pretty bog standard right-wing psycho. Nothing, Q-Anon-level crazy, but, like, you know, hates gays. You know, hates poor people, the normal shit. So the, sorry, go ahead. I just didn't know, I didn't realize that this, I'm shocked that this is just now going on in the state of Minnesota, specifically. Like, I just didn't realize that it was even something that,

was hotly debated in, you know, one of the more otherwise sane, seeming states, you know, by American standards. And I saw some of the other clips from this, you know, debate they were having or whatever. And it's like, you know, Reefer Madness lives on, dude, the way some of them talk about, they literally talk about like overdose, ODs on cannabis and like how, you know, you can't test for it. So people will be driving high. You can't, like, do a roadside test for it. People will be driving high maniacally all the time. How to ruin your life and all this stuff.

Just the same, like, playbook that Dare was going from when I was a kid and everything. I just didn't realize that they were still out here doing it at that level. But I guess they are. I know why they're really doing it, though. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I don't even know why they're really. I mean, I guess they're thinking a lot of more black and brown people. But the, I think my favorite one of their takes was one guy was like, I used to smoke weed in college and almost flunked out because of it.

Yeah. Like, okay, it's weeds fault. You're lazy and stupid. that same guy then talked about getting two DUIs or whatever also back then I'm sure he's still cool with booze though there was one sheriff who is like testifying that they'll need increased police funding if they if they increased police funding for having to do less enforcement of low level drug crime because like you said of the driving law high thing as if people aren't already driving while high when it's illegal like it's like this is a fantasy word where people aren't smoking weed already in a minute in the

I mean, I guess maybe it's him trying to get out in front of it, but I know that like with the cops, with their lobbying and stuff when it comes to this law, they don't, it's the opposite. You know, they like they don't want to see their budgets eventually go down because they don't have to dedicate the time required to prosecute and weed anymore, you know, and they got to protect that budget. And also obviously, you know, the prisons and big farming and all that. When I said, I know why they're really doing it. That's what I meant. They've got, you know, they're in somebody's back pocket, getting donations from, you know, know, someone who matters. And I did, I know I've talked about this before, so I won't do the whole thing, but I did a little, I did a little piece on this for this news show pilot that didn't get picked up in the state of Tennessee. And they like interviewed a bunch of people involved with it, like Tennessee, Republicans before everybody knew just how insane they were. And like they would just literally like openly tell you all that.

Like they weren't even making it a secret. You know, you could ask them like, how do your constituents feel about this? It's like, oh, you know, everybody's pretty much on board with it. There's not a lot of opposition to it. And it's like, and is it going to pass? Absolutely not. Why not? It's like, well, you know, there's a lot of interest involved who are not ready to see that change or whatever.

And it's like, it's just going to have a shame to bullshit about it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The, a lot of fun stuff. Remember that we talked about this show, the guy who said the cop who was like, but if you legalize weed, we'll have to euthanize our weed. sniffing dog. Do you hate dogs?

So some other Minnesota let us say fun. This is one of the opponents of the legalizing weed bill who had the weirdest Zoom thing happened. This is fun. Senator Anderson.

Yes. Senator Barr. Yes. So if you're listening the podcast version, he was laying down with his shirt off and also his Zoom background is the how a bill becomes a law schoolhouse right yeah so uh there it is there's a screen grab of it that's dude these people still ain't figured Zoom out by now it's like also he made a background do you

know what I mean like he has to have some knowledge of how Zoom works or he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of making the background maybe he got his wife or somebody to do it I don't know but either way it's uh yeah yeah look this guy's name is Calvin Barr spelled BAHR and He's, like, one of the most right-wing members of the Minnesota State Senate. And he's against smoking weed or getting gay married or wearing shirts on Zoom, apparently. But he's the same people who are against, they think we're all lazy for when to work from home. And he's a guy with his shirt off in the legislative hearing. Yeah.

All right. So our honorable mention for Daily Dumbass tonight is all of us for thinking Judge Dread was way off for the future world. looking at. Let's see this clip of who else. Spaghetti Man, Ron DeSantis. Well, we're stopping jailbreak in the state of Florida today with

making sure we have tough bond policies and bail policies. We're putting pedophiles to death, hopefully, with this today. All right. So, Q and on shit.

so DeSantis is making a move to try to get legalize the death penalty for non-killing related offenses with the Supreme Court has held you know unreasonable and under the Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual um since I think it was the 80 I forgot I'm going to talk I'm going to talk about if I say I don't know exactly when but it's it's long been considered out of bounds because it's just is disproportional to the crime and look you're not you never want to be on video defending pedophiles right so i'm not going to do that uh because i don't want to uh no one should but i will say that the incentive structure of this is not quite thought through um and that but politicians will

always go harder on the grossest crimes because there's no no one because no one just like i don't want to no one's going to stand up and be like this is a bad idea but yeah it's not about right look nobody's defending child ripest or whatever it's not about that part is that that like The last thing we need to be doing is giving the state of Florida, like, more ability to execute anyone or upping the number of people that they are in charge of executing because, like, that's just one part of it. That's one part for me. It's like you can't trust them to not ever get it wrong. Like, that's the whole reason I posed a death penalty in the first place. I've said it many times.

There are people out there who I think, you know, nothing is lost if that person has put to death, truly monstrous criminals or whatever. But that's not the point. And as long as we ever execute innocent people, which we know we have many, many times, then it's just got to go. And trying to expand it is the opposite of what should be happening because you can't trust these motherfuckers. And the second part that I don't like about it is we all, those people cheering when he says we're putting pedophiles to death, we all know that a lot of them also think that gay men or trans people are automatically pedophiles, right? Like, a lot of them think that or assume that.

So I view it as not that far of a cry from them cheering that type of thing instead, you know what I mean? Which is pretty scary, in my opinion. So, yeah, it's not about defending child rapists. It's just about, you know, maintaining some semblance of sanity. I saw a criminal justice reporter, Randy Balco, talking about this earlier. And do you want to guess what state leads the nation in death row exonerations? for Loverida. So they already

They already can't think They're already They're already been caught Trying to execute innocent people a bunch of times Now you want to introduce more A whole thing is just gross But the

I was thinking about the incentive structure here For criminals Because like we're probably going to seem To think criminals respond to You know incentives Like normal people Like people

People don't think through Cost benefit ratios In most things they do in life Unless they're talking With like an investment advisor Nobody robs a liquor store thinking, I'm doing this because I'm only getting 10 years in prison, but if you're up at the 20, they'll stop doing it.

That's not really, I know, that's worked. But let's say they did respond to incentive structures. I was thinking about the first scene in heat when they robbed the armored car, and Waingrove loses his cool and kills one of the security guards. So it escalates to a murder one beef, so they decided to dispatch the other two guards because it's already murder one. You already get a death penalty. Why wouldn't you kill the witnesses?

So you have a less chance of getting infected. I see where you're going. So if you're, so if you're, right. It's delicate, yeah. You, you know, like, what the kid tells him, we get the death penalty. What's your fucking. How do you stop that from happening? Right.

Silence the kid. And if you're, if it's a death penalty either way, why would you not then do that? I mean, you know, that's super fucking dark, but like, you know, it makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think, I don't get what you're saying. I don't think criminals think through incentive structures like that, but Republicans do. So I'm saying this is a really fucking dark bill, even to quit inside their own brains, is my point. It's been a really weird. DeSantis keeps doing this.

DeSantis, when he was in Congress, was like a normal Tea Party Republican. Like so crazy, but like not crazy, crazy, crazy. Just like crazy and not understanding how government works and wanting, like, poor people to die, which is pretty normal for a Republican. But he's doing this right-wing culture or stuff to, like, try to out-flank Trump to the right, just a total misunderstanding of everything because Trump outflanked everybody to the left in 2016. But the only thing is said to immigration. But so he's doing that right now, isn't he? Isn't Trump doing that with like social security and and all that shit?

Like he's, you know. Yeah. He's he's, he's, he's, he's, like, what do you mean he scrambles people's brains? Is he ended up with like New York Times think pieces, the word like calling Hillary a hawk and him a dove? It's like because he doesn't talk like a normal politician, but that doesn't mean he's good or cool. it just means he understands how to sell stuff for regular people because he's a con artist yeah it's always been his thing on the one hand it's invade mexico and uh you know uh we we're gonna put a bunch of criminals to death sort of along these lines the other hand

he's talking about how ronda sanchez is coming for social security Medicaid so anyway but desantis this doesn't make sense to desantis because he's fucking stupid so he's still running for president i guess he's going to announce him a week or two but he's been on like international tour like he went to England to like it's to some business conference to like you know try to like get more trade to Florida between Florida and the UK or whatever and the quote shot of this um yeah this is at lords of lords of London so it's a bunch of you know the British version of business schools they said he was low wattage and it felt like the end of an overseas trip now by British upper class standards this that's ruthless absolutely brutal

that's that's the same thing as to call this guy worthless do nothing piece of shit all right because that's how you know like one of them even said he was horrendous or horrendous uh yeah these are people he's trying no one left the room thinking or i would be surprised if anyone came out of that thinking i would not be surprised i wouldn't be surprised if people came out of that thinking that's clearly not the guy right about desantis yeah yeah no no quote nobody in the room was left thinking this man's going place remember he was there to charm these people and here's another quote so he said he looked bored and stared at his feet he's got the charisma of like a of a fucking frog or something they also said and i'm not trying to be fair to desantis here but i guess he had done like five they said five country five european countries i guess in five days and this was the fifth one so he was just real worn out like you know i'd be worn out too but you got you got to get it up for the for the for the the the the line the me tycoons you know you want to be the goddamn president that's all they do is shit like that you know what I mean yeah you want to be president buddy it's like it's your one shot did I miss your chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime right at showtime buddy uh but it's also important remember um that like he he's trying to pass a bill because all 50 states governors travel plans and records are public so the citizens of their state can know where the governor is so he's running for president while trying to pass a bill to keep his travel plan secret because he says

he's afraid of being assassinated, which why he would waste the bullet around to Sanchez. It's fucking weird to me. But it's clearly because he doesn't want the citizens of Florida or he might have to run for reelection, maybe, or run for senator, whatever, to know that he's not actually doing the job of being governor. But also, he's not just silly and uncharismatic. And that's the reason he won't be president. But I want to remember that the reason he shouldn't be president is because he's a fucking psychopath. Here's some more reporting. about his, more reporting about his time in Guantanamo. I remember he was a judge, in the Junker Corps in the Navy.

He was a lawyer. He was ostensibly in Guantanamo to make sure that they were being treated humanely or something like that, right? Like that was his job was he was the guy that was supposed to make sure that, you know, nothing inhumane was happening to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. And instead, he like giggled as they were waterboarded and shit like that. I mean, he kind of though, right? Like, that's pretty much like that.

They were in a hunger. They were in a hunger strike. and he was laughing at them while they're being force fed with the feeding tube. So there were three guys there who turned up hanging to death with their arms and hands and hands bound behind their back and their feet tied with rags stuffed in their throat. So suicide, clearly. Right. And he was part of the team that helped rule it as suicide.

And these were guys who had never spoken to each other. Like they're in severe, like, isolate, you know, what do you call a solitary confinement? They had never spoken to each other. but the government's theory of the case was that they did this to embarrass Guantanamo, like they committed suicide and made it look like a murder to make America look bad, even though they didn't make any sense. They killed them. This happened in sales.

There's like chain link cells that are heavily patrolled every few minutes, and they were hanging there for hours before anybody bothered to get them down. This smells like awful. Yeah. This is like, this feels evil. and yeah fuck around that

sort of like that a Russian guy who killed himself by stuffing himself in a duffel bag and then throwing himself off a bridge or whatever

like that guy there was a I was telling him about that true crime podcast about the Dixie Mafia where the cops are so scared to this guy

that he this guy owed him he shot him three times in the head and the cops ruled his suicide and his son asked him

did the guy really kill himself and he goes in a sense he did because he should have paid me my money. It was like a similar case to that. That's depending on how you look at it. All right.

Well, let's get into it, Mark. Ryder's on strike. Yeah. So we wanted to talk about why this happened and try to explain to people what's going on. Me and Trey both voted for it if you need to know. The vote was like 97.85% to 2.15. So it's an incredible amount of solidarity because people are just fucking fed up. I was thinking, I was the thing 98% of people,

of people agree on. I was going to say that sex is fun, but some people are asexuals. That's not even remotely true. So anyway, I want to get this off the bat. Showbiz people are not sympathetic working, like industry types.

Like, a lot of big stars are out of the picket lines today. And I get why because the cameras are there and you want to lend your support, right? But it also makes it look like all of us are fucking millionaires. Like there's so much. propaganda floating around the studios.

I said the average writer makes a quarter million dollars a year. And I'm like, are you averaging me with J.J. Abrams and Dick Wolf? Right. Because that's not how math goes, buddy. So everything about this is very weird. Like I saw some actors, actors are really struggling to you right now, just work a day actors. And she was trying to break down how her finances work.

And if you get to the end of it, you're like, okay, this is a little bit sympathetic. But she starts off talking about how she's made $5 million over her choice of her career. And then immediately people's brains tune out. But it breaks down to her making like a, bringing home like $100,000 a year trial while trying to maintain residence in two countries. You're like, okay, I get it. But still, it's still, it's also like, and I know we're going to get into this. But it's like, you're right. That does make it unsupertive.

Nobody, I know from when I go back to Salina, like, nobody wants to hear you bitching about your show business problems, right? Right. You know, when they're fucking roofers and shit. And that's what they're doing. Like, they ain't trying to hear it. And I do understand that. And I get it. But it's about like with most of the other like disputes we've covered and everything.

It's just about the disparity between the amount of money that does exist and it is being made and it is being taken home by the people at the very top who don't do nearly the percentage of work that goes into actually making these products happen that, you know, the writers do and how much of a difference, you know, there is there. And then other stuff too, but it's just it's not fair, you know. right in order to be fair they're getting away with fucking murder there are people who are writing on hit shows who drive postmates on the weekend they can't afford rent which doesn't make any sort of sense right a hit show means you're making a ton of money for the studio network

stream or whichever it is and uh it doesn't like workers should have some ownership of their labor that's the basic organizing principle of you know labor and socialism if you want to get down to it but the idea that you that you trade your your little life away hours, chunks of your life away from your family. If you're working in a physical industry like the railroad or whatever, you know, you're trading your literal safety and literal parts of your body.

I work with a guy who lost his eye work in construction and he was paid $7 in something an hour. That's fucking stupid and not fair because the owner of the goddamn company who didn't risk losing his eye was driving a super nice truck, right? So anyway, this is a, oh, so this start at the beginning. So this strike, what was going to happen three years ago? ago, but then COVID happened and everything's shut down. So you can't really threaten to withhold your labor when everything's shut down anyway.

So COVID protocols are being lifted on set in May, I think. And that's sort of why everyone's sort of feeling like COVID's over as part of why this is happening now. And also the, our contract with the studio has expired, yada, yada, yada. The Directors Guild and SAG are up soon. You're in SAG rights. You might be on Double Strike soon. Yeah. Not doing a whole lot of SAG work.

or anything, so it's not going to take much for me to show solidarity with them. But, yeah, now. Yeah. The strike's probably going to last at least two months, and that's for a few reasons. One, on the bad side for the studios and networks and streamers, that's when it would start pushing back, fuck with fall TV plans. And on the good side for the studios and networks, the big deals they were handing out a few years ago to big-time creatives like, say, Netflix gave like $100 million, I think,

or $200 million to Shonda Rimes and $100 million to Kenya Barris. Those have deals that have forced majeure clauses for labor stoppages that, where the contract gets canceled if it lasts six to eight weeks. So if they let it last six to eight weeks, they can claw back hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. So they're kind of incentivized. Right now, all talks are broken off. And there's right.

Because of that, they could save a lot of additional money, the studios and the, you know, producers or whatnot if they allow it to go a couple of months because it would allow them to get out from under all these massive crazy contracts that gave people a few years back so they have some incentive to do it but i mean you're going to talk what about the like just sort of breaking down generally what the problems are like for example you're talking about providers not been able to make as much money anymore part of that is because if you guys think about it you know like tv shows used to be that meant mostly network shows network shows network shows It's like 22 episodes a season, spread out over the course of, you know, nine months or whatever,

everything except the summertime. And that was like a full, if you wrote on one of those shows, it was a full-time job and, you know, paid quite a bit of money. Well, now if you think about the shows, many of you all watch six or eight episodes, they'll make a new season every 18 months or something like that. Well, they, so writers are getting less opportunities. They're working like for, not even necessarily. for shorter period sometimes because it might

take just as long, but they get paid on a per episode basis or whatever. So, like, it's just so down. I'm going to make it a moral judgment here. This is business, this negotiation. So, but basically, every time technology disrupts stuff, it creates a loophole that the bosses

can drive a fucking truck through. All right. So, like, it was, back in the day, it was television instead of movies. Then it was, you know, VHS tapes and DVDs. and now it's the internet and stuff. So, like, the agreement didn't cover the internet. So that's why we had a big work stoppage in 2007, 2008, before it was in the guild before we moved to Los Angeles.

So it wasn't a part of that one. But so they're like, well, we don't, the contract doesn't require us to pay residuals for streaming content. So we don't. We're like, well, what is different from Netflix than TV? And they're like, well, we're on the internet. It's like, okay, but like, the job is the same, dog. So, like, what do you, what the fuck you're talking about?

Anyway, that was a 100-day strike. And so they basically don't pay any residuals for stuff like this. Like when I worked on a Netflix show, the residuals were like nothing. And there's a side of there's a bar here called residuals. And for years and years and years, like your residual checks, it's stepped, right? So it goes down, down, down, down to more times they'll rerun an episode, right? So you literally get a check for one penny at a certain point. And so there was a bar where you could take your check for one.

penny and trade it for a drink. And that was sort of the gimmick of the park. So the walls are plastered with one cent checks. I've literally got an envelope with like 20 checks checked stacked up for one penny each or eight cents each. It's like, what the fuck is? Just keep it, man. Save the stamp.

So that's a lot of it. He was trying to get residuals. And by the way, if Netflix TV or not, when it's time to sign contracts for shows they work on, they're just, a little YouTube, like, streaming show, right? But when they want to win Emmys, their fucking TV network. So my thing is like,

why, why do you get to win Emmys if you're, when it's time to pay up, you say you're not TV. Emmys are for TV shows. Fuck you. Fuck off. There's also, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was going to say also for, you know, Netflix fans were out there,

whatever out there. You may have noticed before Netflix has this sort of reputation for canceling shows kind of out of nowhere. I think, Is it normally after the three-year mark or whatever? What you may not know is that that's part of, like, the contract and how the guild rules work is if a show goes more than three years, a lot of new things apply, pay raises and things like that. So it's no coincidence that Netflix cancel so many shows around that mark, or you may also have noticed they'll do like a spinoff show. I love the Narcos shows, right?

And I think those shows are great. But if you notice how there's Narcos, then there's Narcos Mexico or whatever, that's, that's, That makes that two different shows, right? And instead of one longer running show where people would get paid more money and stuff. So it's all this like gamesmanship and stuff behind the scenes. And it's always, it all goes in one direction, right? It benefits upward only every time. They also correctly figured that like nobody's, nobody's staying signed up for Netflix.

Like, if you signed up to watch, I don't know, glow or whatever, you're not going to cancel it if they cancel glow. like the juice isn't worth to squeeze so they're like why are we going to keep pinking this expensive show we're not going to lose anyone if we cancel it so that's a business decision and I get it but it fucking sucks because fans it's like an opt in versus opt out you're tricking people in the stand subscribe

because they just forget to like cancel the subscription it's it's pretty cynical there's also a thing called mini rooms and this is where it connects to like other businesses like I talk a lot about how nobody has a plan for more than 15 minutes from now from now um that's across all of american society right now it feels like it's just like these guys don't care if the companies are long-term successful because they're going to get their

golden parachutes and they don't care if like show business to exist in five years just like the railroad companies don't seem to care if the railroad exists in five or ten years the government doesn't seem to care if america exists in five or ten years it's like it's just totally extractive and exploited with no like backup plan so that brings us to a thing called mini rooms. All right. So. Yeah. Many is in miniature. Yeah. Mnature rooms. So when you sell a TV show, it process typically goes like this. You pitch an idea for a show. You write the pilot scripts. The network makes the pilot. They say they like the pilot. Then you go to series and then you hire more writers. All right. Trey and I have both done the first step of this process where you

sell it. You write the pilot. We've never gotten to go further than that. Correct. it's a source of much pain and consternation so that's the way it went through the dawn of time but then they started but the most expensive part of making a show is not the writers it's the production it's the actors so instead what they do is like we'll put give you money for a budget for a mini room where you'll write more episodes of the show we'll see if we like those then maybe we'll go to series but they only give you money for like four writers so instead of hiring like two upper level writers two mid-level writers and two

entry level writers which is important nice for the budget for the future of the business, the more people know what to make TV, they just hired a couple of upper level writers to write a couple episodes, pay them half their rate. And you'd either take it or leave it. And those upper level writers who used to be way more successful have to eat it because their last job was also a mini room and they haven't worked in a while. So the work product suffers. There's also no money for like new writers to go to set, learn to do post production and stuff like that. So like there's no, there's no new blood getting experience and breaking in. And so, like, I don't even know what TV is going to look like in five years.

It's going to be all, like, Milf Island or some shit. I mean, yeah. Well, so that's what some people have, you know, pointed out to say, you know, most people remember the big strike in 2007, 2008. I remember, like you said, that was where I even started. I was still in college at the time. But a lot of people attribute the, like, meteoric rise or the true explosion of reality TV to that rider's strike because I got to fill time with something with new content. and if the riders are on strike, what are they going to do?

So that's how you get the milf islands of the world and things like that. But it's also like TV is not as bad as movies in this regard, but it's always been wild to me how little writers are valued in this town. And I know that's like,

you're hearing two writers say that, but genuinely, like, they, you know, they just want the script to be turned in and then for you to fuck off essentially. And they want to get it as cheaply and as easily as possible. In movies, if you all don't know,

if you sell a script, they can take it and do whatever the fuck they want to it might still have your name on it despite it having no real resemblance to what you wrote now you're getting blamed for a shitty script that you didn't write in the first place also a lot of times writers are prohibited from even being on the set of movies they wrote and things like that like it's just always weird because to me any like good director or actor or whatever would should tell you you know the first thing you got to have is a great script like you can't do this shit without writers and it's like they forget that all the time

And they're constantly trying to find ways to prove that wrong. You know what I mean? They'd love to figure out a way to do it without writers, which, you know. I got a buddy who's name I'll mention, but I've talked to you about him before. He wrote a couple bigger hit movies. And one of them was like, had a big buzzy premiere and they were hosting it at Comic-Con. And they had a big panel with the actor as and director. Not only did he not put him on the panel, they forgot to get, put him on the guest list to be able to even watch the fucking panel in premiere of his movie.

Right. And it was shot word for word. But also, like, even my little career I have, like, I worked on production, a production once where the, uh, uh, what it wasn't a shoot day, they would lock up the bottled water so the writers didn't go burn through the bottled water budget. Oh, it's just like so fucking weird. Um, so yeah, but like if you're wondering the state of the business overall, whether like people are asking for something unfair that would actually hurt these companies. No. Um, they are not losing money. the writers are essentially asking for 3% of profits, right?

So these are profits, right? These are not like, no one's asking them to take a loss. Right. It's not pay cuts for the executives who are making signs about a money anyway. We're not saying, like, give us some of your money because I guess everybody knows that would be a non-starter. Do you know what I mean? Like, well, that's not even on the tape. Can't make any less than a quarter of a billion dollars a year if you're, you know,

the chief executive of one of these companies. So, yeah, 3% of profits. completely untenable, apparently. Basically what's happened. Hollywood's never been perfect, but the 70s or 80s, the people in Georgia Studios actually likes TV and movies, but since then we've been taken over by,

like, private equity and, like, tech bros and stuff, who don't care about arts or entertainment or care about making good movies. And because of that, like, the incentive with everything, every public trade, the trading company, or every company basically is just to grow, which is stupid.

Like, if you make $5.5 billion, dollars this year, that's amazing. You make $5 billion next year, that's also amazing. But Wall Street thinks you have to make six and a half or you're failing. It's like, no, why is $5 billion profit bad? And what sense is that? Well, you've got to grow. Why?

Explain this to me. Explain this to me like I'm a fucking child. Most of us get 3% raises, but Wall Street wants fucking 40% returns. I watched this happen when it worked in newspapers where newspapers were very, very profitable enterprises, even after the invention of like Craigslist. ruined classified advertising. But Gannett, which owned USA Today, was able to make 30-some percent profit margins. So the little newspaper I worked for was only making 25 percent.

So you start cutting, laying people off to try to get the 30 percent to be competitive. It's like, what's wrong with making 25 percent of your money? Right. Like, if I'm a billionaire, I would buy every newspaper in the country and just take a 25 percent return on my fucking money. That's an amazing return. What are we doing here? Yeah, plus then you get to control the news.

you know, which is also pretty cool if you're a billionaire. You know, that's what Bezos did, you know, fucking look at Rupert Murdoch's whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to be able to control the narrative. Yeah. Turn on the TV and the news case.

Today's Jeff Bezos update. Jeff Bezos rules. Yeah. Looking good, Jeff. Yeah. So like, so what would they come on to you? The quickest way to show growth is to cut costs. Right.

But you can only, like, you can only cut so far before there's nothing left to cut. And it's also a very short side. going back to the nobody's thing in 15 minutes from now, like if I offered you $1,000 for the wheels off your car, that's a quick way to make $1,000. Right. You're very, you're $1,000 richer for one evening,

but then the next day, what happens? You have to get to work, right? Right. This is essentially what they're doing is a business practice. Yeah. And it's fucking infuriating. Like, I would, like,

the, like, the, like, so the negotiations broke down last night. And I thought they were close to a deal, all right, because the strike hadn't been called yet. Then UWGA put out how far apart they were. And it was like they weren't even remotely negotiating in good faith. It's like, like some stuff they didn't even count, I'll make a counteroffer for. It was like, these guys don't care. They just don't care if the business keeps going. It's amazing to wait.

But if you want to, let's walk through some numbers real quick. Bernie tweeted this out. Last year, eight Hollywood CEOs made nearly $800 million. yet pay for TV writers is falling by 23% over the last 10 years. I stand with nearly 12,000 WJ at Raiders from Strike for a Fair contract. So then this happened. Adam Conover, who used to host a show on a true TV called Adam Ruins Everything. You might be familiar with his work.

You might not. Adam Ruins Everything is essentially the same thing we do on this show. It's like, you know that thing you like? Here's what sucks and it's evil. Anyway, so he was on CNN. They were interviewing about this and this happened, which really made me laugh. That run this industry that say, look, times are changing. We are not making as much.

money as we once did. This is not the golden era of television. Although some of this would argue the shows are great. What do you say to them? So I'd point out the fact that David Zoslov, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, which is the parent company of the network I'm talking to you on right now, was paid $250 million last year, a quarter of a billion dollars. That's about the same level as what 10,000 writers are asking him to pay all of us collectively. So I would say if you're being paid $250 million, Ted Sarandos made about $50 million last year, these companies are making enormous amounts of money. Their profits are going up.

It's ridiculous for them to plead poverty. When the writers who are making their shows, some of them are not able to pay their rent or their mortgages. I literally know writers who have had to go on assistance because they have not been able to make their year. If you look at these companies, they're making more money than ever, it's the people who make the shows for them that are making less. Adam Conover, thank you so much for coming on because you ruined everything. You may have just ruined my career, but I don't mind. Yeah, so, yeah, eight guys and the other all guys making $800 million total.

If the writer, if the WHA had gotten everything they asked for, where no one expects to get in everything grassboard negotiation, it would have cost like $430 million a year. So if guys like Davis-Lazov had only been paid $130 million instead of $240,000, we could meet in the middle and everybody everybody's right right but uh this but again but everyone is like acknowledging right i've written articles and stuff for people on the inside of this and everything saying like what you just said like that's not going to happen right i.e if you took 130 of his paycheck and use that to fix this everyone that knows what's up is like yeah well that ain't

going to happen like that's like that's not even on the table you know i don't i don't really even understand what like an executive at like an entertainment conglomerate like does day to day like with their day to day like when they sit down on the laptop what they do but i guarantee you it's not writing the next episode of blue bloods or succession or whatever it is show you like um but but it's like if the writers don't get this money it doesn't somehow go to like HBO subscribers right it's not like it's like when people complain about pro athlete salaries it's like the the the team set the ticket prices for what they can get people to pay. The ticket prices aren't coming down if you cut the athlete's salary.

The money just goes to the billionaire owner. But, like, Americans are, like, instinctually so management sympathetic. They're essentially bootlickers. Like, this tweet went viral earlier. And I want you to see it because it's, like, absolutely amazing. This strike is immoral. You're denying millions of Americans of a mental health outlet, and this will directly lead to suicides. The WGA will be morally closed.

Well, that's a little bit much. The only shows that are immediately impacted are like late night talk shows. So this guy has essentially threatened to kill himself because Jimmy Fallon's a repeat tonight. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm sorry, buddy. I don't feel morally culpable if you kill yourself.

I don't want you to kill yourself. I want you to stop paying for your bloop check and stop being such an idiot. But everyone's such, like the media, like, so the showbiz press or. just the press in general, what little money they do get from show business is from the studios buying ads. So they're extreme, that's also their sources for who's like all the stuff you read in the trades, the gossip magazines, they're who's getting, they're getting their tips from. So all their, all the information comes from the studios.

They end PTP, if you're wondering, it's organization to go shapes for them on behalf of the studios and streamers. So all the news is extremely slanted. They're essentially calling us like greedy fucks or obstinate who won't just like take our supper and like take our shit sandwich and gladly eat it. But even the New York Times, okay, so they had this piece written by a writer talking about how the, there's structural problems with how writers are paid. He talks about residuals and about how like writers rely on residuals to make it when they're

during the long lean times and they're not like, you know, employed. The headline currently is, the Hollywood writer's strike isn't about money. It's about survival. What do you, do you want to guess what the original headline was before they got screamed at? you tell me Hollywood writer explains why writers should be paid for doing nothing it's not nothing dog the stream the studio in the network and the networks and the streamers are making money off reruns

why should the person the people who help create it get paid out get a small chunk of that like what why why is their instinct always the people at the top who I don't know spend all day jerking off on a boat get all the money And it's impertinent to ask for them to share some small part of it so we can buy fucking food. It's like, this is, this is like, going back to like nobody has an idea for the future thing, like, part of the contours of the rail strike that we talked a lot about in leading up to Christmas was the railroad unions were pointing out that something like East Palestine might happen. And which besides getting a bunch of people hurt, would also cost the railroad a ton of money and maybe lead to further regulations. Right. they were trying to save the railroad companies from themselves and a railroad

companies were like no yeah that would cost more money right now which is something we just do not do and here you have a bunch of people who are like like if there's no new writers breaking in the writers that currently exist can't are going to have to pivot to new industries because they can't afford to eat the the the the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow doesn't exist anymore so no one's even trying to break in this industry as a writer It's not really just suffered. Like, I understand the game dog. It's like, it's a tough game.

It's not stable. I never was assured I was going to make it, right? But the pot of goal is the reason you keep trying. There's no pot of gold. No one's going to try. There's going to be no TV shows and movies, which maybe it doesn't matter to anybody outside of like me and, I don't know. I feel like Americans watch a lot of TV,

but a lot of these, a lot of these end up being cultural institutions. Like, it's just like, it's like. Well, that's right. That might not necessarily be true, Mark, because I mentioned earlier that they would love to find a way to replace writers or not have writers at all. And it seems like that's how they're going to accomplish what you do. Who says movies and TV have to go away? Maybe writers can go away. And the movie stay using a little something called AI or chat TPT.

You guys know about it. So this writers, as part of this process, outlined a stipulation that said that AI would not be used to write scripts or to like rewrite scripts and any use of AI would have to be. or that anything covered by their agreement could not be used to train AI or use AI in incapacity, and they rejected that, which seems somewhat telling to me. But I'm not all that worried about it yet because, like, I don't know if I'm not either. Chat GPT at all, but I have a little bit. And like, it ain't funny at all. Like, it's just, I've asked it to write jokes and stuff, not for me, just to see what I'm up against.

And I'm pretty confident. that I'm more funny than that goddamn robot. So I don't think they're there yet. But they would love to be there, though, is the point. I think the way they would use it would be to, like, send a bunch of scripts to it to train it and then ask it to write, like, based upon the first season, feed it the first season of a show and ask it to write the second season and then pay a much smaller

writer's room to fix its work product. It would probably be what they would do. But it's just not going to work. It's like, if you're not familiar with it, it's just plagiarism. It's a search function. basically it scans the internet and tries to organize the answers it finds into like a coherent paragraph and it often doesn't work so someone out there still has to be doing research reporting uh and creative writing for the robot to steal from there still us to be a person even if you did

this this gravy train would last a year or two before you run of them stuff to plagiarize and you still got to find a life human being with an original idea they're fucking steal from but they didn't just reject like this is this language is really funny so they you Like you said, the WJAS to regulate the use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects. NBA is the agreement between the studio with the writers. AI can't write or rewrite literary material. It can't be used as a source material. And an NBA-covered material can't be used to trains at AI, like Tray said.

The studio is countered rejected that proposal, countered by offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology. So we're like saying, please don't replace us with robots. And they counter to come with a, like a PowerPoint presentation once a year to tell us why we're useless. Yeah, right. Oh, this is just so fucking hilarious to me. By the way, something that really hit for me is David Lindelof was out to strike today. If you're not familiar with his work, he created the HBO series of Watchmen.

He was one of the big forces on Lost. He has a new show called Miss Davis on Peacock, which is really hidden for me. But it's about like this, it's like a comedy adventure about this underground resistance against this AI that's running the world now. And the writer's room created an AI. and just to play with and used it to name their episodes and then episodes came out I think the pilots titled

Mother of Mercy colon the Way of the Horse has nothing to do with anything but create this AI as a fuck you the bosses they were trying to create it replace us with robots because the robot can't run the title of a fucking episode that makes sense so anyway

Diedrich Bader who's an actor you've all seen in stuff he was the guy in office space who said he wanted if he had a million dollars. I'll go with reason with two girls. So he... Two chicks, man. Yeah.

Uh, interesting enough, it's actually the executives that can be replaced by AI, since their decisions essentially boil down to demographics calculations and could be an algorithm. And he's fucking right. Yeah. The people who could be replaced by an algorithm are paying themselves a quarter billion dollars a year. Right.

While the people who actually create stuff who can't be done by a robot are driving for fucking postmates in the weekends. And I fucking hate everything. So, yeah. Yeah. I, man, I was about to say, Matt, go ahead and throw some up there. Comments from people. This is Gina Woolsey.

Gina Woolsey says, robots don't get humor. Just ask my boyfriend. Hey, Zenga. But, yeah, it's like Sherry Ann says, Mr. Crowder, you were much funnier than any robot. Well, it's pretty low bar, but thank you, Sherry Ann. I appreciate that. Like in the Will Smith classic, I Robot, he says, but can a robot sculpt a beautiful chair or a compose, a magnificent concerto? or whatever, you know. Dude, my buddy, like this, this, using AI to do creative stuff, stuff.

It's like, like, tech bros don't get art, creative stuff, and they fucking hate it. Like, if an AI, like, we talked about Elon Musk buying Twitter in an effort to try to make it. People think he's funny. And like, it's the one thing you can't buy, right? He can't fucking buy being funny. And these tech, they can, they don't understand art. They never read a book. They fucking hate it.

So they're making AI art and trying to make AI scripts. And my buddy sent me a draft. He's doing a college commitment to a speech and he's talking about creative work in a time of AI. It's like you're talking about how dystopian it is that the rope like the dream of like some like Star Trek or the Jetsons is the robots do the manual labor so we can spend time like in Star Trek they like drink and fuck and do art learn foreign languages and explore right that's what they use the free time for but in our hellscape the robots are doing the creative work the my Roombos going to be doing creative work while I vacuum that's where we're fucking headed right this doesn't make any sense yeah well on that note Sam sharp Jr on Facebook says high hyper-capitalistic hellscape. Yeah, we've been in late-stage capitalism, buddy. What a ride it's been, and we'll continue to be so far. And JDS 7813 says, we all hate everything with you.

So we're united in solidarity of our shared hatred for the timeline we all live in. There's Natalie Nichols back again, says, what can we do to support the strike? Basically, I mean, I guess in theory you can start canceling streaming services, but that make me hypocritic because I'm not hypocritical because I'm not going to do it because you've got to have stuff to watch while I'm fucking not working. But basically, just in general, when people say that workers are being greedy

by asking for a chunk of the profits across all industries, just calmly explain to whoever's saying that, that they're full of shit, because my dad used to say stuff like that, and I don't understand why workers hate each other more than they hate bosses. Another repeat commenter and viewer here. an enemy anemone, says if you're...

You said it right. The first time. First time for everything. It says, if you're rich, you, air quote, deserve money for doing nothing. If you're poor and want residuals on your work, you're just being greedy. Yeah, this is this weird phenomenon. I don't know if it's because the whole idea, it's like, oh, Americans dream of one day being the guy that gets to fuck everyone else over and take all the money.

It's like, first of all, that ain't, that's not super healthy, uh, aspirationally. Anyway, I don't dream of being the guy that fucking steps on everybody's neck on my way to the top and, like, dies alone in my bed, dreaming of my childhood sled or whatever. But anyway, people want to do that. Maybe that's why they're okay with why they do the bootlicking, why they side with these tycoons the way they do. I don't know, but it is a very odd dynamic to me. Kim Avery says those of us in right-to-work states are completely cowed by fear of losing what we have. It feels like Oliver Twist asking for more. Yeah.

that's one reason these things are ideological is because a broke workforce is a easily cowed workforce. You can't ask for shit if you're paycheck to paycheck, which is like, that's one of the reasons that like, even when it doesn't make financial sense to force a strike,

like they just did, they're going to lose more money than they'll make. One of the reasons I want to talk about this is this is costing the city of Los Angeles $285 million a day for as long as it goes on. That's crazy, dude. Yeah,

not to mention what's going to cost. And unless people start, and their subscriptions, which won't happen in the short term. But, like, there's no fall TV season. That's, like, I know not a lot of people watch network TV anymore, but, like, they still make a ton of money off of it. If they don't have new shows this fall, they're going to lose billions and billions of billions of dollars.

Dave Gear or Davajir says, America is full of the future rich in a temporary slump. Was it Alexis de Tocqueville, who after touring America, said that America is a country full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires or something like that? Yeah, I don't know who said it, but I've heard that before. And yeah, I mean, it's, I think it was tough. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's a goddamn shame, though.

I don't know why people, like, it's just a hell of a lie that they've sold that number of people in this country. You know what I mean? Because it should be very easy for us to do some French shit and just, you know, set everything on fire and eat them all until they learned to act right. But nobody seems to be willing to do that. Well, they tried in 2020 and the government. unleashed a militarized police force to crack everyone's heads. So I can't really. Yeah. Yeah. Edg fan

says there is no reason for some CEO to make hundreds of times more than the rest of the people working for the company. That is bullshit. Yep. It didn't used to be that way. It's the standard now. Yes, it is now the standard. You're right. It didn't, that didn't used to be the way it was. Not only that not used to be the way it was, they used to genuinely

billionaire types for a long time had this like shared sense of obligation to at least pretend to you know give back or like it's like they it's like some of them had some amount of like almost shame or guilt about their immense wealth and they would try to offset that by you know building housing or giving out food or whatever like that used to be a thing that they all did and i guess you've got the fucking gates isn't or today but i'm just saying um it's there's just been a real shift in the like culture of the ultra wealthy and the expectations that people have of them part of it was fraud part of it was fraud part of it was fraud But it was at least like, you know, the whole, like, was it hypocrisy as the tribute, vice paste of virtue about at least pretending to be good, at least concedes the good exists. But I'm not going to sit here and like cope for the Cape for the DuPonts or whatever. But nobles oblige did make them at least pretend.

They did give a bunch of money to charity, even if it was fraudulent to make themselves appear better. But at least we got libraries and shit out of it. I don't see a David's Lasloff library to you. Right. Exactly. All right. Well, we'll see how it all goes. We'll be here either way, though.

I want to remind you before we go. Go to Trey Crowder.com. Check out the upcoming dates. Come and see me. It's a lot of fun. I assure you. And also, you can go to weekly skews. com slash more.

Thank you, Mark. Or, Matt, I forgot. On Treycrider.com. Also, you can find a link to my special. Damn, boy. Go to weekly skews. com slash more. Or go on Patreon.

Look us up. $5 month. Access to full-length bonus episodes. Support the show in the process. And right before you go, if you're still there, hit that like button and everything, guys. Look at that. Got in under the wire.

like share subscribe all that stuff like we said strike or no strike it don't affect us here at the skews so long as you keep coming back every skews d we will too we are the bosses who are going to strike yeah yeah we'll see you next time love you bye you