WHAT WENT WRONG - Ripped From The Headlines - Double Strike

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Released on 7/19/2023. Chris & Lizzie break down the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Join them to learn the basics on AI, mini-rooms, minimums and more.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to a special breaking news edition. Of what went wrong. We're not talking about a movie tonight. We're talking about the state of movies tonight. My name is Chris Winterbauer. I'm one of your hosts. And I'm here, as always, with the other one of your hosts. Lizzie Bassett, Lizzie, how are you doing today?

I'm great. I can't wait to hear from a real out-of-work writer about what it's like to be going through this strike. Well, let me tell you, it's a lot. like what it was like before the strike. But no, it actually was affected in very specific ways by the strike. And I'm excited to talk about it because, of course, the strike has expanded. Yes. So without further ado, if you guys have not been keeping up with what's been going down in Hollywood on May 2, 2003 at 12.01 a.m. Pacific time, the WGA, that's the Writers Guild of America,

representing between 11 and 12,000 screenwriters, initiated a strike. It was their first strike since 2007-2008, and were well over two months into the strike now. But very importantly, on July 14th, 2020, the Screen Actors Guild slash American Federation of Television and Radio Actors, that's SAG AFRA, also went on strike.

That's right. It's a double strike. It's a double strike. Double struck. They joined the WGA for the first. dual strike to have hit Hollywood in 63 years. The last time both guilds struck simultaneously was in 1960, which is when the WGA struck for 148 days, which was not the longest strike. That was the 1988 strike when the WGA struck for 22 weeks. Oh, gosh. How long was the one in 2007, 2008?

100 days. The strike in 1960, important to this conversation, resulted in the writers winning the rights to receive residuals for the showing of theatrical films on television. Oh. And led to an industry health insurance plan, an independent pension fund. Okay, so that's a big one. And full disclosure, I benefit from this very directly. So I am a writer. I am part of the WGA.

I have been since the end of 2019, excuse me, 2018. And I get my health insurance through the Writers Guild of America. And full disclosure, I think most people know this, but I do work for Wondery. in my day job, which is owned by Amazon. I am not affiliated with Amazon Studios. Also, obviously, this podcast is not affiliated with any of that. So just remember in this conversation, my opinions are my own and Chris's opinions are his own, whether they're right or wrong. You be the judge. So that's the scene, Lizzie. What questions do you have? Can you explain to our listeners sort of what are the main points of contention for this strike?

Like, what are the big things that have caused this for both writers and actors? I think they're similar for both? They're similar, but not entirely the same. So the core underlying issue across both disputes is compensation. This takes form in a few different ways. The first is in base pay. So both the WGA and SAG-AFRA are pushing for higher percentage increases into the minimums that are guaranteed by these deals. Minimums are effectively floors for compensation that ensure that actors and writers are paid at least this negotiated amount for their services. Think of them like minimum wages that fluctuate based on both the type of work provided, as well as the scale of the project that the work is for. The WGA proposed annual percentage

increases of 6%, 5% and 5% across the next three years for their minimums. The AMPTP, that's the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers, countered with 4%, 3%, and 2% increase. respectively. On the SAG side, the AMPTP has stated that what they offered SAG in terms of minimum increases, and I don't have those exact numbers, was the highest percentage increase in 35 years. However, since we're facing record inflation, even if that is true, SAG's analysis pegs the minimums offered as an effective 5% decrease in wages. Now, for reference, the Directors Guild of America, the DGA just came to a new basic agreement with the AMPTP. The minimum increases that they settled on were 5%, 4%, and 3.5%.

So it's important to remember that what's being negotiated is a floor for both writers and actors. If that floor is too low, it is impossible to support yourself in this industry. Also, like, 5, 4 and 3%. Like, those are not huge increases. Right. And the big issue is that if the minimums are too low, your actors aren't going to make enough money, for example, to qualify for health insurance. So if you're a member of SAG, you have to earn $26,000 in qualified earnings every year in order to participate in their health insurance plan. And according to Fran Drescher, the SAG president, I believe 86% of current members of SAG do not qualify for their health insurance plan because they do not hit that 26.

thousand dollar threshold. Right. Both SAG and the WGA are also pushing for increased residuals from streaming. There are some pretty illuminating stories being released, revealing how low residuals really are these days. I encourage you guys to go and check some of those out. SAG in particular is pushing for a 2% revenue participation floor with streamers and wants an external audit to ensure that the numbers they're being provided are accurate. Obviously, streamers are pushing back on this. A 2% cut on profitability would be extremely painful for them. They're also notoriously cagey about releasing their internal metrics in any way. For example, I directed a movie for HBO Max, now Max, called Moonshot, and I have no idea how many people watched it.

The WGA is also fighting for staffing increases, and they're fighting against the use of mini rooms, which are a reduced form of television staffing that's been developed over the last 10 years to keep their costs down. They're also pushing for higher compensation on series since there are now lower episode orders than they're used. used to be. So television shows in the 90s, you'd get 22, 24 episode orders for a season. Nowadays, it's not unusual to have only eight episodes in a season of television. Sagan the WGA and the WGA are also both demanding higher contributions to their pension and health plans. And then there are a number of guild specific fights as well, including what I would call professionalism demands. SAG, for example, wants to limit the amount of self-tape

requests that actors can be given because auditions have become entirely remote. This may sound like a small thing, but it's actually a really big burden on actors. They have to record themselves at home, and that means they have to figure out how to get good audio, good video, get somebody to read with them, they have to get good lighting. They're effectively serving as a home production studio for their own auditions, which is something that they're not paid for. Now, of course, the big issue that's on everyone's mind beyond this simple compensation fight is the implementation of AI or artificial intelligence in Hollywood.

The crux of the issue is studios do not want to be encumbered by restrictions, Guild restrictions, on the use of AI going forward in creating their products because AI could represent a major cost savings and therefore lead to greater profit margins, whereas Guild members don't want to be either replaced or exploited by way of AI in terms of the studios using either their likeness or the collective breadth of their work to create new material going forward for which there will be no compensation. Again, two different ways in which those affect writers versus actors. Right.

Well, one of the most interesting things that's been flagged about the actors' side is, you know, initially people were talking about, oh, they could take your likeness and you could have Titanic starring, you know, Clark Gable with opposite, I don't know, Merrill Streep or something because they can do whatever they want with your face and voice. But the other thing that to me seems a lot more likely for them to do right away is to use AI to generate extras and to not pay people to be like they don't need them if they're just doing it that way. Yeah, this is a sticking point that has been brought up specifically by Fran Drescher,

who is the president of SAG. What has been leaked has been a proposal supposedly from, the AMPTP saying what we're suggesting is we would pay your actors a one-day fee. They would come in for a movie. We would scan their faces. Right. They would perform that day. And then for the rest of the film, we would use, it's not just AI.

It's a combination of the technologies that AI enables plus the use of VFX artists in order to generate extras for the rest of those scenes. And we don't have to pay for their labor on those dates. One report said we would just be able to use those actors in perpetuity. I believe there was a clarification from the studio side. No, it would be only for a specific project. To be clear, that is technically already done right now. That's true.

They do pad out scenes, right? They do. They will bring in actors. They might have a second unit director, film those actors crossing, for example, on the back and forth in front of a blue screen, doing a variety of different actions. It's less a quantum leap forward in technology than a continued erosion by way of a practice that's already been established at this point. I'm not saying it's okay.

I'm just saying like it's not, this isn't a revolutionary thing that is being proposed. It is just a worse, a deepening of a practice that's already happening. In terms of AI, I do think that the more revolutionary things happening are on the writing side just because the leaps and bounds that have happened in terms of AI are around large language models and the ability for it to generate. I mean, it can do it visually too. I don't want to minimize that, but the leaps we've taken forward in terms of how close AI can get to a specific writer's voice is scary. Yeah, it's really interesting. So I've messed around with chat GPT, a decent amount, mostly to try to figure out what's going to take my job and introduce myself to it.

But the stuff it writes isn't good. But here's the problem. The way that these things work is that the more data they are fed, the better they get at replicating it. So I hope you didn't put any of your scripts into chat GPT because... Well, no, I haven't. But then, again, it could already scrape a number of my own, like two of the movies I've written exist. And it can scrape those. Yes, but the way that I understand, particularly chat GPT, is that there are some legal parameters

about what it can use. However, if you feed it information, so this is something to be careful of. Yeah, yeah, if you were just like to upload your own writing in large form. Or if you were to feed it a pitch and ask it for help on that, people should be aware that if you are doing that, you are feeding it that pitch and it can spit that out somewhere to someone else. So that is how it works. Is that the more people interact with it, the more they use it, the more it's able to generate. Look, to be very clear, I am not a fan of ChatGPT. I did not like the screenplay that it wrote based on my great prompt about Werewolves. It was lacking in substance and structure. my point is that even though I don't think what chat GPT creates right now is particularly good,

the technology is so young that it's very easy to see where it's going, even if the worst thing that AI does to the writing profession from screenwriting is to replace the mediocre writers in Hollywood, of which I proudly am one. Remember that so many of your favorite writers, your favorite actors, your favorite creatives in any field, toiled in mediocrity, or at least had to exist there for a moment before they were able to achieve greatness. And for many of us, getting to be mediocre at something and still earn a living is how we provide for our families. Yeah, for most people. That's the definition of the word.

mediocre, I think. I'm not that good a writer. Okay, but so to get back into this as it pertains to both of the strikes, what happens if boundaries are not placed on what studios can do with AI and what are writers and actors trying to, like what parameters are they trying to put in place to kind of keep this in check? Well, I don't know. So I know publicly, the writer's guild is saying no AI. Sure. I think that this whole thing is going to play out on the legal side, much more than it is on the union side, which is these models learn by ingesting other people's material. So how do you pay for that?

Or what if the studio has to license stuff from Microsoft or all of a sudden they owe... That's what I was getting at is also like, if you use, let's say you use this thing to generate your pitch or even generate an outline, you cannot guarantee it's not pulling information from someone else who fed their own outline into it. legally. Chain of title is the really big issue that. So ownership for studios is the big exposure point when they're developing anything. To be clear, there is a way around this, which I'm sure is being discussed, but that is to build a model internal to. You could build an LLM internally. You could feed it all of the classic scripts and then you get your new Wizard of Oz, which is like Dorothy with

four legs. But it is attempting to stop a corporation from using a new technology. is like lying in front of a train. Yeah. And by the way, the guy that's running the train doesn't care about people. So when I say trying to stop AI is fruitless, what I mean is this technology is coming. We cannot prevent this technology from existing, unfortunately, because of the Zuckerbergs of the world. I know he didn't invent this.

But the best thing that we can do, I think, is create legal protections that give. that give people recourse. Guardrails. To, if needed, use their union or a lawyer to sue more powerful entities, the studios, tech giants, when they candidly abuse people's work, likenesses, labor, etc. That is ultimately the point of a legal system. That is the point of unionizing, is to create. a credible threat to a corporation which at the end of the day will act at best amorally

in many of these situations when implementing a new technology in order to maximize their profits. That brings me to my last question, which is what happens if a deal is not reached or what happens if this continues to stretch on? Well, I mean, everything's shut down. Right. So when the Writers Guild went on strike, the most immediate thing that feels it, is late-night television because it's the fastest thing that goes on the air that requires the use of writers. The next thing that's going to get hit are projects that are in production, but don't have

the scripts finished for the entire series, for example, or they need more work to continue shooting. Those projects then get shut down because they don't have writers that can perform those duties. a lot of TV shows have gotten shut down along those lines. Then come all the movies that we're supposed to start shooting or are in pre-production. Right, that now can't because of the actors. There's still another class of movies, which are all the movies that had finished shooting, but we're in post-production. But now that the actors are on strike, you actually likely can't finish those.

And if you can, you might not want to release them. So here are the work and services prohibited under the rules for TV theatrical contracts. So on-camera work, acting, singing, dancing, performing stunts, piloting an on-camera aircraft, puppeteering, performing capture or motion capture work. Wow. And then off-camera work, ADR looping, that's automated dialogue replacement. So that's when an actor is brought back in, either for technical or performance reasons, they re-record the line that was captured on set so they can be replaced in post-production.

There's a lot of ADR in movies, guys, and TV. So can't do that. Voiceover for TV trailers, theatrical trailers, any voice acting, singing, narration, stunt coordinating and related services. Then there's also background work, stand-in work, photo fittings, body doubles, wardrobe tests, makeup tests, rehearsals, camera tests, scanning your body, interviews and auditions, promotion of publicity services for any of this work, including tours. Yeah, Comic-Con is going to be interesting. Personal appearances, interviews, conventions, fan expos, festivals, four-year consideration events, panels, premieres, award shows, junkets, podcast appearances, social media, studio showcases, blah, blah, blah. So the point is, if your movie's done, you can't promote it.

If your movie's shot but not done with post, you can't do a lot of the essential things needed to finish it. If your movie hasn't been shot yet, you can't shoot it because you don't have actors. and if you don't have script yet, you can't get it written because you don't have writers. Now, you could get a director, and I am available as a director. I also am part of the Directors Guild, and we did reach a deal with the A&P but there's nothing that the directors can do at this point. The directors have very graciously said that they stand in solidarity with their struck brethren and cistern. And so if an agreement is not come to, so an agreement eventually will be negotiated. Sure, the question is how long will it take and what will be in it?

Exactly. First of all, in terms of studio incentives, there's the more traditional studios and then there are the tech giants. In terms of the lowest level exposure, I would argue you have your Amazon's and your apples and think of Apple with their streaming service, Apple TV Plus, which I think is great and I have and I love so much of the content on there. I don't think Apple makes any money off of that streaming service. That streaming service exists to get people to buy. iPhones and MacBook Pros. It's, you know, a loss leader for them. And Amazon similarly wants people to sign up for Amazon Prime. And so it's a benefit that you get to watch the shows that they make. Whether or not they make money, ultimately Amazon has such a great business. Apple has such a great business selling phones. That's the important thing for them. Whereas something like Netflix is profitable now and it is just a streaming service. But the advantage Netflix has is that it has now transition into reality TV. It has a ton of reality TV, and they do a ton of production overseas. So with the success of shows like Squid Game and Money Heist, they are not bound to labor in the

United States. Globalization has been the name of the game for Netflix. And then you have Disney, which is making rumblings about maybe getting out of the TV business, and you have Paramount, and you have Universal, and you have Sony. And these studios are, are the ones that are more vulnerable to the labor stoppage now, because they still rely on this homegrown content in order to make their businesses profitable at the end of the day. So in strikes past, some companies buck first. And so the question really isn't,

can the Writers Guild, SAG, et cetera, outweigh everyone. The question is, can they outweigh the, the weakest members of those groups. Both sides, I think, have really strong incentives right now in that I do think there's an extreme amount of pressure from Wall Street on these companies to cut costs. And so in the short term, a strike is helpful from a financial perspective. That's interesting. But that could become really painful in the long term. But I do think it's worth looking at some of the similarities to the 1960 strike that happened because there are some really interesting historical parallels. So first film ever shown on TV guys real quick, the police patrol, 1930.

The hell is that? It was a movie. It was 60 minutes long. They cut it into 10 minutes segments and they released it over six weeks. Yes, it was the original Quibi. I know you were thinking it. It was. So then over the following two decades, TV grows, but the major studios aren't interested in putting movies on TV because they're thinking, we make money at the box office. Why would we want to put our movies on TV for free? Because those things just piped in through the air, right? This is before cable.

So it's just broadcast television. The way it's paid for is through advertising. And so the studios are like, well, we're not going to do that. of course, people start watching a lot of TV. So eventually the studios realize, okay, fine, we got to put our movies on TV. We're going to license our movies to these networks and they're going to put them on TV. The first one is in 1956. It is the 1933 King Kong because the deal that the studios had just reached with SAG explicitly said that actors would only get residuals for movies screened on television if that movie

came out was made after 1948. So anything before 1948, you don't get residuals for. So the first movies put on TV are, they're just dumping all their pre-1948 stuff on TV because they don't have to pay residuals on it. And they don't want to pay residuals. Claw and a nickel away from one of these studios is a nightmare. Right. We haven't talked about that.

And we're probably not going to get into a ton, but another huge sticking point here is the lack of residuals for streaming. Well, that's the similarity here. So this is a new story. technology. Studios are losing money. We can't give away our profits. That's insane. So the Wizard of Oz on November 3rd gets licensed, as we talked about in our episode, buy MGM to CBS for $250,000. They don't edit it. It premieres without a time slot, meaning it's not having to be cut down to fill a specific amount of time. It's the first feature

film to be shown in its entire uncut form on television. It's the first feature film. It's this new frontier and it becomes an annual event, right? And the actors aren't paid a dime. So that sounds a lot like streaming when it was first incepted and kind of the basis of the last writer's strike. What's interesting is that that 1960 strike was led by Lizzie. Do you know who? I have no idea. He was a president. Ronald Reagan? Ronald Reagan. Whoa. Was the president of SAG in 1960. He's the guy that got them residuals. Wow. So let's go back real quick. 1937, Ronald Reagan, baseball radio announcer, newspaper man, goes to California to cover the Chicago

Cubs spring training camp, runs into an agent, because there's, remember, it's 1930s Hollywood. There's 12 people. Right. In total. He runs into the one agent. Yeah. And the agent says, hey, you're a good looking fella. And he says, let me get you a screen test.

Does the screen test, Warner Brothers says, there's only two other actors here. We could use you. And he gets a contract for $200 a week. working for Warner Brothers. Leaves, baseball, just stays in California. Sure. Just says, screw it. Turns out, SAG had just been formed the Screen Actors Guild a few weeks earlier. Ten years go by, Reagan's a working stiff in Hollywood, rising up the ranks. 1947, at the age of 36, he is elected the president of SAG. So between 1947 and 52, he was re-elected five times. He was the five-year president. He was then elected. He was then

liberal Democrat, believe it or not, and he is the guy that got the actors for television residuals for their shows when they were rerun, which was not standard practice. So what you're telling me is we need to find a Ronald Reagan. It's Fran. That's Fran Dresher. Yeah. 1959 rolls around the agreement between the actors and the producers. Expires. Runs out. Expires just like today. And the actors say, we want residuals for the feature films that are going on TV because that's the future in the same way that actors and writers today are saying we want better residuals on the stuff that's going out and streaming. And the studios say, hey, no, no, no, no, no.

Our box office profits have been going down for years. Does this sound familiar? So between 1945 and 59, domestic box office had dropped by nearly 70 percent. And the theaters are saying, we can't afford this. And the actors are saying, we're going to walk if you don't pay us. And the studio says, there's no way. There's no way. There's. no way. They're poor. They're all a bunch of poor people. We're so poor. They can't survive. So then on March 7th, 1960, the actors struck joining the Writers Guild, which had already struck in a industry-wide strike, the first one in Hollywood's entire existence. Wow. So this is only the second time this has ever happened. Yeah. Okay. Five weeks is how long that strike lasted with

the actors. So remember, the writers were in it a lot longer, but the actors, five weeks before the studios finally caved. And here's what the actors got. They got residuals for all films starting in 1960. They did not get residuals. They wanted retroactive residuals for earlier years. They didn't get that. So then they got instead of residuals for films between 1948 and 59, they got a one-time payout of $2.25 million, which SAG used to create a health insurance plan and a pension plan. Again, leave the AI stuff aside. I want to highlight the similarities. An industry in decline. Producers crying poverty, a major labor stoppage, fight for participation in those profits. The broad strokes are basically the same

as the fight. Now, I think all of this is to say, I have no idea where things will bottom out on the AI thing. My guess, if I had to guess, is that they're going to kick the can. Three years. years until the next agreement. But hey, maybe we'll get another quantum of solace. True. A film that was shot during the writer's strike of 2007-2008 without a writer. And you can feel it. Yes, you can.

Along with Michael Bayes Transformers. So that's a little primer on the strikes. I believe I got most of that information correct. I think I got those percentages correct. And again, the DGA did reach a deal with the AMPTP, SAG did not. And nothing is getting made. So listen to more of our podcast. Listen to the podcast.

And on that note, thank you all for tuning in. And we will see you in a week for a very special mommy dearest episode. And this is also a special week because this is not the only piece of bonus content that's available. Behind the paywall, if you are a patron on our Patreon, you can also hear a special episode about all the hot goss. between Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone. It is an episode discussing Costner's sort of abrupt exit from the series and what that resulted from and some parallels to some times earlier in his career as well. Please give that a listen if you're a patron.

If you're not, go become a patron so you can listen to it. It's pretty fun. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you for your support. If you'd like to come say hi, I'll be on the picket lines. There you go. At Warner Brothers. Go see Chris.

Talk to you guys later. All right. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonoguos.