by Wrigley Zbyszewski and Mark McDermott
Reinforcements arrived at the picket line Tuesday outside Manhattan Beach Studios as the Screen Actors Guild went on strike alongside the Writers Guild of America. Organizers say the future of the entertainment industry is at stake.
Nick Geisler, a WGA writer and strike captain at MB Studios, said that the arrival of SAG actors at the picket line provided a much needed morale boost after 78 days on strike.
“It was the the brightest, cleanest, coldest jolt of fresh air on a hot day that we could have asked for,” Geisler said. “It’s been a hot week, and having [SAG members] out there is incredible.”
SAG officially went on strike July 13, creating a unified front with writers even as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) appeared to toughen its stance. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, last week went very public in drawing a line in the sand in negotiations.
“There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic,” Iger said in a statement. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
Geisler said that actors had joined the picket line even before themselves going on strike.
“I want to give a lot of credit to those people who came out before SAG went on strike just to stand in solidarity with the writers, and I think that’s a big reason why they were able to get such a big movement, so quickly, once they were on strike,” he said. “Actors saw this challenge coming. They knew this fight was going to be existential, and they knew this fight was something we have to do together. They have been on the picket line list since day one and now that they are on strike, those numbers have tripled. And I’ll tell you this, they are a lively funny, loud bunch.”
The contract negotiations between AMPTP and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) reached an abrupt halt when negotiators on both sides refused to compromise on several issues. The Guild, also known as SAG-AFTRA for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, represents around 160,000 actors and other artists in the television and film industries.
The president of SAG-AFTRA is Fran Drescher, an actress who has starred in many shows, such as the 90s sitcom, The Nanny and the movie Saturday Night Fever. After failed contract renewal negotiations with major production studios, including Warner Brothers, Disney, and Paramount, Drescher announced in a press conference last week that SAG-AFTRA would be joining the strike lines.
“I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things,” she said. “How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right, when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”
The issues at stake for both labor groups revolve around residual rights, particularly for the proliferating streaming platforms, and the use of Artificial Intelligence. Geisler said that just how key these issues are to the very future of the industry is not well understood by the general public.
“I don’t think that people quite realize that this is really an existential threat for writers and actors. This is not just a play to get a little more money,” he said. “It comes back to pricing out— I mean, 87 percent of actors don’t make more than $26,000 a year, meaning they are not going to qualify for healthcare. And already there’s a proposal out there to replace background actors with digital likenesses and pay them one day of work to use their likeness in perpetuity. And there’s a writer, Alex O’Keefe, who wrote on The Bear and was nominated for an Emmy — and the entire time he wrote on The Bear he lived below the poverty line. This is not just about a little more money. This is about a very thriving creative middle class in Los Angeles — and the South Bay — not being able to live here anymore.”
The last time both the actors and the writers were simultaneously on strike was nearly 63 years ago, in 1960. While there are several overlapping issues both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA refuse to budge on, such as the rights to residual payments, SAG-AFTRA is fighting extra hard for protection against AI technologies.
The potential threat of AI is in the usage of “digital doubles,” which would allow major studios to use actors’ images to fabricate doubles of them in different movies and shows, without compensation toward the actual actor. While this technology is pre-existing, the AMPTP’s new proposal is to allow them to use the digital doubles for major performance roles in film, not just background scenes and stunts.
The AMPTP is set on pushing its ambitions with AI, pension and health rights, and wages. In an official statement, the AMPTP said it was willing to wait for as long as it takes for the actors and writers to come around back to the negotiating table, even if meant major economic consequences for the WGA and SAG union members.
“This is the Union’s choice, not ours,” the AMPTP said in the statement. “Rather than continuing to negotiate, SAG-AFTRA has put us on a course that will deepen the financial hardship for thousands who depend on the industry for their livelihoods.”
Geisler said all the unions are asking for is, quite literally, a living wage.
“What we’re asking for from Amazon as writers is .006 [percent] of their yearly revenue,” he said. “That’s all. And that’s just one example. That’s about what the CEO makes in one day of work.”
Over the past two decades, Manhattan Beach Studios has been home to the production of several major films and shows, such as The Mandalorian, Avatar, Iron Man, CSI: Miami and Medium. Thousands of actors, writers, and other entertainment industry workers live in the South Bay, Geisler said, which is why picketing outside MB Studios is important.
“Manhattan Beach Studios is a beautiful spot that has hired many VFX [visual special effects] people, and it’s providing VFX shots,” Geisler said. “And the VFX artists are being worked to the bone, and talking about almost inhumane living conditions. When they’re not being worked to the bone, that work is getting farmed out or outsourced to little content farms across overseas. And so that’s a huge part of the South Bay. You look at Avatar at Manhattan Beach Studios, where we’re picketing — those shows employ hundreds and hundreds of people and very few of them are uber rich and wealthy. You know, we’re all just trying to get by in a very expensive city. Everybody is going to be hurt if we can’t find a way to do that. What’s so frustrating is when Bob Iger, a man whose net worth is almost $700 million, says these demands are reasonable. He just negotiated a $54 million salary over two years, and that’s after he’s saying that the business is losing money and we can’t afford to pay actors and writers. And that’s why it’s embarrassing, and I think the reason everyone’s come together. I think we are all feeling that we have to be together or we’re all we’re all going to be in some serious danger of an industry just falling apart.” ER
