Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Guild Trip

As predicted here — and I'm not bragging 'cause this was an easy one — the Writers Guild has just overwhelmingly voted to accept the newly-proposed contract. Here are the details of the vote.

I still think this was a crummy contract but I understand why it passed. Very few members spoke up against it and those who did offered no real "Plan B." In a sense, it was like a friend of mine who thinks Bush has completely bungled the Iraq War. The friend voted for him anyway, because he was unconvinced that Kerry had a better — or, at least, markedly different — idea of what to do. I don't like this thinking, either with the presidency or the WGA, but I can certainly understand it.

The Screen Actors Guild is the next major Hollywood union that will have to negotiate a new contract and try to improve DVD revenues. They don't stand much of a chance. What keeps happening in these deals is that Union A settles for no increase but they get some sort of language that suggest that if Union B gets an increase, it will apply to Union A. Then Union A goes to its members and says, to save face and make it sound like a possible gain, "We've locked ourselves into whatever raise they get." But that's not really how it works. What actually happens in this situation is that Union A gets zero and, in the process, locks Union B into the same deal. The Directors Guild settlement undermined the Writers Guild's negotiating position and now the Writers Guild has done the same to the actors.

The good news is that we may have seen the last of the big Hollywood strikes and the bad news is that we may have seen the last of the big Hollywood strikes. I know some people think everyone in show business is overpaid but lately, the weakness of the unions has caused more and more people in the bottom-level jobs to lose ground (and, too often, health insurance) and for that money to go to the folks in the Michael Eisner jobs. At some point, this trend will have to change...but it's going to get worse before it gets better.

• Posted at 11:08 PM · LINK

Tom and Jerry...Cheap!

We recently wrote here about the Tom and Jerry cartoon series — not the cat-and-mouse but the earlier one about a short guy and a tall guy. We forgot to mention how available their cartoons are if you want to cruise by the cheapo DVD displays at some department stores. I generally find that most of what they put on those cheap videos of public domain material is unwatchable, ninth-generation prints. I once bought a VHS of the p.d. Laurel and Hardy feature, The Flying Deuces, that was so fuzzy, you could barely tell Stan from Ollie. But there are exceptions. Someone went to the trouble of digitizing nine cartoons of the original Tom and Jerry, and they're available on decent-quality DVDs that routinely sell for an entire dollar.

The cover at left is from one that was purchased at a Target store (thanks, David McLallen). They seem to have been put out by Genius Entertainment, whose website is, at this moment, screwed up and not working right. The one on its right was purchased by me at a 99-Cent Only store — a saving of one cent! — and also includes a ten-minute phone card. Even without the phone card, it's a bargain. So if you're like me and you usually bypass cheap video, this is one time you might want to make an exception.

Since I had some room, I put up a cover from a mid-fifties 8mm release of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, from after they'd been renamed Dick and Larry. No other reason. I just had space to fill.

• Posted at 9:16 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Jonathan Franzen on growing up with Charlie Brown. Not the best piece of this nature that you'll ever read but worth a click.

• Posted at 8:22 AM · LINK

Smart Guy

Somewhere on this page, you'll find a wise and perceptive review of this book.

• Posted at 8:18 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

I've read an awful lot of "Why Bush Won" articles the last few weeks. Democrats are too nice. Democrats are too nasty. Democrats need to be more like Republicans. Democrats need to be more like Democrats. Democrats have to look more to the future. Democrats have to remind America of their past achievements. Democrats need to define "values." Democrats need to forget about "values" and press "solutions." Democrats need to stop listening to people saying what Democrats need to do. Democrats need to — well, you get the concept. In most cases, the advice seems to me to be trying to take an election that may have been lost for a wide range of reasons and distill it down to one quick fix. (Very few seem to even mention the possibility that maybe John Kerry just failed to excite enough people to the point of convincing them to change horses.)

Here's Robert Kuttner with one of the best articles I've read on the topic of "Why Bush Won." There's a lot more that could be said but this piece struck me as casting a wide, reasonable net.

• Posted at 8:09 AM · LINK