Saturday, February 17, 2007

Writers Guild Stuff

I keep alluding here to the upcoming labor nastiness in Hollywood which may include either a monumental strike by the Writers Guild and/or the Screen Actors guild, or one or both of those unions getting its teeth kicked in, or both. There are some other possibilities but I'm not expecting any that involve everyone linking arms, singing happy songs around the campfire and life as we know it continuing unchanged.

This website has a very simple explanation of how the process works, at least from the WGA perspective. I disagree with the suggestion that my Guild "lost" the 1988 strike. In fact, I think one of the problems we've gotten into is this tendency to view a labor negotiation like a Jai Alai game where one side must emerge as undisputed winner and the other as loser. If you can get away from that mindset — and sadly, some folks like the bloodshed and don't want to — it's possible to arrive at a deal that works for both. It's also possible to wind up "winning" a strike the way some wars are "won" — i.e., fewer of your people got killed. So you still lose when you win. I believe the future of labor negotations, at least in Hollywood, involves moving away from the win/lose attitude and getting to the "works for both sides" mentality. I'm not sure though that the folks with whom we bargain are there yet.

Anyway, like I said, I don't think we lost the '88 strike. I don't think we won, either. I think we were forced into a situation where being on strike for five months was the less damaging of two bad options...and there were only two. When we get closer to when the '07 strike might commence, I'll try to write more about what I think happened in '88. But in the meantime, read that piece to which I'm linking. It's a good primer on the situation.

• Posted at 9:16 PM · LINK

Pooh Wars

Yet another chapter in the long-running Winnie the Pooh legal battle. The Disney folks lost the latest round.

• Posted at 9:10 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The late composer Meredith Willson wrote "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" and all the songs in The Music Man and The Unsinkable Molly Brown — tunes like "76 Trombones" and "Til There Was You" and "I Ain't Down Yet." But for some, his most memorable tune was one that was drilled into them in their school gym classes in the early sixties.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched something called The President's Council on Physical Fitness and asked Willson to compose an exercise-oriented theme song. Willson responded with "Chicken Fat," a record sung by Robert Preston and distributed by the zillions to physical education classes across the country. In some schools, it was played every day and when students from that era hear it, they reflexively drop and begin cranking out push-ups.

Our link today is to a clip of the song as performed on The Dinah Shore Show on October 6, 1961. Dinah and Nanette Fabray give it their all, along with Dinah's dancers and brief appearance by Al Hirt and George Montgomery. It's an odd presentation of an odd song, and for the full effect, you might want to do a couple of sit-ups as you watch. Thanks to Shelly Goldstein for recommending this one.

• Posted at 8:52 AM · LINK

Parking Breaks

So exactly what was so wrong with having cashiers at the exits in parking lots? It's getting so every mall I go to these days has a little recording on the way in that tells you that there are no cashiers at the exits and that if you have to pay, you have to pay at some machine before you return to your car. This is annoying enough in lots where you don't always have to pay — say, at the Westfield in Century City where the first two hours are free. But yesterday, I was at the new Beverly Connection on La Cienega and it's at least a dollar to get out, no matter what you bought or how short a time you stayed there. So if I go there, I have to deal with their silly vending-type devices.

I don't get how this can save them a lot of money. It's not like those people in the booths were drawing down CEO salaries, after all. By eliminating those employees, the lot incurs the cost of the equipment and the ongoing upkeep on it all. And in every lot I've visited that has gone to this system, there seem to be dozens of employees hovering around, making sure the machines work and teaching people how to use them and dealing with the inevitable confusions and system failures. Wouldn't it be easier/cheaper to put back the booths and stick those people in them?

At the Beverly Connection, before you return to your auto, you stop off at a kiosk and put in a dollar to get your exit ticket validated. A little voice informs you that you have twenty minutes to use the exit ticket.

Question: What happens if on my way to my car, I suddenly think of something else I'd like to go buy? Or what happens if I run into a friend and we get to talking or if I can't find my vehicle and it's twenty-one minutes before I get to the exit? Or if I lose my ticket? Or if, as happened to me twice in parking lots before Christmas, I drive around the lot for ten minutes, fail to find an empty space and decide to leave? I can think of a dozen other problematic scenarios, none of which occur if there's a human being I can talk to and pay on the way out.

Yesterday also, I was in a manned parking lot where the first hour was free. I was driving for the exit at 58 minutes after my entry time...but there was a traffic jam at the gate and I had to sit there for four or five minutes while the lady in the booth argued with some driver. When I finally got up to her, it was more than an hour after I'd entered but she waved me on through because she knew it wasn't my fault. A machine can't do that.

Like I said, I don't get how this can result in huge savings. I can see how it generates ill will and maybe a desire to not visit that parking lot if you can help it. But can this really be worth the potential ill will involved?

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK