Thursday, November 1, 2007
WGA Report
And now it's later and I'm home. Here, as they say, is the lede: Yes, the Writers Guild of America is going on strike. When? They'll tell us tomorrow. The Board will vote tomorrow morning and we should have an announcement by mid-afternoon. The sense is that tomorrow is the last day there will be any non-scab writing of TV and movies for a while.
Obviously, a strike is not good news but I came away from the meeting feeling good about the situation. I already had confidence in our leadership and now I have a lot in the membership. We haven't had a strike since '88 and an astonishing percentage of the current WGA membership has joined since then and, some feared, might not understand the occasional necessity. That sure doesn't seem to be the case. The hall was packed with, all in all, a pretty youthful crowd. There seemed to be a solid grasp of what's at stake and what must be done to achieve it. There was also, I should add, a lot of joy at the gestures of support from the Screen Actors Guild and the Teamsters.
I've been going for more than half my life to WGA meetings where we were either already on strike or talking about it. This is the first where there was no dissent; no one outside passing out leaflets or taking the audience mike to make the case for accepting Management's latest offer. In this case, I don't believe we even have an offer that we could accept but even if we did, no one seemed to feel this was the time to grab at such a thing. (One group was passing out leaflets but I don't think they were against the strike. Matter of fact, I read the one I got and I'm still not sure what it was trying to say.)
A couple of folks at the microphones in the aisles did ask how long the strike might last. Our leaders couldn't exactly say this but I think the answer is "Nobody knows." A certain amount of this is out of our hands and out of sight...the internal squabbles of the AMPTP. One should never underestimate what can happen if all those powerful people are bickering among themselves, nor can you discount the idea that they'll stick with a rotten battle plan simply because they can't believe it's not working. For the most part, long strikes in this town occur because someone has drastically misestimated the opposition and is stuck without a Plan B. That was clearly what the long '88 Writers Guild Strike was all about. The Producers thought we'd take a crummy offer, we didn't — and they were left in a pretty impotent position with their negotiators mired in a strategy that hadn't worked as predicted. Are we in for this again? Sure looks that way.
Undoubtedly, you will hear some say, "The WGA could have played it smarter...done more to head this off." I don't think so. You can't really negotiate with an entity that believes its greatest strength is in its refusal to negotiate; that strives to avoid the concept that these things ever have to be a two-way street. They do, of course, and at some point this will probably be settled by some good, old-fashioned give-and-take. But we're still at the stage when the Producers are unprepared to abandon the idea that they hold all the cards and we can only win what they'll let us win. That works for them most of the time but I don't think it's going to work this time. Not based on what I saw tonight.
• Posted at 10:55 PM · LINK
Live WGA Blogging
This is me actually blogging at you from inside the WGA Membership Meeting. I want to pay attention rather than sit here and fidget with this micro-mini keyboard and anyway, it's supposed to be confidential, even with umpteen thousand writers in the house. But I don't think it would be wrong to report here that the place is packed, that the attendees are solidly behind the Guild Leadership, and that if the Producers think they can intimidate this union into a crappy, status quo deal, then somebody on their team has pulled a Paul Wolfowitz and is in serious need of firing. This Guild is serious and together and not about to fold. Tell you all about it later.
• Posted at 7:49 PM · LINK
Leaving Now...
Off to the WGA General Membership Meeting to find out when we strike. Blog ya later.
• Posted at 6:02 PM · LINK
Set the TiVo (Maybe)
I know a lot of folks who read this site are still interested in the Kennedy Assassination. Sunday at Noon (Eastern time), C-Span2 is airing a live interview and phone-in session with Vince Bugliosi, who I assume will be talking mostly about that. The announcement makes it sound like he'll be taking calls for three hours. However long he's on, it oughta be interesting...maybe not three hours' worth of interesting, but interesting.
• Posted at 2:34 PM · LINK
Ain't Too Proud to Beg
I'm planning a trip to New York later this month and attempting to procure house seats for Young Frankenstein. One by one, acquaintances and friends who've told me they could arrange these for the new Mel Brooks musical are finding out that they can't. I can apparently get house seats for anything playing in town except this one show...
...unless someone reading this has the necessary connections. If you are such a person, please do let me know.
• Posted at 9:53 AM · LINK
For TiVo Owners Only...
If you have a Series 2 or Series 3 TiVo and you transfer recordings to your home computer, you will want to play around with VideoRedo Plus. It's a pretty good video editor but, more importantly for us, it works directly with ".tivo" files and will also convert them effortlessly to several other formats. With it, I could record an episode of Phenomenon on my TiVo, transfer it to my PC, edit out all the commercials and stupid parts and then put the show back onto the TiVo for viewing. Of course, I'd wind up with about a three minute show but...
• Posted at 9:12 AM · LINK
Recommended Reading
The National Journal had a bunch of health care experts evaluate the various plans for "universal" (actually, expanded) health care from the various folks vying for the Oval Office. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Democrats' plans fare better than the Republicans' if one really wants something that will achieve the stated goals.
I am reminded of a sketch that my friend/hero Stan Freberg used to do with a moon man puppet named Orville. Orville would announce that his people were offering to give Earth a nuclear device. The dialogue (Freberg providing both voices) went like this...
INTERVIEWER: We already have a nuclear device.
ORVILLE: Ours is better.
INTERVIEWER: Why is yours better?
ORVILLE: Ours doesn't work.
I was thinking of that the other day when I was listening to Mitt Romney explain the value of his. He was almost whispering aloud to his supporters, "Don't worry. Mine won't change anything. In fact, it may even make things so much worse that we'll all be able to say, 'See? Government health care is always a fiasco!'"
• Posted at 7:32 AM · LINK
Spleenk!
"Spleenk!" is the sound of me smiling. I've received and am generally enjoying MAD's Greatest Artists: The Completely MAD Don Martin, despite the fact that it's yet another fancy repackaging of stuff I already own. I did not resent paying for this collection of all the work "MAD's maddest artist" did for MAD Magazine. It's a handsome, classy two-book set with pages a bit larger than I was expecting. It also has decent reproduction, which has not been the case with every MAD project.
I'm happy to have these slipcased volumes on my shelf — or will be, just as soon as I can figure out what shelf the thing will fit on. If you'd like to go "Spleenk!" like me, here's a link to order your copy.
• Posted at 1:43 AM · LINK
Today's Video Link
This runs six minutes and the video's terrible...but it's kinda funny. It's an excerpt from the Hollywood Squares game show during the period when it was hosted by Tom Bergeron. Let's go to Gilbert Gottfried for the win...
November 2, 2007
