A lot of folks in the movie and TV business are having a nervous Christmas owing to management/labor unrest. There's a tendency to only call it "labor unrest" and in this case, I think that's a misnomer. It's our unrest only in that we've been forced to take a stand, backed into a corner where a strike was unavoidable. This is my fifth Writers Guild strike and I honestly don't think any of them were avoidable. Some of them could perhaps have been fought earlier and been less bloody. Some of them could arguably have been fought later and been even more destructive.
But avoidable? Sorry to say, I don't think so...and I'm one of those folks who thinks the best way to win a fight is to not have it. Whenever possible, I like to sit down, discuss needs and differences of opinion and arrive at some set of creative solutions and compromises that gives everyone what they want/require. That is not, sad to say, an option that has been open to us in dealing with the AMPTP.
Our members understand this, which is why they've been so good about hanging together. People outside the WGA "get it," too. The other day, I had a long conversation with one of the men who's rebuilding my kitchen. He understood completely, and without me explaining it to him. He's had jobs where the employer kept chipping away at his income and benefits, counting on the fact that no one's going to up and change jobs over the little cutbacks. "Nibbled to death by evil ducklings" is how the worker put it. At some point though, the nibbles add up and become major bites...and that's when you have to say, "This stops now." In his case, he could quit one construction company and go to another one. We don't have quite that luxury. As a unit, they're all trying to hack away at the financial foundation of our profession so we have to quit them all at once. I wish there was another way.
Lately, they've been employing Scare Tactics. You know: The CEOs are so mad at us that they're willing to blow off not only the rest of this TV season but the one after, as well. In every one of the previous four strikes, we had those threats of burning down the factory, breaking the union, destroying our whole profession. It's never happened. Eventually, they have to make a deal with us, just as they have to make a deal with the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, neither of which is going to accept terms as rotten as the ones presented to us.
How and when this will end, I do not know. Despite all the rumors and games of Good Cop/Bad Cop being played, I still think the strike will end sooner than a lot of people think. I wish I was certain of that but all we can go by is logic and in this arena, illogical things tend to happen. I am pretty certain though that if we take a crappy deal this time, then in 2011 when the 2008 contract is up for renegotiation, they'll offer us a deal three times as crappy, take it or leave it...and we'll have to strike three times as long just to put a dent in it. At least.
ABC ran the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas this evening. It was a half-hour special when it first aired in 1966 but nowadays, there are more commercials in a network show so they have a choice: Chop it down or pad it out. They chose to pad the show out to an hour by inserting filler aplenty, including a little documentary on the making of the special.
The documentary was produced in 1994 and its makers were able to interview several folks who worked on the show and have since passed away — director Chuck Jones, composer Albert Hague and voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft. It was also hosted by someone else who's no longer with us...Phil Hartman. In fact, he's not even in the documentary anymore. A few years ago, Warner Brothers redid his sequences and narration, replacing Phil with Tom Bergeron. I suppose we should be grateful they didn't replace Chuck, Albert and Thurl while they were at it.
Even though I have the animated special on DVD, I got hooked watching a little of it on ABC. It still works. Some of Jones's later animated work smacks too much of his own stylistic quirks. He was an overpowering director and when he handled someone else's characters — the Jones-directed Tom & Jerry cartoons, for instance, or his Pogo special with Walt Kelly — everyone came off looking like Wile E. Coyote and twitching their noses. But on Grinch, perhaps because he had Dr. Seuss hovering about or because the Good Doctor's style melded well with the Jones look, there was a unity of style and purpose. The additional story points, which came mostly from a brilliantly mad animation writer named Bob Ogle and an artist named Irv Spector, expanded the Seuss story without wrecking it. It's probably my third-favorite Christmas special, following A Charlie Brown Christmas and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.
It won't make your holidays any brighter but Fred Kaplan has an article up detailing what's likely to happen with Iraq in the next six months. And if you really want to be depressed about the world situation, read Christopher Hitchens on North Korea.
Here we have "The Night Before Christmas" as read by a whole bunch of voice actors including Gary Owens, Tom Kenny, Brian Cummings, Jim Cummings, Eddie Deezen, Grey DeLisle, Candi Milo, Billy West, Jennifer Hale and Don "The Movie Trailer Guy" LaFontaine. I believe Jim Cummings is the first person I've ever heard do an impression of Professor Irwin Corey. I'll bet there's a lot of call for that.
We love this kind of story. Earlier this year, the Circuit City chain, which wasn't doing so well, decided it could save money by firing 3,400 employees and replacing them with folks who'd work cheaper. In most cases, it meant getting rid of salespeople who knew about computers and electronics and the equipment sold in those stores, and bringing in kids who didn't know as much.
So, how has this worked out? Well, Circuit City just reported its fifth straight losing quarter and warned stockholders that it won't post a profit for this holiday season, either. When you're selling electronics equipment and you can't make money at Christmas, you're really doing something wrong. But at least they've wised-up a little and are now trying to hire a lot of their old, more knowledgeable employees back.
December 25, 2007
