Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Today's Political Thought

Like you, I keep getting mail — the paper kind and the "e" kind — asking me to donate to various folks running for the presidency. I've received the most from John McCain's campaign even though the chances of me giving him money are about the same as the chances of him giving me a soothing full body massage. As for Clinton and Obama...I don't know if I'll be giving any Democrat money but if I do, it won't be until they start spending it on defeating a Republican.

• Posted at 12:24 PM · LINK

Synchronicity

If all goes as expected, Barack Obama will accept the nomination of the Democratic party at their convention on August 28...45 years to the day after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

• Posted at 11:47 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This runs one minute. It's the opening to an unsold pilot for a Dick Cavett show. If you were producing a show and you wanted to make certain it didn't sell, I'd imagine you'd come up with an opening very much like this one.

I never heard of this pilot. In his autobiography, Cavett, the host talks of an unsold pilot he did around the same called The Star and the Story but there's no mention of this one, which is alleged to date from 1967. If so, that would mean it came before Cavett even started doing his first talk show, which was a daytime program on ABC.

Bruce Reznick sent me this link today — thank you, Bruce — and noted that my pal Chuck McCann is in the cast. An hour or so later, Chuck phoned about something and I asked him about the pilot. He had only vague memories of the show and said, "We did it and almost immediately, we knew it wasn't going to sell so we all forgot about it. I don't think it ever aired. A few years ago, someone brought it out on a VHS tape along with an unsold Johnny Carson pilot."

So that's all we know about it, perhaps all we're likely to know about it. Have a look...

• Posted at 5:05 AM · LINK

Hollywood Labor News

The Writers Guild ought to be getting residuals for what's going on between the AMPTP ("the studios") and the Screen Actors Guild ("the good guys") in their current negotiations. Actually, the negotiations are no longer current, having broken down today with the two sides still light years apart...but the point is it's like a replay of what happened with the WGA, and we oughta get residuals for the rerun.

If anyone thought that our strike would have softened up the studios...well, that doesn't seem to have happened. Accounts are sketchy and conflicting but it seems safe to say the studios are offering our (and the DGA's) "new media" deal in a form that doesn't work for SAG, they're refusing all other increases save the token, low-end cost of living increases, and they're demanding a number of concessions from the actors. One of those proposed concessions is to do away with some fees and all permissions when a clip of an actor is used in a different context. In other words, if you're in a movie, they want to be able to take a segment that you're in and do any damn thing they want with it without paying you and without your okay.

I can't believe that will ever fly with the SAG membership. In fact, it's so outrageous that it sounds like it's in the studios' demands just so it can be dropped later on. As we noted during the WGA head-butting, a favored tactic of the AMPTP is to make an offer that's really lousy with one or two deal-killer points. Then, when they drop those points, the hope is, the union will consider it a "win" and accept what remains, which is still a really crappy deal.

Without a vast amount of confidence, I'll stick with my prediction that there won't be a SAG strike. The studios are sitting down now with the other actors' union, AFTRA, to negotiate a new contract. The expectation seems to be that AFTRA will take a bad deal and then the AMPTP will go back to SAG, tell them they can have the same thing or they can go on strike...and no other options will be discussed. I don't think it'll work because I think SAG and its members know the drill and are inspired by the WGA walkout/holdout. Also, SAG just seems angrier about the basic issues than we were. Still, a lot will be riding on how badly AFTRA eats it.

• Posted at 12:11 AM · LINK