Members of the Screen Actors Guild are currently voting on a long-awaited contract. Here's a video that runs almost ten minutes which features a lot of familiar faces explaining why they're voting against it...
Not being a member of S.A.G., I don't get a ballot...but I have read and heard a lot of the pro and con arguments. The video above gives some (not all) of the arguments against. The "pro" arguments all seem to sidestep the question of what's actually in the contract and to make two points. One is that SAG is so deeply divided that it cannot mount the kind of strike and solidarity that would be necessary to improve it. The other is that the contract's expiration date is roughly the same as that of all the other major Hollywood unions. There is, therefore, a chance that all those unions could link arms in a few years, sing a few choruses of "Kumbaya" and mount an all-out, shut-the-town-down-'til-we-get-what-we-deserve work stoppage.
That's possible. But it's also so unprecedented and world-shaking that it's hard to have a lot of confidence that it will happen. Producers aren't, for the most part, stupid. They have calendars. They must be pretty sure they can head that off...which doesn't mean they can. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. Still, it seems foolish to me to take a bad deal this time because you're confident you can get it all back (and more) next time.
The first argument has some merit and it sadly reminds me of the way my union, the Writers Guild of America, folded in 1985 and took a terrible, terrible deal. In fact, it was such a rotten deal that it not only cost us billions but — and read the rest of this sentence carefully — it put us so far down that it practically guaranteed we'd have to strike in '88 just to dig our way out a little from the pit into which we'd been dumped.
I usually don't like penile analogies in labor matters. A contract or a strike should be about arriving at a deal that works for all parties, not about proving that someone is tougher than someone else. Still, the best way to describe what went on in the WGA back then is as follows: In '85, we gave up one testicle rather than go to war and then in '88, we had to go to war in order to keep the other one. It would have been a lot easier and less costly to fight the first war.
Alas, what happened in 1985 was that our leadership splintered and collapsed. Those of us who wanted to fix bayonets and charge into battle looked at the front of the hall and didn't see anyone capable of leading us to the men's room, let alone to war. Everyone up there was too busy fighting with everyone else. I voted against the contract but I could certainly understand the resignation of my friends who agreed it was a sucky deal but felt the game was lost and it was time to move on.
I fear SAG is now in a comparable position. What the WGA and DGA got was acceptable. The SAG offer is the same in some regards, different in others, and it adds in a lot of terms that are unique to actors and quite pernicious. In an ideal world (which despite the election of Barack Obama, we don't seem to have just yet), the actors would demonstrate grand solidarity, vote it into oblivion and within 48 hours, the producers would have a new, more benevolent one on the table. For lack of unity and leadership, that ain't gonna happen. If the contract does fail, which seems doubtful, it will be by a small margin. That's like going into a war where the other side has a nuclear arsenal and you're armed with Daisy Air Rifles.
I don't know what's going to happen except that SAG doesn't have the kind of leadership necessary to fight this thing. The Board of Directors vote to recommend this contract was 53.38% to 46.62%...pretty much split right down the ol' middle. There will probably be a lot of members who'll vote Yes because though they know the deal stinks, they feel like my friends did in '85.
How would I vote? I'd vote No but I'd brace myself for losing this one...or maybe worse, winning by a tiny margin. But fortunately, I don't have to vote. I'm not a professional actor whose career is involved with the Screen Actors Guild. At the moment, that feels like a good thing not to be.
Over on a website called Eclipse Magazine, I see the following news item...
Director Kenneth Branagh and legendary Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have found the man they want to step into the role of The Mighty Thor and have cast Australian born Chris Hemsworth as the hammer swinging action hero.
It's nice of them to give Jack a writing credit but it's even nicer of him to help them cast their movie, fifteen years after he passed away.
Speaking of the Comic-Con, as I believe I just was: This year, to note the fortieth assemblage, the convention crew has concocted a hardcover book jammed with convention memories — hundreds of photos, old ads, reproductions of past badges, anecdotes, schedules, etc. Gary Sassaman and Jackie Estrada did the heavy lifting and...well, I just got an advance copy and it's a glorious, memory-jogging book for anyone who's ever ventured to one of these events. I haven't crawled through every inch of it yet but what I've gone through has been just about perfect.
And hey, it's worth the price alone just for the wraparound cover by Sergio Aragonés. If you look closely (see the detail I isolated), you can spot Sergio and me being pedal-cabbed to the con. That's how we usually arrive, except that before I lost all that weight, it took six cyclists to get us there.
I dunno if the book will be available anywhere before the con but that may not matter. You're going to want to purchase your copy at the con. It'll just be more appropriate that way.
Joan Alexander, the original voice of Lois Lane on radio, has died at the age of 94. That's her in the above photo, posing with Harry Donenfeld (the publisher of the Superman comic books) and Bud Collyer, the radio voice of The Man of Steel. She was best known for that program but she appeared in an awful lot of other programs, and also had a decent career in television. Among her other jobs, she was a panelist on the game show, The Name's The Same, which we've occasionally discussed here.
This obit will tell you a lot more than I can, but it does have one thing wrong. It says she and Collyer did the radio roles in the 17 Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleischer and Famous Studios in the forties. Actually, the last few had very good sound-alikes, not Collyer and Alexander.
One thing in that obit surprised me. It said she had once been married to actor John Sylvester White, who was best known for playing Mr. Woodman, the beleaguered principal on Welcome Back, Kotter. I knew John pretty well when I worked on that show. He was a charming man who talked openly about his past, which included destroying his career for many years at a time via alcohol...but he never mentioned that he was once married to Lois Lane.
The Comic-Con International in San Diego has sold out for Thursday. Tickets for Friday and Saturday were gone weeks ago. Sunday passes will probably be gone before this month is out.
This is May. The convention isn't until July 23-26...two months from now. Amazing.
It may also interest many of you that a couple of terrific Guests of Honor have been added to an already-stellar list...the legendary comic genius Stan Freberg and his wonderful wife, Hunter. We are officially delighted.
I will be hosting my usual marathon of panels and events, including all your old faves — The Golden Age Panel, The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, Quick Draw!, a couple of Cartoon Voice Actor panels and many more. There'll be a special spotlight event for the First Lady of Cartoon Voices, June Foray, and one with the Frebergs, as well. The whole schedule won't be up until some time in July, I would imagine.
This will be the fortieth of these conventions and the fortieth I've attended. Matter of fact, some of the programming this year will be devoted to the history of the con, and we'll be recalling those days at the El Cortez Hotel when it was a big deal that there were three thousand people there. At this year's con, there'll be three thousand people ahead of you in line to buy a Diet Snapple. But it's still going to be great. At least, it has been the last thirty-nine times...
I have a perverse appreciation for songs with inappropriate arrangements...where someone has taken a tune and performed it completely and totally the way it shouldn't be. It's especially wonderful when the performers obviously thought they were doing a fine and valid interpretation.
During the early disco craze, I was overwhelmed with examples, but you still encounter them, here and there. This clip from The Lawrence Welk Show is about as "wrong" as wrong can be. It's so wrong, Mr. Welk apparently couldn't bring himself to introduce it and he left that task to his star accordion player, Myron Floren...
May 24, 2009
