February
10The Urge to Self-Destruct
It’s been one year since the Writers Guild’s self-destructive strike and now we have the actors in a similarly self-destructive mode. At a time when the nation’s economy is in a state of upheaval, this town’s creative community seems intent on stepping up the chaos.
I have a very brief question: Why have people lost their survival instinct?
The architects of the writers strike are sufficiently delusional that, one year later, they still claim they scored a triumph. I defer to the judgment of John McLean, the Guild’s one-time executive director, who says the writers emerged with “perhaps the worst deal ever negotiated by the creative guilds.”
McLean’s interview is quoted in an article in today’s Daily Variety and a lengthy Q&A with McLean is carried on Variety.com.
McLean is asked his opinion of the 2008 WGA deal and responds: “If it was the best deal negotiated in the past 30 years, why did the WGA keep their members on strike for an additional three weeks after the DGA made their deal?”
McLean feels SAG “allowed their friends at WGA to strike prematurely and their adversaries at AFTRA to go off and make their own deal….SAG has lost this game and they need to get focused on the next game.”
Instead, SAG’s leaders are hell-bent on pursuing their struggle, displaying along the way a significant level of power paranoia.
I have a very brief question: Why have people lost their survival instinct?
The architects of the writers strike are sufficiently delusional that, one year later, they still claim they scored a triumph. I defer to the judgment of John McLean, the Guild’s one-time executive director, who says the writers emerged with “perhaps the worst deal ever negotiated by the creative guilds.”
McLean’s interview is quoted in an article in today’s Daily Variety and a lengthy Q&A with McLean is carried on Variety.com.
McLean is asked his opinion of the 2008 WGA deal and responds: “If it was the best deal negotiated in the past 30 years, why did the WGA keep their members on strike for an additional three weeks after the DGA made their deal?”
McLean feels SAG “allowed their friends at WGA to strike prematurely and their adversaries at AFTRA to go off and make their own deal….SAG has lost this game and they need to get focused on the next game.”
Instead, SAG’s leaders are hell-bent on pursuing their struggle, displaying along the way a significant level of power paranoia.
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Going to the WGA’s fired, former-Executive Director John McLean for his assessment on the current Guild speaks far more about Peter Bart than about the reality of any strike. Further, when one sees the significant gains the WGA made – particularly in New Media, where the original offer was zero – it again speaks volumes about Mr. Bart to read him calling the strike “delusional,†or suggesting that the Guild has no survival instinct. Mr. McLean chiding his former union in regards to the DGA contract ignores the reality that the DGA got the increased New Media terms it did specifically because the writers had been on strike over the issue for two months. And in the end, he clearly misses the reality that, because the WGA stayed on strike three weeks longer – a) the DGA deal didn’t meet all the writers’ needs, and b) the WGA was able to get better terms than the directors did. Worst of all, though, is Mr. McClean’s suggestion, and Mr. Bart’s approval, that the WGA should have waited to strike with SAG. Given SAG’s inability to unite, and the collapse of the U.S. economy, the two gentleman demonstrate why unions are not going to them for their insightful advice.
Posted by: Robert J. Elisberg | 2/11/2009 4:31:55 PM
McLean suggests that the WGA should have gone out on strike in July 2008 instead of November 2007.
This is absolutely idiotic.
July 2008: the Los Angeles housing market has fallen off a cliff, network TV is on hiatus, and we're about to go into the Beijing Olympics and the heat of the Presidential race?
Brilliant, Mr. McLean! Brilliant!
I'm not sure you go far enough, Mr. Bart. Isn't the WGA also to blame for the subprime crisis, the credit crunch, the investment bank failures, and the implosion of the united states auto industry? The WGA struck, and then these things happened, so the cause and effect is clear.
Posted by: JDM | 2/11/2009 11:15:35 AM