July
9The Ball is Back in SAG’s court: It’s Deal or No Deal
SAG could still fight the three-year deal and seek a strike authorization vote (it would need 75% backing). Rosenberg and company will meet with the studios again tomorrow. The studios offered to sweeten the deal provided the guild ratifies it by August 15th.
How did we get to this mess? As Cynthia Littleton reminds us in today’s Variety, the original scenario was quite different. The Writers Guild was going to keep working under its old contract until SAG’s June 30 expiration date. Summer was supposed to be solidarity time.
Then the writes decided to enter the fray sooner, hoping to disrupt the TV season. The resulting strike walloped the community, though it’s arguable whether it gained much for the writers.
So suddenly SAG finds itself at the end of the bargaining line behind the writers, directors and below-the-line craftsmen.
It’s well know in the business that actors love to play heavies. If you’re the heavy you can chew up the props, climb the walls, and lay on the shtick --you don’t have to follow the rules of the clean-cut leading man.
Due to its strategic missteps, SAG has now cast itself as the heavy. The trouble is the town doesn’t need another heavy -- it needs a little statesmanship.
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SAG will not get 75%, even though a larger percentage of their membership is essentially out of work at all times anyway. Pathetic and unprincipled greed mongers at the top. Send them wherever Hoffa went.
Posted by: Kush master general | 7/10/2008 9:06:53 PM