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Posted Nov. 12, 2007, 10:44 a.m. PT
SNL Cast Members Past & Present Explain Writers' Strike To You
By Ann Magnuson
My inbox has been flooding with emails about the Writers' Strike. (Yes, as a card-carrying member of S.A.G. I plan to march in solidarity. Maybe even bake those adorably caustic writers some very special brownies! Especially for the Family Guy and American Dad scribes!) One of these emails arrived with a link to a YouTube clip of former Saturday Night Live cast member Tim Kazurinsky who I think explains the situation as best as anyone has. I also like the comments posted on that particular YouTube site, three of which are excerpted here:
-Hey, tardo, pick up a paper. This isn't only the entertainment business. This is happening all over America with mega conglomerates making the top 1 percent of the country richer while sucking regular people dry. And MOST writers are middle class regular people. Again, read up before you make an ass of yourself making ignorant comments. Or maybe you want all the money in the world to go to about fifty people?
-Health insurance isn't provided for free...that's a lame assumption you have. There are premiums to pay. Writers don't work 12 months of the year. True there are your steady big name writers but I read that roughly 40% of writers are unemployed at any time. They need their residuals. 4 cents was a joke way back when and producers said they'd fix it and they didn't. Now they are trying to secure their future for new media before they get hosed.
-Great explanation. Even with the DVD negotiations off the table, the corporations won't even talk about new media.
The video below is from the present day SNL and they also get to root of the problem. Just wait til the actors' and directors' contracts run out! No one is going to work in this town for a looooooong time. (You're gonna see a lot of stuff up for sale on eBay soon.) It took a lot more than a strike to topple the Romanovs. Which in Movieland are the greedy A-listers who are sucking all the money up (as this very astute article in this Monday's New York Times points out.) I think everyone here is facing a long, hard slog. Even so....Power to the B-C-D and LMNOP List People!
Comments
OK my job is pretty much affected more than anyone in the writers guild or S.AG. considering I am the one working on making the DVDS at DELUXE in Burbank as well as ASCENT media ,,....the truth is that yes downloading is the next big thing and that in about 10 years its possible that DVDs will no longer be made ......but what is not understood is that people like to hold something...or own something so I think that DVDs including the new Bluray technology as well as HD which have added materials to get the consumer to buy the disk will still be in circulation for quite some time when downloading becomes the next big thing;the studios are doing their most if not more to bring something beyond the movie experience into peoples homes with Bluray and HD which are not on downloads....unlike writers and actors who have already made and will continue to make a profit off of their intellectual work ( though its debatable as to the intellectual part )I will not receive a dime .... EVER! for my work in bringing DVD,Bluray,HD or the downloads I watch to the public beyond my paycheck ....next time you watch a Paramount movie or watch LOST and Pirates of the caribbean on Bluray thank me and maybe buy me a drink or better yet buy me diner or let me into a invitation only red carpet event
Posted at 4:44 p.m. PT on Nov 12, 2007 by randy focazio
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