Speaking with the Los Angeles Times,Alex O’Keefe, who wrote on season one of The Bear, said, “The WGA doesn’t have a standing army and the concern of our union should be helping rebuild our careers and protecting our free speech.”
Last Friday, some 75 writers joined a Zoom to discuss their disappointment with the WGA’s decision not to issue a statement. “Right now, I don’t feel like the guild represents me,” says Guggenheim, who attended the Zoom meeting. He plans to withhold his dues “until such time that I feel like the guild has my back.”
Wyatt Earp screenwriter Dan Gordon went a step further, announcing Tuesday that he will leave the union after 56 years, becoming a non-voting “financial core” non-member. “I am resigning my membership not because I wish to work on non union projects nor cross any picket lines, but because I no longer wish to be a fellow traveller with those who hide behind the fetid veil of a morally bankrupt wokeism and stand silent in the face of unadulterated evil,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which was published by Variety.
Gordon, who spent much of his childhood in Israel and served in the Israeli army, tells Vanity Fair that he shared the news of his resignation with multiple news outlets, “because if they are not going to give voice to a condemnation, then I want there to be at least one writer on record who does in a very public fashion.”
Three leaders of the WGA West—including president Meredith Stiehm—reportedly emailed members that same day to acknowledge that their “decision not to issue a statement on the events of October 7th has caused pain within our membership that we did not intend.” They said they had felt that commenting on the attack was “outside the purview of a U.S. labor union.” The email ended with a condemnation of the attack. “All of us in Guild leadership are horrified by the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th,” they wrote. “The murder of so many innocent people in Israel is an abomination. We deeply mourn the deaths of innocent Palestinians ensnared in the violence in Gaza. We feel for all our members who have been affected, directly and indirectly.”
The WGA East reportedly emailed its members one day earlier that it would not be making a statement because journalists have joined the ranks alongside screenwriters, explaining that “such statements hindered journalist members’ work and divided rather than united us.” A representative for WGA East did not respond to a request for comment.
Some Jewish members of the WGA point out that the guild promptly spoke out in support of other causes, including Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement. “The silence itself is a statement and the silence itself is a choice,” Guggenheim says. “It’s hurtful.”
Schkolnick says he wants to feel supported by his union during an otherwise terrifying time. “There’s a ton of antisemitism around the world right now, and that really pushes a lot of buttons for Jewish people,” he says. “A lot of us grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. Even if we weren’t directly affected, there was always a fear that it could start up again, that you’re never really safe as a Jew.”
WGA West members are scrutinizing the message sent to members. Guggenheim says the furor has not calmed down, adding that he will continue to withhold his dues until they “make a sincere apology.” Gordon calls the statement “cowardly” and asks why they did not call for the release of hostages. He doesn’t expect that others will follow him in leaving the union, but says that’s okay. “I have heard from a lot of people who said, ‘You gave voice to what I was feeling and thinking,’” he says. “It sort of let the pressure out of the pressure cooker.”
Leaders of Hollywood’s writers union declared their nearly five-month-old strike over Tuesday after board members approved a contract agreement with studios.
The governing boards of the eastern and western branches of the Writers Guild of America both voted to accept the deal, and afterward declared that the strike would be over and writers would be free to work starting at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
The writers still have to vote to ratify the contract themselves, but lifting the strike will allow them to work during that process, the Writers Guild told members in an email.
Hollywood actors remain on strike with no talks yet on the horizon.
Hollywood North awaits end to writers strike
A new spirit of optimism animated actors who were picketing Tuesday for the first time since writers reached their tentative deal Sunday night.
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“For a hot second, I really thought that this was going to go on until next year,” said Marissa Cuevas, an actor who has appeared on the TV series “Kung Fu” and “The Big Bang Theory.” “Knowing that at least one of us has gotten a good deal gives a lot of hope that we will also get a good deal.”
Writers’ picket lines have been suspended, but they were encouraged to walk in solidarity with actors, and many were on the lines Tuesday, including “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, who picketed alongside friend and “ER” actor Noah Wyle as he has throughout the strikes.
“We would never have had the leverage we had if SAG had not gone out,” Weiner said. “They were very brave to do it.”
Striking actors voted to expand their walkout to include the lucrative video game market, a step that could put new pressure on Hollywood studios to make a deal with the performers who provide voices and stunts for games.
Writers Guild and Hollywood studios reach tentative deal to end strike
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists announced the move late Monday, saying that 98% of its members voted to go on strike against video game companies if ongoing negotiations are not successful. The announcement came ahead of more talks planned for Tuesday.
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Acting in video games can include a variety of roles, from voice performances to motion capture work as well as stunts. Video game actors went on strike in 2016 in a work stoppage that lasted nearly a year.
Some of the same issues are at play in the video game negotiations as in the broader actors strike that has shut down Hollywood for months, including wages, safety measures and protections on the use of artificial intelligence. The companies involved include gaming giants Activision, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Take 2 Productions as well as Disney and Warner Bros.? video game divisions.
“It’s time for the video game companies to stop playing games and get serious about reaching an agreement on this contract,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a statement.
Audrey Cooling, a spokesperson for video game producers, said they are “continuing to negotiate in good faith” and have reached tentative agreements on more than half of the proposals on the table.
Lingering impact of the Hollywood writers’ strike
So far this year, U.S. consumers have spent $34.9 billion on video games, consoles and accessories, according to market research group Circana.
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The threat of a video game strike emerged as Hollywood writers were on the verge of getting back to work after months on the picket lines.
The alliance of studios, streaming services and producers has chosen to negotiate only with the writers so far, and has made no overtures yet toward restarting talks with SAG-AFTRA. That will presumably change soon.
SAG-AFTRA leaders have said they will look closely at the writers’ agreement, which includes many of the same issues, but it will not effect their demands.
Associated Press video journalists Leslie Ambriz and Krysta Fauria in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
When you’re writing a story about an issue that affects a large group of people, whether it’s for a news outlet or a television show, you often pick one person as the anecdotal lead of the tale. That character serves a purpose: to make a specific thesis feel less nebulous and more, dare I say, human. Right now in Hollywood there are some 11,500 humans who could be the lead of this particular story. Writers who have spent their careers holed up in writers rooms or coffee shops, figuring out plots and characters and dialogue and stuffing them into 30- or 60-page scripts. But this past week, those same screenwriters have woken up, donned blue T-shirts that say “Writers Guild of America,” grabbed a red-and-black picket sign, and descended on the sidewalks of one of the big Hollywood studios. Then, as gangly palm trees sway nearby and rivers of cars flow along Los Angeles’ concrete canals, these writers have trudged back and forth on the pavements in front of Paramount Studios and CBS and Disney and Netflix—on strike as screenwriters for television shows and movies for the first time in 15 years.
But in reality, it isn’t just the 11,500 people wearing those blue T-shirts and chanting, “No contract! No content!”—or my personal favorite, “Here’s a pitch: Pay us, Bitch!”—who could be the lead of this story. It’s actually a much larger group; an estimated 375 million people worldwide, to be precise. “What?!” you’re saying. “There aren’t that many writers in Hollywood!” No, there are not. But there are many people who will be affected by what happens with one of the issues at stake between the writers and the studios. (This is where we cue the scary music.)
I’m referring to artificial intelligence. No, no…I know what you’re thinking, not another AI story, but wait! Stop! Keep reading, I promise you this will all make sense momentarily. AI in Hollywood could be a harbinger for what’s to come to everyone—and I mean everyone. It could be the issue that signals what will happen to almost all creative jobs (and many other kinds of white-collar vocations) in the not-too-distant future. That’s because, among the lists of demands the WGA is asking for, which include better pay and larger writers rooms, the most important topic (to me) is the demand that the studios agree not to use AI to write or rewrite stories (though the guild has said it’s okay for writers to use it as a tool). The AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios and networks, rejected this proposal, saying that the group representing the studios would be open to offering an annual meeting to discuss advancements in technology.
“The writers strike is too easily dismissed as coastal elites protecting their cushy gigs. Instead it should be seen as the first skirmish in a new war, one where more than half of all jobs are at risk as we lose control of language itself—and thus of being human—to large language models,” Paul Kedrosky, an investor and prominent thinker on how AI is going to change society over the next few years, told me when I asked if this is the first true battle in the humans-versus-artificial-intelligence war. “Too many people are trapped in the past, arguing that we have always had to adapt to new technologies. Yes, but we have never been chased by an all-encompassing technology whose DNA is evolving in real time so quickly. Our attempts to stay ahead are charmingly vestigial, like buying expensive carbon plate running shoes to out-run a rocket-powered steamroller.”
The irony of the AI debate is that six months ago, when the WGA and AMPTP were gearing up for these talks and negotiations, AI wasn’t even something they were discussing as part of the demands. ChatGPT was not released until November of last year, and it didn’t really show its true prowess until March 14 of this year—around 50 days ago—when GPT-4, the most advanced version of the platform, was released. And yet, at the end of the day, while all of the other negotiation topics by the WGA are incredibly important to writers—including being paid residuals for popular shows and the elimination of “mini” rooms, where shows are created with a skeleton staff—the requisition to put AI-written scripts at bay could prove to be the most important battle not just for screenwriters, but hundreds of millions around the world—which (most ironically) includes the hundreds of thousands of people who work for the studios the AMPTP is representing.
It isn’t that AI will simply write scripts in the future—it will do everything, and do it in real time. You can imagine a scenario a few years from now, you walk into your living room after a long day (not working because you’re out of a job), plop on the couch, and say to your TV, “Hey, Netflix, make me a 20-minute comedy set in New York in the 1980s starring Marilyn Monroe, The Rock, and Dave Chappelle. Oh, and throw in a few zombies and make one of them my ex-wife.” Your TV will go beepedy-beep-beep-beep and your customized show will begin. An AI has written the script, created AI actors (that look completely real), created an AI score (which sounds like it was written by Max Richter or Hans Zimmer and performed by the Vienna Philharmonic), and generated AI sound effects (you don’t think an AI can fake a broken bone?), and it’s edited, directed, and produced by the same software. (Cue even scarier music…this time, made by an AI.)
Then when you factor in the next era of televisions, which are starting to come with built-in cameras (like the ones in your phone and iPad) which will be able to watch you as you watch them. They’ll see if you’re laughing, or crying, or bored, and will be able to change the content in real time to make sure the show is all you ever asked for.
Pacific Press/Getty Images.
Now I know what you’re thinking: There’s no way AI could do that. Humans, with their human foibles and human creativity, are the only people capable of telling stories. But what people fail to realize is that AI is using human-written content, with all of its human-backed suffering and empathy, to tell new stories. An AI doesn’t need to have abandonment issues because its parents got divorced when it was 12 years old after its dad cheated on its mom in order to read and analyze every great script, novel, and story ever written about that specific human experience. And if you think an AI couldn’t make the next formulaic largely garbage Marvel movie, or John Wick 17, The Fast and the Furious 839,123, or most recently, The Super Mario Bros. Movie—which, let’s be honest, may have made $1 billion and counting at the box office, but was excruciatingly mimetic of every other video game turned movie—then you may have missed what’s been happening to culture and content over the past 40 years.
But there is a way to stop this from happening. The Directors Guild of America, which represents more than 19,000 directors and directorial team members in Hollywood, is starting its own negotiations with the AMPTP on May 10, which will be followed by the Screen Actors Guild, which represents approximately 160,000 actors, radio hosts, recording artists, singers, and more and begins its own negotiations on June 7. It is especially worth noting that, like the studios themselves, these two unions also risk their representatives being replaced by AI—if you don’t believe me, go and watch AI Mark Zuckerbergtalking about scrunching his nose or the completely AI-generated Great Catspy trailer, or even the AI-created RNC attack ad against Biden. There were no directors, actors, grips, or directors of photography used to create that content. Just a few lines of text that an AI turned into video. In other words, everyone is fucked if they don’t all team up and give this story a Hollywood ending.
There are countless companies currently working in the video and film space, and what they are capable of today is astounding (and frankly, for a creative person, terrifying). Some of these startups are simply tools, while others are aiming to completely replace people in all forms of storytelling. And their company taglines say it. Synthesia.io, a text-to-video service bills itself as the tool that allows you to “say goodbye to cameras, microphones, and actors” because it can create all of that for you. Runway, a generative AI company that has an incredible text-to-video product—the company’s tagline is “No lights. No camera. All action”—is a place where you can create content from scratch in seconds. At the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills last week, this was the topic du jour, with Todd Lieberman, a movie producer, saying that in three years, a “good” movie will come out that will have been written and created by an AI, which was echoed by Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade, who noted that it won’t just be screenwriting, but it will be everything, from editing to storyboarding to directing. “AI in the future, maybe not next year or the year after, but if we’re talking 10 years? AI is [absolutely] going to be able to do all of these things,” Wade said.
In another universe, Pete Davidson would have spent Friday night in the writers’ offices at 30 Rockefeller Center, making last-minute adjustments ahead of his planned first time hosting Saturday Night Live. The comedian was a cast member of the show for eight seasons, officially leaving the show just last May. Instead of taking his victory lap on the show as a graduated senior with a brand new sitcom of his own, the Bupkis star spent last night handing out pizza to striking Writer’s Guild members on the picket line in Brooklyn.
“Gotta support the writers,” Davidson said in a clip captured from the drizzly scene, precious pies in hand. “No shows without the writers, man.”
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Davidson arrived in a dark hoodie with the hood up bearing stacks of pies from L&B Spumoni Gardens, an 80-plus-year-old Brooklyn institution in the Gravesend neighborhood. It’s a jaunt, but well worth it—Sbarro could never. Spumoni Gardens’ square grandma pies are a slice that demands respect.
Saturday Night Live is among the shows that have halted production amidst the writers’ strike, and will air a rerun tonight instead of Davidson’s show as planned. The strike has halted nearly 12,000 writers’ work as they stand with their union, the Writers Guild of America, in the group’s first strike in nearly 15 years.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 5: Pete Davidson joins members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and its supporters to picket outside Silvercup Studios on May 5, 2023 in New York City. Writers Guild of America members have gone on strike in a contract dispute with studios and streaming services over lowering wages, residuals and the future of AI in entertainment. (Photo by Bruce Glikas/Getty Images)Bruce Glikas/Getty Images
Earlier this week, Davidson was spotted with signs showing SAG-AFTRA union solidarity with the WGA.
Last week, in an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon before the strike was authorized, Davidson told host Jimmy Fallon that he’d been working on his episode for two or three months, and that if a strike led to the cancellation of his hosting debut, “it just feeds my weird story I have in my head, like, ‘Of course that would happen to me.’”
Hollywood writers are putting down their pens and grabbing picket signs. After weeks spent negotiating a new contract with Hollywood’s biggest studios, the Writers Guild of America said Monday that it has failed to reach a new deal. Now, for the first time in 15 years, nearly 12,000 scribes plan to walk out on Tuesday in a strike that threatens to grind Hollywood to a halt.
“The WGA Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, but the studios’ responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing,” the WGA said in a statement shared with Vanity Fair. “The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing.”
The WGA called for its members to begin picketing on Tuesday afternoon.
The WGA spent six weeks in negotiation with Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers—which bargains on behalf of 100-year-old studios like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, as well as streamers like Netflix and Amazon Studios. The guild said in the statement that the studios would not meet certain demands, including guaranteed weekly employment for TV writers or protections against an AI incursion. The studios, the guild said, “have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
WGA’s contract renegotiation was complicated by the tough economic climate for the studios, which have been cutting budgets and laying off thousands of employees as they face pressure from Wall Street to turn their streaming services into profitable businesses. AMPTP said in a statement that it “presented a comprehensive package proposal to the Guild last night which included generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals. The AMPTP also indicated to the WGA that it is prepared to improve that offer, but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the Guild continues to insist upon.” It added that its primary sticking points are “Guild proposals that would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not.”
The group continued, “The AMPTP member companies remain united in their desire to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry, and to avoid hardship to the thousands of employees who depend upon the industry for their livelihoods. The AMPTP is willing to engage in discussions with the WGA in an effort to break this logjam.”
Conversations with Hollywood sources in the weeks after negotiations began indicated that no one was jonesing for a strike. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos both spoke out in support of a deal with the writers, but hand-wringing about a potential work stoppage mounted as the contract expiration date loomed closer with little signal that the groups were nearing a deal. On April 17, the WGA announced that 98% of its members had voted to authorize a strike if a new contract was not in place by midnight on Monday.
This will be the writers’ first work stoppage since late 2007, when they went on strike for 100 days over a cut of studios’ digital sales, among other issues. The strike led to years of bitterness between the two groups. Though writers won key concessions, they also lost jobs and lucrative deals with the studios. Meanwhile, productions were delayed, and the LA economy took a hit.
The upcoming strike could be similarly devastating, depending on how long it lasts. (The longest strike on record was in 1988, when the work stoppage lasted for 153 days.) Sources indicate that there’s little incentive on either side to let the upcoming strike stretch for months. But regardless of its length, it will have an immediate impact on day-to-day business in Hollywood. Writers won’t be able to pitch new projects or work on existing ones. Late night shows will be the first to go dark, because they are often written mere hours before they are taped. Broadcast shows like Abbott Elementary—which was scheduled to start the writers room for its third season this week—could also be delayed in returning to the air this fall.
