I have a quick message to TV and film companies like Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Warner Bros.: Dip into your embarrassingly deep pockets and pay the striking writers and actors IMMEDIATELY before a Hollywood work stoppage forces people like myself to either read a book or face the grim terrors of the world around us.
I’m not kidding.
The last thing you big-shot Scrooge McDucks want to deal with is an American populace deprived of the TV and movie entertainment that takes the edge off our miserable existence. So help me, if we start having time to reflect on humanity’s slow lurch toward extinction, you’ll never hear the end of it.
For those who’ve sensibly remained distracted by binge-watching streaming shows and movies, the Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May 2, and on Thursday the Hollywood actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, announced its members will take to the picket lines Friday, effectively shutting down all U.S. television and film production.
The writers and actors are striking over pay equity in the streaming age
It’s the first time writers and actors have gone on strike at the same time since 1960. The demands are both clear and, from where I’m standing, reasonable.
The era of streaming shows and movies has boosted the need for content, but the pay for writers and actors hasn’t kept pace. Also, streaming shows have shorter run times than traditional network television series, so writers and actors are getting paid less while also experiencing larger gaps between jobs.
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A Los Angles Times analysis found that between 2018 and 2021, the average pay for top Hollywood executives rose 53% while writers pay remained “virtually flat.”
David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros., received a nearly $247 million compensation package in 2021. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ pay, according to the Times, “increased 32% last year to $50.3 million … despite significant cuts to programming and hundreds of layoffs that year.”
The writers and actors are also rightly concerned about the advent of artificial intelligence and want assurances they won’t be supplanted by AI.
Why are actors and writers so mean to executives who are only making dozens of millions a dollars a year?
The studio executives haven’t been saying much, presumably because they’re busy overseeing routine moat maintenance at their summer castles. But what has been said hasn’t been great.
One unnamed executive told Deadline: “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”
If a screenwriter wrote that bit of dialogue, it’d be rejected for being “too predictably cruel.”
Just a quick heads up:AI-powered robots will kill us. K, bye.
Disney CEO Bob Iger opens mouth, inserts foot
Speaking next to a fountain of liquid gold (probably), Disney CEO Bob Iger, who has to be careful when he speaks because money sometimes just shoots straight out of his mouth, said the writers and actors are “just not realistic” and said of the strike: “It’s very disturbing to me.”
You want to know what’s going to be disturbing, Mr. Iger? The moment I have no new shows or movies to watch and have to spend more than 15 seconds pondering the state of the planet because the only thing left to distract me is a book I’ve been avoiding reading for the last three years while I was merrily watching brilliantly written and acted movies and television shows. THAT will be disturbing.
Have you seen what the world outside our TV and movie theater screens looks like? It’s a freakin’ nightmare. Part of the country’s on fire, another part is almost underwater, there’s a whole political party that just keeps saying the word “woke” over and over again, guns are practically growing on the trees that aren’t burning, the Eagles are touring for some reason and everything’s just all catawampus.
What are we Americans supposed to do to distract ourselves from the festival of chaos we call everyday life? Go to the library? HAVE YOU MET US?!?!
Studio executives, pay your writers and actors, or you’ll have to answer to us, the un-entertained
No, if you think having your writers and actors on strike is “disturbing,” just wait until we the people start realizing our favorite shows are getting delayed. It’ll be torches and pitchforks for you blokes if you don’t keep a steady flow of dragons and zombies and vampires and superheroes and whatnot beaming directly into our eyeballs.
So listen up, all you entertainment giants and studio muckety-mucks. Peel off a small fraction of your bazillions and do right by the people who actually make our much-needed entertainment come to life. It’s a simple matter of fairness. And if it means you can’t hire someone to clean out one of your cash-filled moats this season, so be it.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
