Monday Morning

This will have to be brief (for me) because any minute now, I have men arriving to begin ripping out half my kitchen. They've already "demoed" (short form verb for "demolition") about a third of my dining room and made it unusable for — they say — about six weeks of reconstruction. Now, they're going after where I'd prepare the food I can no longer eat in my dining room. This is all because of a burst supply line on an upstairs toilet that leaked into walls, flooring and ceiling while I was in Ohio. The least fun part of my trip.

So…to the strike. We're in an uncomfortable place right now. The AMPTP says the talks are over until we assure them we're dropping six demands. A few writers elsewhere on the 'net are arguing that we should drop some or all of them in order to get the talks going again. Of course, there's no guarantee that if we drop all six, the other side won't engage in meaningless chat with us for a few days — just so they can say they're honoring their side of the ultimatum — and then announce the talks are over until we abandon six more of our demands. Or all of them. One thing we know from past deliberations with the AMPTP: When they have a strategy that gets them what they want, they do it again and again and again.

I think compromises are possible on at least some of those six areas — animation, for instance. The WGA is not, insofar as I know, demanding that jurisdiction over animation just be wrested from The Animation Guild…which the AMPTP probably couldn't do if they wanted. But there is language in the WGA-AMPTP contract that we'd like dropped because it makes it more difficult for the Writers Guild to organize via traditional labor organizing methods. The same thing is true of "reality" shows. If some of our demands in these areas seem like overreaching…well, a lot of that is like when they offer you $10,000 for a script and you and your agent think (and know) it'll be $15,000 so he asks for twenty. You often have to play the High-Low Game in bargaining. And sometimes, you have to be prepared for them to tell you you're crazy and unreasonable and to break off negotiations for a while before you get around to the $15,000 price.

And of course, sometimes you never get there. That's the risk in haggling. But you never get there when you capitulate and agree to the ten.

Sure, it would be nice if this thing was over. In most negotiations, the other side counts on you thinking that. In a game of Chicken, which is what too many business disputes devolve into, the one who acts less afraid of the head-on collision is usually the victor.

I don't think the WGA is going to blink on this. When the history of this strike is written, I suspect it's going to yield the overview that the AMPTP guys consistently underestimated the resolve of the membership. Almost every strike in Hollywood history has been about that…about someone on the Producers' side saying, "If we offer them X, they'll grab it" and just plain being wrong. In a sense, the AMPTP position is self-refuting. They're arguing there's no guaranteed money to be made on the Internet but they're willing to endure a long strike and screw up most other facets of their business in order to not share that "no money" with us.

If we are truly asking for cash that doesn't exist, it's real easy to arrive at a formula that handles that: We get X% of whatever does come in…or Y% of whatever comes in after $Z has been earned. Something of that sort. For the most part, the AMPTP is still sticking with "There's no money there so we won't discuss sharing it with anyone." Which is not a logical position and, of course, the "no money" part is not what they're telling their stockholders.

My doorbell is telling me the guys with the sledge hammers are here to whack my kitchen but I guess I'm done with this. It went on longer than I'd expected. But then, like strikes, my postings often do.