Monthly Archives: January 2008

A number of folks seem to think a deal between the AMPTP and the DGA could be announced as soon as today. That seems too quick to me but I'm sure it's possible. It's not likely that the Directors Guild is raising any issues that take the studios by surprise or which they haven't already mentioned in informal discussions. Anyway, stay tuned on that front.

Someone on eBay is selling a pair of Gary Coleman's pants, autographed by the former star of Diff'rent Strokes and gubernatorial candidate. The other night on his show, Jimmy Kimmel put in a bid and warned viewers, "Don't try to outbid me on this." Well, of course, people are trying. The other day when I checked, the top bid was up to something like a million and a half dollars with many folks bidding six and seven figure amounts. I immediately thought, "Hmm…I may be wrong but I have a hunch some of these aren't legitimate bids."

eBay has since cancelled out all the six and seven figure bids, labelling them as "bogus bids." But the auction is still on and as I write this, the top bid is $33,433.33 with about four and a half days to go. What I find amusing is that someone bid more than $30,000 for a pair of Gary Coleman's old pants and eBay apparently doesn't consider that a "bogus bid." What do we think the cut-off point is where a bid for Gary Coleman's pants is considered bogus? $50,000? $75,000? I was thinking more like ten bucks.

If you want to track this auction, here's a link. See if you can figure out which bid is Kimmel.

The Directors Guild sat down Saturday morn with representatives of the AMPTP to hammer out a renewal of the DGA contract, which expires at the end of July. An eager/nervous industry turns its eyes towards this bargaining, wondering what (if anything) it will mean to the ongoing Writers Strike. I can't imagine that it won't mean a lot and I think most of the possibilities are pretty good insofar as they might lead to a rapid settlement of the WGA dispute.

As I see it, there are four possible scenarios, one of which I'm going to rule out as extremely unlikely. That's the one in which the DGA goes in and just settles for an extremely rotten deal. If that happens, WGA and SAG will be royally screwed as that will be the precedent the AMPTP will argue is reasonable. Which is one of the reasons it's probably not going to happen. Many writer-directors and actor-directors would be furious (so would many director-directors), the DGA would be humiliated and, of course, that guild would have blown one of the best bargaining positions they've ever had. The WGA strike, with SAG marching bravely in lockstep, has empowered labor in this town, albeit for a little while, and put the studios on notice that they can't always get away with stonewalling on lowball offers, which is what they usually like to do.

The studios' wishdream — that they could establish the Internet marketplace without giving a decent share to those who create the material transmitted on the web — has failed. Not gonna happen. Whatever else happens in this strike, that much has been achieved.

So now the AMPTP has two concerns. They have to give up something significant in that area and they want to see how small a share that can be. That's Issue #1 for them. The second concern is that they want to do everything they can to not make the outcome of the Writers Strike look like a "win" for organized labor, thereby inspiring more unions to emulate what has happened. That bodes well for a decent DGA contract. The AMPTP's going to have make a deal with someone and they'd prefer it be the directors so they can say, "See? If you don't go on strike and make unreasonable demands of us, you get a fair deal!" (But of course, the DGA will get more than was offered to us before we went on strike…)

So Scenario #1 — the DGA takes a rotten deal — probably won't happen. Scenario #2 is that the DGA gets a decent deal and that becomes the template for a decent WGA deal. There'd be a lot of blame-shifting and credit-arguing as some tried to pretend the DGA got what it got just by being smarter but that still doesn't sound bad to me. What does sound bad is that the AMPTP would stonewall on all other points. Their position would be "We won't negotiate with the WGA but we will give them the same Internet and home video terms and raise minimums the same percentage." They would then presumably refuse to talk to us about the issues that concern the WGA but not the DGA, including matters like Animation and "Reality" Shows and maybe even the ethical issues such as late payments, free rewrites, the shopping of unacquired scripts and accounting practices. I don't know what kind of resolve there would be in the Guild to abandon all of those concerns if we were able to settle on New Media. I guess it would depend on how good that New Media deal was.

Scenario #2 is quite possible, perhaps even probable. Possible but less probable is what I'll call Scenario #3, which is that the DGA can't make a deal with the AMPTP and winds up either walking out of the talks or getting tossed out like we did. I don't think this would be a disaster either, but for a different reason. The DGA contract isn't up until the end of July so they'd still have plenty of time to come back and make a deal. We'd be back to the AMPTP versus the WGA again but with a key difference: It would be obvious that the WGA wasn't the problem. After all, the DGA — the guild that doesn't strike and which prides itself on speaking the language of Management — couldn't make a deal, either. Unless the studios are really willing to torch their businesses, they'd have to find a way to sit down with the WGA again and begin budging.

Lastly, we have Scenario #4. This is the one that scares me.

Scenario #4 is the one in which the DGA makes a deal that works for them but not for anyone else. As in Scenario #2, the AMPTP says, "Okay, we've made a New Media deal with the DGA and that's it. The WGA and SAG can take the same terms or they can walk picket lines until the world looks level…we ain't discussing any other formulas, any other numbers." But in this case, the deal is something like Internet Revenues based on how many shots you called or how much time you spent in editing. In other words, it's some set-up that would yield decent payments to directors but not to writers or actors. The first deal the DGA made for Pay TV was like that. It paid okay for directors but because of the differences in what we do, it would not have paid nearly as much to writers…and that strike became all about demanding a different formula when the studios insist we accept what the DGA accepted.

I'm not sure if it's possible to devise one of those formulas — works for directors but no one else — for New Media but I'd be very surprised if the AMPTP hasn't had accountants and lawyers trying to craft one. If they manage it and if the DGA takes it, this could be a much longer strike. Let's all think good thoughts that this won't happen.

Ray Arthur sent me to this. It's a brief online survey/game where you enter your positions on key issues and it tells you which of the presidential candidates is closest to your way of thinking. These things are always a bit flawed in that, first of all, you have to answer multiple choice questions in which none of the choices may reflect your view. Also of course, they don't take into account whether you believe the candidate will really do anything about the issue where he or she says the things you want to hear. But it's not a bad little exercise. In my case, all of the Democrats were pretty much tied for my affections, followed by Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and on down. Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee were tied for last place but even there, they matched me on a couple of issues. And nobody matched me on everything.

Wanna see photos of presidential candidates holding a baby? I mean, if you can't hold a baby, you have no business running for the highest office in our land, right? Darren Garnick managed to get her toddler photographed with each of the Oval Office Seekers except for Fred Thompson and Mike Gravel. Frankly, if I had a five month old daughter, I wouldn't hand her to Fred Thompson. He might try to marry her.

Bill Maher came back on the air last evening and closed his broadcast with a brief criticism of the leadership and mood of the Writers Guild strike. I've received a number of e-mails asking me to explain what he was talking about and I'm not being coy or cute when I say I haven't the foggiest. I'm guessing he had a private conversation or perhaps more than one with someone in the WGA leadership that displeased him, and perhaps rightly so. I don't know.

He was complaining about dissent within the Guild being suppressed or treated like treason and I have to say that would be news to me. I've been out on the picket lines and I've been at the public meetings. I haven't seen Bill Maher in any of those places but I've been there. The criticisms I've heard have been pretty mild or vague…nothing really worth stifling if you were on a mission to close down dissident points of view. Even with hindsight at their disposal, the folks who usually leap to say "We should have done something else" seem hard-pressed to say what that something else might have been. At least, that's my sense of it.

But this is the Age of the Internet. It's hard to shut people up, especially if they're writers. If there were a lot of members unhappy with the WGA leadership, there'd be hundreds of weblogs up that expressed that sentiment. Have you seen many? I haven't. I see a few forums here and there laden with anonymous messages, some from people who claim to be WGA members…and — who knows? — some of them may actually be WGA members. But I can't point you to an article or website where a lot of prominent writers are expressing any kind of unhappiness with how the strike has been waged. Members are unhappy but they're unhappy with Nick Counter and the CEOs who have been standing firm on about half an offer than no union could accept. At the same time, they're refusing to meet with us to discuss the other half and maybe improve the part we said wasn't good enough, the part about Internet Moola.

So that's what I have to say about Maher's comments; that I haven't heard whatever he's heard. Before the weekend is out, I'm going to try to write a little piece here about the DGA negotiations and where they might take us. It'll be guardedly optimistic but with a few big ifs in there.

I could never vote for Ron Paul. He's said too many things in the past about race and poor people and about the responsibility (or lack, thereof in his view) of people to care for one another that I find inhumane and even impractical. I also think he's one of those people who calls himself a Strict Constructionalist but that means he's found ways to argue that his prejudices were Thomas Jefferson's prejudices.

That said, I admire the guy for getting up in front of audiences and not telling them what they want to hear and for raising questions that politicians of all stripes would rather not discuss. I think he contributes a lot to the national debate by talking about things like our proper role in world affairs and the proper role of government in our lives. You don't have to agree with someone to be glad he's out there giving his views.

I'm not going to embed it because it's a little over an hour long but I thought I'd tell you about this interview he did up at Google last year. No matter who you're supporting in the coming election, I'd be surprised if you couldn't find something Paul says that you wish your candidate would say. You'll also find plenty of reasons why Dr. Paul isn't going to get the Republican nomination.

There's something comforting when you go to the CNN webpage and the headline is "O.J. SIMPSON BACK IN CUSTODY." It's just so reassuring in this hectic world of ours that some things don't change.

This comfort is partially offset by my bewilderment. There are some people in this world who just seem to wake up each morning and think, "How can I really screw my life up today?"

My favorite example is Mike Tyson on June 28, 1997. Tyson must have felt pretty good that morning. He was out of prison and people were forgetting about the rape conviction that had put him in there. He was losing the image of a psychotic, violent animal and starting to receive lucrative offers for endorsements and merchandising. He was reconciling with some of his children. And that night, he was to receive $30 million for fighting Evander Holyfield, and he stood a good chance of retaking the Heavyweight Championship, which would lead to even more money and glory.

My theory is that he got up that morning, reviewed his life and wondered, "What's the stupidest thing I can do tonight?"

I imagine him sitting there, pondering that question, maybe even calling up some friends to ask for suggestions.

One of them tells him, "Well, maybe if you got caught betting on the fight tonight…"

"No, no," Tyson says. "Then I wouldn't be thought of as a violent psycho. I need to ruin my personal image, as well and I want one thing, one action that will destroy everything good that's happening in my life."

The friend thinks and then says, "Well, this is kind of weird…"

"Go on, go on," Tyson says.

"Well, this just popped into my head but what if during the fight, you bite the other guy's ear off?"

"What?"

"Think about it. First of all, you'd lose the fight right there…plus you'd lose or at least they'd suspend your boxing license. I mean, the one thing you can do, you wouldn't be able to do anymore. You'd forfeit a few million of your purse in fines, all those endorsement deals would go away, everyone think you were criminally insane…"

"That's it! That's the thing," Tyson yells. "It's brilliant! I bite his ear off!"

It's the only possible explanation. And O.J. Simpson must have decided that he hasn't had enough mug shots, hasn't done enough jail time to convince every last person in the world that he's criminally insane. Frankly, I don't think a bail violation's going to do it. I think he's going to have to kill again.