Voice artist Dee Baker posted this on Facebook the other day…
The headline we always read: Artists' Unions Votes to Authorize a Strike, Bringing Show Business Closer to a Shutdown.
The headline we never read: Behemoth Entertainment Corporation Directs Its High Paid Lawyers to Resist Giving Artists Even a Fraction of What They Deserve, Bringing Show Business Closer to a Shutdown.
I dunno if there will be a Writers Guild strike but I can tell you these ten things that will occur if there is…
- A lot of people will blame the Writers for rejecting a terrible offer and not the Producers for making a terrible offer.
- A lot of wanna-be writers will think "This is my chance" and will hurry to submit scripts while their competition is out carrying picket signs.
- Those wanna-be writers will have about the same success rate as they did when there was no strike…or worse.
- Striking writers who've been working a lot will speak of how they're the Guild Members who are suffering because they walked out on actual jobs and are risking the actual destruction of actual projects.
- Striking writers who haven't been working a lot will speak of how they're the Guild Members who are suffering because they're the ones who really needed that next job they thought was imminent — and besides, the writers who've been working a lot can live off savings and residuals.
- Producers will spread the claim that the real successful writers are not behind the strike and that it's being driven by the guys who almost never get work. They will say this no matter how many of the top-earning, in-demand writers are highly vocal about their support for the strike.
- At least one writer I know will call me in hysterics, insisting that if we don't settle the strike immediately, he will lose his home, his wife will leave him, his health insurance will go away and he will contract some fatal disease and die.
- Most writers will not do that. They'll understand that these things are occasionally necessary and that if take a bad deal now, we're practically begging for future offers to be worse and worse.
- A lot of non-writers will get annoyed at us because their late night talk shows will either be in reruns or not as good.
- And everyone on strike will find that picketing is kinda fun…for the first day or so.
In each of four Writers Guild strikes I've lived through, I had some project looming that I really wanted to do for both creative and monetary reasons and it was killed by the strike. I have one pending now that might not survive a strike so that nudges me towards thinking a strike will happen.
But that's really the only thing that does because I do have a lot of confidence in our solidarity and in the wisdom of our leaders. Then again, the Producers have been known to do some really dumb, self-destructive things…so I don't know. We'll see.