Take a look at the video below of The Office on Strike. After getting their perspective I'm totally with the writers in this strike. Just put yourself in their position, you do work...and someone makes money from it..but you don't make anything from it. And the end of the video is brilliant.
7 comments:
I'm still not buying this. These guys make more money than I do and I work twice as hard as all of them. I will trade jobs with them RIGHT NOW.
I ditto graham! I'm 110% anti-union, and even more against Hollywood unions. Let 'em come work at my factory for a few nights and they'll all gladly go back to writing full time. They get paid for what they write, and now they're wanting more. They're being just as greedy as the studio heads they're protesting against. And to top it off, they're going to cost a whole lot of people that aren't associated with the WGA their jobs as well, the unknowns that just work normal jobs on the sets of the shows and movies that now aren't being written.
I hope this strike goes on for a long time, long enough for me to write a few pilots, I'd gladly do scab work in Hollywood and probably turn out better work than a lot of the crap that's out there from the "A list" writers.
I don't like unions but you guys are siding with the corporation. I'm 100% for the writers.
A lot of the shows you guys are fans of are being hurt by these producers who will not budge or bend in even the slightest. The WGA even took the DVD percentage offer off of the table, only focusing on internet ideas.
I know both of you would like to work in Hollywood, but really, if you were getting fucked in the ass by no-talent management whose only role in life was to take your hard work and art and turn a profit on it, would you want them taking all the cash for themselves? It's not as if the writers are demanding a lot.
I can suffer through a few weeks of no new office if it means that the talented people who create it get there just deserves.
I just can't support Producers who will not give credit or profit where it is due. Most of these big-time writers don't actually make a lot of money.
excellent points made.
however...
i need to see some figures. i'm pretty sure they are making some pretty good money.
Yeah, they're still several steps over the poverty line. I fail to feel sympathy for someone that's making a good living doing something they love. If they're that oppressed, they need to get a new line of work.
Figures: Producers negotiated a deal for writer profit on video retail in the 80's. At the time, the video rental market was dying on the vine, so writers took a huge cut from what was the standard and accepted 4 cents per sale.
That was the 80's. We all know how huge the DVD market is now, a far cry from what it was then. The producer side is making a killing. Why do they deserve that money? Are they writing anything? No. Why couldn't they attempt to work out a deal? Because they are far more greedy than the WGA.
The WGA simply requested that the DVD sales go from 4 to 8 cents per unit. I think that's a completely fair agreement. Furthermore, networks are making a killing off of online advertising through webclips and digital shows, but writers aren't seeing a single penny, even in cases where they are writing directly for that market.
Showrunners make the most money on writing staffs. But your regular day to day member of a writing staff makes an average wage by comparison. They aren't out driving Mercedes Benz's to a huge home in the Hills. Often times they are working on three shows to make ends meet, living with three other writers. I chalk that up to the ridiculous amount it costs to live in that godforsaken hell hole that is LA.
But nonetheless, I don't know how anyone can make the argument that they don't work hard, and aren't derserving of a small percentage of the profit being made off of their backs.
It's not about sympathy, it's about ethics. There's plenty of statistical data out there to show the uneven slope. I don't think the writers are out there picketing in order to gain sympathy or because they all want to be filthy rich. I do think they are fighting "the man" for something they believe in.
I'll take 4 cents per dvd...
Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer total DVD sales: 2,247,077
(x .04 cents) = 898,830.80
Pretty sweet deal, cause we know how hard it was to write that sequal.
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