The Strike, Day 10: Blacklists, Fear, And Tiny Penises
As the writers strike creeps into double digits (we wish we had a photo of the WGA Ring Girl defiantly holding up a DAY 10 sign, but we suppose one of Kathy Griffin with a dick joke will do for now), here's today's morning round-up of news:
· The WGA responds to the "Setting the Record Straight" ad the AMPTP has run in the trades over the past couple of days (we posted the text of it here, or you can see it here), clarifying the "misleading statements" the studios made about the payment of digital downloads (not zero, but close!) and residuals: "However, the reason for this message is the AMPTP has been making some misleading statements. I want to make sure you know the truth. They say writers are already paid residuals for digital downloads. That's true. We are paid one third of one cent per dollar made by Studios for digital downloads.
One third of a cent. This is a paltry amount for work that we have created. We are asking for 2.5 cents per dollar, which is what we currently make on ad-supported TV programming. The AMPTP says that we were given $260 million in residuals in 2006. This was our contractual share of a record setting twenty billion dollars the studios earned from reruns of the work we created. The companies' rollbacks would cut our residuals in half." There's more, of course, but you'll have to follow the link to read the rest. [WGA.org]
· Always-quotable AMPTP president Nick Counter once again unloads on the Guild, which it accuses of using scare tactics and blacklists to keep its red-shirted footsoldiers in line: "The WGA is using fear and intimidation to control its membership. Asking members to inform on each other and creating a blacklist of those who question the tactics of the WGA leadership is as unacceptable today as it was when the WGA opposed these tactics in the 1950s." [AMPTP]
· United Hollywood's Laeta Kalogridis counters by claiming that it's the Companies who are the ones threatening to kneecap writers if they speak up during the strike, and notes a rumor that the networks may be planning to string up one particular showrunner in front of WGA headquarters as an example to all the others who refuse to cross the picket lines. [United Hollywood]
· The Governator seems to be stuck in the early stages of backchannelling, making it unlikely that he'll soon ride into Hollywood on his Harley, flick a half-smoked cigar into a stream of gasoline leading to a 76 station near a WGA picket line, and declare in monotone as a searing fireball rises behind him, "This ends now." Sayeth Schwarzenegger's people: "'Both the studio side and the writers side asked to talk to the governor,' press secretary Aaron McLear said. 'So he is talking to both sides individually to get a sense of what the issues are and what if anything he can do to be helpful.'" [THR]
· Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane recognizes that Fox would be within its rights to finish up still-incomplete episodes of his show without him, but that doing so would "just be a colossal dick move." [Variety]
· The Get Back in the Room blog is compiling the names of those who've lost their jobs because of the strike, promising to send an updated list to the WGA's Patric Verrone and AMPTP's Nick Counter "in perpetuity" to try and get them back to the negotiating table. [Get Back In That Room]
[Photo: Getty Images]