Clooney, De Niro, Hanks And Streep Tell SAG, Studios It's Time To Start Talking
Yesterday, Variety reported that several Big Name Actors were about to kick off a public campaign to shame convince SAG's leadership and the studios to pick up a phone and arrange the kind of pleasant little rap session with moguls like News Corps' Peter Chernin, Disney's Bob Iger and CBS's Les "Negotiations Are Fun! Let's Do One Every Week at My Place! I'll Even Spring for the Bagels!" Moonves that helped to end the writers strike, hoping that getting a jump on things before their Guild's contract expires at the end of June might help to avoid another one of those mildly inconvenient, 100-day shutdowns of the industry that seem wildly passé at this point. The first of these exhortations are appearing in the trades today, with the initial installment authored by George Clooney, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, a line-up so laden with Oscar hardware that Hollywood has no choice but to take notice of their plea.
At least initially, the actors are opting for a minimalist, all-text design for their ads, but should their message not result in the immediate commencement of informal chats, we hope they go for something a little more ambitious: perhaps a two-page spread depicting a laughing Clooney and Iger enjoying some cigars and glasses of whiskey as they watch a streaming Ocean's 13 on a nearby laptop, with the campaign's catchy JUST TALK tagline illustrating how merely getting in the same room for a loosey-goosey bullshit session is a low-stress, crucial first step to hammering out a deal.
