While film executives would like nothing better than to celebrate Hollywood's unprecedented $4 billion summer by boasting about the current quality of their cinematic product and commissioning a two-page spread in the trades depicting the heads of the major studios slathering their naked bodies in peanut butter and rolling around in stacks of hundred-dollar bills the size of freshly raked autumn leaf piles, they know that the looming labor war with the various guilds requires public restraint over showy exuberance. In today's NY Times story on the studios' ongoing attempts to remind everyone about how producing nine-figure-grossing blockbusters is a terrible way to make money, execs cry poor while WGA officials lick their chops over every report of another box office record shattered:

In the discussion of the potential work stoppage waiting to cripple Hollywood upon the rapidly approaching expiration of several union contracts, it's all too easy to become consumed with talk of multiplatform residuals, de facto strikes, and script stockpiling, impersonal matters that distract from the human cost of the looming labor Armageddon. A piece in today's NY Times on the strike-induced scheduling crush affecting the industry's most coveted talent finally puts a face—a stubbornly still-cherubic, relatable, and franchise-supporting face—on the issues:

The free bagels enjoyed each Wednesday by Innovative Artists' overworked, undercompensated, and recently uninsured assistants will be slathered with the delicious schmear of victory this morning, as Variety is reporting that agency president Scott Harris has recanted his belief that benefits were being wasted on his young, hearty workforce and reinstated their health coverage through COBRA. A staffer tells Var:

After being informed on Friday that their health insurance benefits had been yanked retroactive to June 1st, disgruntled assistants over at the Innovative Artists agency are deciding whether to stage a sick-out or to burn down the place in protest, driving their insured oppressors into the street and letting every important call go unrolled. Var spoke to one of the affected staffers, who planned to discuss their strategy over lunch today: