The Artful Writer Goes “Inside the Mind of the Militant”
Craig Mazzin’s analysis of Alan Rosenberg’s singing response after getting slapped hard by the SAG National Board is certainly worth a read.Â
Here’s a snippet:
Wow. What can one say?It’s actually a fascinating insight into his psychology and the psychology of many militants. It goes like this. You have to fight to get the best deal. If you’re not willing to fight, you’re a stooge, a slave, someone who would happily work for free. There is no middle ground. Until the militant is satisfied, no one should be satisfied.
Our thanks to Kathryn Joosten for pointing this one out.
Um, actually I pointed this out (and linked to it) in a comment several days ago, to which several other commenters responded.
VG
–
Admin. Comment – Ooops. My mistake – it’s what comes from the explosion in traffic here – none of us gets to read it all. Thanks for posting it!
The Mazzin article was a good read (thanks!!), but I don’t think his analysis really paints the full picture.
A much richer understanding of the complexity of militarism is captured in the recent Ken Loach film “THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY”. I don’t mean to open up a bad analogy can-of-worms comparing England/Ireland to SAG politics.
My point is that if actors can watch that film and imagine being cast as either of the brothers, and really seeing the story’s dilemma’s from both Damien and Teddy’s point of view (and how they both evolve), it might raise the current level of discourse a bit.
Unlikey? Sure-sure. But if nothing else, you get to see a great movie.
(subtitles recommended)
Nah that’s a straw man.
Weak-assed description of “what happened.” I got news for you: there are thousands upon thousands of SAG members who don’t consider MF “militant.” They consider them RIGHT. And they, conversely, consider Sagwatch and UFS/NY/RBD WRONG.
“militancy” cannot be defined as: “demanding as a union to, at very least, keep what you’ve got.”
In fact the actual definition of “militancy” is: “ready to fight.”
As opposed to “eager to cave.”
The myth that people are “militant” who simply wanted to not GIVE AWAY:
residuals
clip consent
product placement protections
force majeure
Speaks to the gelatinous slitherings of the creatures of “moderation” in our midst.
What say we pour some salt on them starting Monday night, and watch ‘em squirm?
Mulhern nails it again. Brilliant post.
You don’t tell the whole story about Mazin. He was very vocal about hating Verrone during the WGA strike and worked while others walked the picket lines. He was directing a movie he wrote while his brothers and sisters walked the line. His site is very anti MF just like this one and VG posts his volumes of hate over there as well.
Mazin is no friend to union people. Using him as some kind of wise word is as ludicrous as merging with AFTRA.
Candy
–
Admin. Note – We give one warning. You get one ID on this board. Posting from multiple Kinkos? Not hard to detect.
all right. Let’s talk product placements
How do you see this as it would work out practically. Would the actor get some kind of residual each time the episode played? What if two actors were in the scene? Would they both get residuals? Who would track the use of the episode? What would be the compensation rate? 13 weeks? What if it’s only a product that the actor doesn’t talk about , just uses? Residual? What if a product is added as background after the shot is done? Please be specific about what you envision. Now you keep spouting off about what is right and what is wrong. Right here you say MM is brilliant. Would you care to defend your comments about what MM says are give aways??
The notion that members of the guild must be either
“Ready To Fight” or “Eager To Cave” -
with nowhere in between or otherwise subtly or rationally positioned -
is at the root of the divisive thinking that has so weakened the Screen Actors Guild,
and there is no one quite as subversive to unity as the name-calling bully
who possesses neither the skill nor the heart to advance the good of the membership.
Tom
I don’t consider the Hollywood Membership First cult as “militant.” I think of them as incompetent. If they had been *remotely* competent in pursuit of their goals, do you think they would be in their current position, one election away from being swept out as a “political movement?” Mr. Mulhern wants the uninformed to believe that his fellow cultists are the only ones preventing the destruction of the Guild. Don’t you see? They are just misunderstood heroes, withstanding the slings and arrows, etc., and all for our benefit. I understand that some people have a compulsion to promote conflict in their daily lives, but when they justify it with self-serving delusions of heroism, that way lies disaster. What Matt has to understand, and I’m sure a little repetition will help here, is that everyone wants to protect all that the Guild has gained for actors, both Membership First and its “enemies†within the Guild. But his favored group has, again and again, shot itself in the foot in its efforts to build “leverage,” alienated allies, and reduced the Guild and – by extension all actors – to laughingstocks. All of their grand attempts at “strategerie” have exploded in their faces, and yet Matt feels that this group of incompetents needs in order to find success is complete and blind support. It’s just too late. Way too late. The manager had to come to the mound and take the ball away because the closer just doesn’t have the right stuff.
#8 -
Totally accurate!
Candyone2,
You’re not quite correct about Craig Mazin. I don’t recall him ever writing any post at his site saying or implying that he hated Patric Verrone. While you are correct that he was directing “SUPERHERO MOVIE” during the strike, you should know that he discussed on the site that no writing was going on – he simply fulfilled his contract as director of the film. And he did walk a picket line (and posted photos of it on his site). By your logic, he should have walked off his movie – as presumably should have every WGA member working in another capacity on any set, and by extension as should have every person working in any capacity in Hollywood. In a perfect world, this would have been the case. But this isn’t a perfect world, and all the guilds and unions have that “no strike” clause, which basically means that you can’t call a sympathy strike or walk off the job during the life of the contract.
Mazin’s posts tended to be more pragmatic, but he always emphasized his support for his guild. He was not supportive of militancy where it either did not or could not achieve anything other than righteous indignation.
#4
Wipe your nose off…
#11 LOL
I will not call MF “militant” they aren’t skilled enough or smart enough to be militants
now “mutants” has a nice ring to it!!
Candyass….go back to the kinkos with your little friends. go ahead and hide there…and don’t use your real name for godsakes
and when we merge, you don’t have to join…how’s that?
Thanks for the link, SagWatch.
For the record, and in response to the Kinko’s poster…
1. I do not hate Patric Verrone at all. I disagree with many of his policies and actions.
2. I was under a valid DGA contract for the duration of the strike, and I was *not* under any WGA contract for the duration of the strike. I was shooting during the first couple of weeks of the strike. Because I could not legally violate my contract, I showed up and worked. However, I did go in to the WGA HQ on a weekend to help make pickets. Once principal photography ended, I walked the picket line. I abided by all strike rules, and any suggestion to the contrary is a lie.
3. I also signed and abided by the “pencils down” pledge, in which I, along with numerous screenwriters, went above and beyond the strike rules and agreed to not even write speculative material during the strike.
4. I served my union as a Board member for two years, and I currently serve as the co-chair of the Credits Review Committee. I have donated my time and money to both the union and its charitable arm. I am more than a friend to my union. I’m a fan. And because I love my union, I wish to improve its leadership and its fortunes, as is my right and prerogative as a free-speaking American employee.
There are politicians who think that there is a “real America” and then a “fake America.” And there are union members like you who think there are “good union members” and “bad union members.”
If you pay your dues and follow the union’s working rules, you are a good union member. Only an ugly extremist would consider the expression of differing opinions to be an act of betrayal or disloyalty.
Boy, the whip sure comes down on the whole “ONE IP!” when that person tells you how full of it you are, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile the petri dish that contains the Ligon, Redanty. voiceguy, transpo, white rat, Hassman, Joosten, Funny Farm etc. spores is fawned over, with loving care, excusing their transgressions, cheering them on in those little editorial rah-rah’s, defending their right to be twisted and insulting, disrespectful and dishonest.
One day, someone is going to get into the secret lab that is Sagwatch and put that petri dish in the microwave and press “go
And we’ll all listen to the squeals.
Wait a minute Marisa. There are good mutants, like the X-Men who exemplify justice and tolerance, and there are bad mutants like The Brotherhood who think they are doing what’s right but end up hurting everyone around them. Mutants are genuinely misunderstood. Do we misunderstand MFF?
This is where the scenario is grey. Both of our idealogies want the same end result but achieve them with different tactics.
We display respect, co-existence, logic and unification and they marginalize, alienate berate and divide.
One Union, One World.
Membership first incompetent?
Hardly.
THEY took us out on strike in 2000. THEY topedoed the agreement with our agents. They torpedoed merger with AFTRA. THEY stuck us with their shill as President. THEY played their confrontational games this year leaving us with no contract since June.
Competence – YES! They are extremely well organized with the fervor of true believers, and in another thread, Steve Diamond pointed out we ignore or marginalize them at our peril. Fearmongering and gossip still play like crazy, and the so-called moderate coalition cannot afford the luxury of dismissing or trivializing them.
Incompetent? How can you say that when just about every comment on this blog is a reaction to the gibberings of Matt or VOTEyes.
For more information, read Camus – “Resistance, Rebellion and Death”. (Okay, the reductio ad absurdum to MF = Nazi is banal, but it’s true. I prefer to call them the SAG Taliban).
We are now in the initial stages of recovering from the Karl Rovian bifurcation of opinion in this country. It’s going to take some time before we in the USA are going to be willing to go back to “Come, let us reason together”.
David Stifel
#8
Spot on. They’ve alienated one-time supporters like me. They’ve shown no interest in consensus or strong coalitions. Disagree and they turn you into an enemy.
Their incompetence is not even debatable. They’ve accomplished nothing. Not a single contract.
And now they turn around and claim that they “are the union.” UFS, New York and the regions now represent the union. They built a coalition–one that will likely grow bigger and stronger. We’re seeing the final throes of an expiring mule.
right on Pat…
i do not think we are marginalizing them at all…we are letting nature take its course…they will self destruct because who ever is left are so bitter and angry (well those are the only ones we see in the press…let’s face it) that they will see no one cares. then…since they must hit someone in the face as they are addicted to vitriol…they will turn on each other..
it’s like watching a train wreck…
whose betting on when we’ll first hear that there is a deal? i’m saying Valentines Day?
anyone else?
I get the feeling that sagwatch did a better job than anyone thinks. Now the mighty Mat is threatening to take down the ip. Good luck ya jerk. Not only you and your goons tried to stifle the voices within sag now you want to do it outside of sag. Like I said good luck. There is a place for you and the rest in the ninth ring of hell along with the child molesters suicides and dishonest clergy. With one are you.
#16. Yes, they are wildly incompetent. Though they “accomplished†all the things you cited, those accomplishments were not what they *intended*.
The commercials contract strike resulted in a weakening of the jurisdiction when many producers and agencies found other places and other people to do the work.
They got enough of the misinformed to vote no to merger with AFTRA because they wanted to keep SAG “strong.” Alone, but strong. If SAG is so strong now, why is the AMPTP kicking sand and laughing? For that matter, why is the entire industry pointing fingers and laughing?
They torpedoed the agency agreement to protect the members from our employees, the rapacious agents. Result? Members now work under non-franchise contracts with agents who are free to do whatever they please as long as it conforms with state law. Their campaign to save the franchise regulations from “evil†changes resulted in the death of the agency franchise.
Supposedly they have been preparing for the theatrical and tv negotiation for years, according to them, yet were completely unprepared for every single event. Their every attempt at strategerie came back at them over the net at twice the speed and with way wicked topspin. And all they could say was, “Whuh happen?”
They couldn’t even start negotiating at the right time, f’chrissakes.
Incompetent is actually a polite way of putting it because it presupposes that they didn’t intend all they disasters they caused. Some might look at the same set of circumstances and see termites vigorously trying to take the organization down from within.
White Rat wrote: “The commercials contract strike resulted in a weakening of the jurisdiction when many producers and agencies found other places and other people to do the work.”
The commercial contract strike stopped the producers from achieving major rollbacks and it protected our residuals. I don’t have the exact numbers of how much actors have made since then that would have been lost if we would have taken their rollback offer. I’m sure SAG has would have that information.
Mikey
#22. Wrong, Mikey. SAG wanted pay per play for commercials on cable. Advertisers didn’t want it. Advertisers countered with proposal to do away with pay per play for network. SAG didn’t want it. So how did it turn out? Hmm, I see that there is still network class a use, but no pay per play for basic cable use. Oh, so that’s how negotiations work? People put things on the table to force the other side to take something off the table as a quid pro quo? Who would have guessed that’s the way it works. It turns out that the “rollback” was just a bargaining ploy, which vanished as soon as the guild agreed to take its pay per play proposal off the table, something that could have been accomplished at the very beginning of that costly strike.
#19, Marissa:
I am going to go waaay out on a limb … and bet they’ll have something to take to the meetings next weekend. May be too much to ask, but we’ll see. FIngers crossed.
#23, White Rat:
You are correct, sir.
In fact, the “deal” we got after six months was the same one McGuire told us we could get WITHOUT striking in the first place.
But DJ had such a Jones for a strike that the joint boards watched him cry like a baby when it was voted up.
SIx months, multi-millions of dollars, and one scorched earth later, he parades that contract around like it’s his own creation … the one he spurned six months earlier.
So for people to talk about what a SUCCESS that damned strike of 2000 was, they need to visit every market that was destroyed and hasn’t come back; they need to look at the hard numbers of the cost-benefit analysis … oh, wait; the “leaders” – then PA , now MF – refused to allow that to take place. There was NO post mortem.
So if people wonder why there’s a bad taste in members’ mouths about striking, they need to consider how the last one was ‘launched,’ then ‘handled,’ then ‘resolved.’
And we weren’t out their twisting alone. AFTRA was twisting with us.
Just a bit of history that I think has some bearing – along with many other things – on where members’ minds are today …
V.
#23 –
Exactly right.
And as the agencies learned how to work around the unavailability of union actors, a lot of work disappeared permanently. Another large chunk moved non-union and offshore.
We took dead aim at our feet and blew the suckers off.
VG
P.S. — I have never posted “volumes of hate” on Craig Mazin’s site or anywhere else. In fact, one of the commenters at Craig’s site took me to task:
“voiceguy,
“This is the internet. Reasoned, informed, well thought out, and sober debate is not allowed here. Please include ad hominem attacks, straw man arguments, and paragraphs written in ALL CAPS in the future.”
800 million on the commercials contract ’08
Suck on it.
–
WW Question – What do you think the contract would have been worth if we hadn’t lost 30-40% of the work right away to non union as a result of the strike?
SAG’s published earnings reports on commercials tell the story.
Principal session fees have gone down year by year, from $242.9 million in 2001 to $133.1 million in 2007 (most recent figure published). Thus, it seems apparent that fewer commercials are being made, using fewer SAG actors.
The only thing keeping overall revenues up is usage and holding fees, which went from $303.4 million in 2001 to $632.9 million in 2007. But again, this is consistent with fewer commercials being made with smaller casts, and the same smaller number of commercials being held and/or used more. This is great for the shrinking number of SAG members fortunate enough to have made those commercials that are being reused or held, but overall, as I mentioned earlier, the amount of work available has shrunk considerably.
In sum, SAG has lost considerable ground in this area since the 2000 strike.
VG
Don’t work so hard at appearing to be a dunce. One has to keep more than a *single* fact in the forefront of one’s brain while debating. Of course commercials contract earnings have gone up. There’s been a bump each year for the last eight years. *Everything* has gone up since 2000 while the value of the dollar has dropped like rock.
The pertinent fact is that without a strike, income would be over $1 billion by now. All that lost income will never be replaced, nor will all the income the pension and health plans lost. When you do a cost benefit analysis, what was “gained†during the 2000 strike is far outnumbered by what was lost.
Explain to me how you fail to see that? It’s quite plain.
#26 matt sounds like a parrott ———————-ignored————————————
#22 & #26 -
800 million? How many more dollars were spent last year on talent in Buenos Aires, Brazil & South Africa?
Between the Summer of 2000–when MF fomented that ill-planned strike, up through the Fall of 2006, how many dollars were spent on Canadian talent?
Prior to 2000, all of that work was in the U.S.
Not now. Why? SAG/MF mad it’s biggest splash ever ‘educating’ the wrong group. Once MF taught the advertising agencies how much can be saved by not using SAG members there’s been no turning back. How bad is it? A friend of mine directed a commercial for the US market, shot in Costa Rica, using talent flown in from Canada.
“Historic and precedent setting” contract? Bite my shiny metal ass.
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”
Hey Lee (I’m not in SAG but here’s my take from the peanut gallery) Blaine
Go back and check the votes to strike and to continue striking from 2000.
And, again, despite the fact that producers doing everything to rip-off actors, writers, directors and below the line folks by going outside the U.S. – a completely unavoidable consequence of the “global economy” mindset and practice of all American as well as foreign corporations, the rise in the commercial contract earnings is undeniable after a dip the year of and the year after, the strike.
To say “800 million on the commercial contract in ’08? Ha!” is the height of defeatism and self-destructive sour grapes. Do you lose things in a strike? Of course you do. But, on balance does what you’ve gained make up and exceed the losses? Well, that’s certainly the hope, and is certainly clearly the case here.
This is part of the “never strike” philosophy of Richard Masur, who actually said that during his presidency. Imagine if an American President said ” all options are off the table” instead of “all options are on the table?”
If a President said the first? They’d take the table, the pens, the paper, the whole house. You don’t publicly state your weakness. That is the definition of stupid. You keep your counsel close, you communicate with your constituency clearly and openly, and you understand that you must give your leadership, at the very least, the benefit of the doubt. We gain together, we take our hits together, or, we lose when we divide.
Right now? We are losing.
This has been easy pickins’ for the AMPTP. They just sit back and watch the usual suspects bitch and moan, undermine and back bite, watch the frustration build in the membership and wait it out till we implode. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have Richard Masur on retainer. I’m serious.