2023-05-06 16:44:39
From coast to coast, there is a battle underway for the soul of the United States. It is not the one that Joe Biden claims to embody to win the elections, the president would like to ride the army of unions that in three days has stopped Hollywood production , from New York to Los Angeles.
The first writers’ strike in 15 years has not only dried the ink on the 11,500 members of the powerful Writers Guild of America (WGA) union. It has also stopped producers, actors, musicians and even truck drivers who these days run into protesters armed with banners and megaphones. “No one wants to single themselves out for crossing a picket line,” smiles triumphantly Lowell Peterson, executive director of the union on the East Coast. “We are all in the same boat”. At that moment, in front of the studios on West 26th Street in Manhattan where the series ‘Billions’ is filmed, there is not one picket line, but two, stretched out along the entire length of the sidewalk. The day before there were four, despite the rain and the inclemencies of the residual winter that plagues New York these days.
‘Residual’ is one of the keywords of the strike. The conversion of cinema and television to small computer screens or living room plasma have turned streaming into the platform for which scriptwriters no longer have to pay for reruns or overseas rights. Movies and series are hosted in the cloud for as long as they need without anyone feeling obligated to give them download accounts or put an end to the season. Without reruns, there are no “residual” benefits, which were previously paid with each rerun. “It doesn’t matter if what you write is a great success or nobody sees it, we are paid just as badly,” says Paul Sado, a screenwriter who is part of five different syndicates. “And what is the difference between ‘residuals’ and royalties?”, he is asked. “Nothing, it comes to the same thing,” he interrupts.
“You can’t pay peanuts to write Billions!” reads one of the banners at the entrance to the studios where they desperately try to close the most successful series on Showtime, ‘Billions’, inspired by the fight of a Manhattan prosecutor against white collar crime. The day before, the police had to intervene for two trucks to enter the hangars of the set, but most preferred to turn around. They did so by honking their horns frantically, in support of the demonstrators excited by the strength of their protest.
Affiliates of the WGA writers union demonstrate in New York on May 2.
Efe/EPA
At the Hudson Street union offices, where the battle between markers, bagels and lox is staged each morning, the enthusiasm is contagious. At 20, Molly Rae still considers herself an “aspiring comedy writer,” although her year in New York has already brought her much satisfaction. “I protest to be able to collect tomorrow,” she explains, “otherwise I won’t have a career to aspire to.”
From his teenage dreams in Colorado, the glamorous film and television industry seemed much brighter and more promising than it has shown among the skyscrapers. In these days of hobnobbing with the veteran screenwriters who have come before her, she can’t believe her misery. Sarah Montana was writing a movie or more a year for $45,000, in a city where you need $100,000 to live, and only her membership in her syndicate has brought her up to $65,000. With that, she can’t live in Manhattan, not even in Brooklyn or Queens, but in Jersey City, on the other side of the river.
“It seems like a glamorous profession because people see celebrities on the red carpet and think that all of us who work behind them are on their level, but at 36 I can’t even hope to buy a house.” “Millionaires pay for a yacht, screenwriters a mortgage,” reads another of the banners. She, nor the mortgage, although with the union she has obtained something that Molly’s mother desperately asks for her daughter: a health insurance plan, in a country without public health.
“I can’t believe it,” the upstart still assumes. “If today all the conversations start with ‘And you, what show do you watch?'”, she recalls. “How is it possible that the people who write them are so poorly paid?” The demands that have led them to strike represent less than 2% of the benefits that the studies have, always according to the union.
The Netflix offices in Hollywood (Los Angeles), surrounded by strikers on Friday, May 5.
AFP
Ten years ago, 33% of scriptwriters earned the agreed minimum wage. That percentage has already risen to 49%, according to WGA data. If one includes inflation, salaries have fallen by 14% in just five years, but the reality is even worse: in the last decade in which their work has jumped to streaming, the income of screenwriters has fallen by 23%, while their lives are reduced more and more to those “mini rooms” in which the studios exploit a few. “My back and neck need better health insurance,” claims one of the banners.
The “mini rooms” are increasingly virtual and reduced. The creative work is over. Writers often don’t even go on set or see the clapperboard go down. Their projects often do not come to fruition. Studies dehumanize them to minimize their business relationship and financial compensation. Behind die dreams and the muse, in the lonely labyrinth of the ‘gig’ economy or precariousness, “which they want to extend to everything,” warns Montana.
Everyone but the big studio executives, who continue to collect multi-million dollar bonuses, even though they insist that streaming is still not profitable ($8.37 million for Disney’s CEO last year). The series have changed, the contracts have not. They are shorter, have fewer chapters, but they still tie many writers to an exclusivity that doesn’t allow them to make their work compatible with other series, even though they charge less per chapter.
“Do you think any of us want to be here protesting in the rain?” Sado asks rhetorically. “No, you want to be home with his family and dedicate yourself to creating, but this is a battle for our existence.” Fifteen years ago they endured a hundred days to claim the rights to be on the internet. It had only been two years since YouTube was born and the trend was already coming. Now it is necessary to tie the gallop of Artificial Intelligence, which threatens to be inspired by his works to write new ones. “I asked ChatGPT to write me a banner and it was crap,” read another tagline. “A human is a human.”
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