Hollywood

Workers Shut Down Hollywood In Historic Two-Union Strike

July 14, 2023 Zak Norton, Liberation News. Resist! AFTRA, Hollywood, SAG, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Screen Actors Guild is going on strike. Today, the union’s national board of directors voted unanimously to launch a nationwide strike against the studios after contract negotiations collapsed Wednesday night. In an emotional press conference, union leaders revealed shocking details about the studio’s counter-proposals that in the words of SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher were “insulting” to their members. This strike announcement comes only a day after the AMPTP strategy to “allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses” as “a cruel but necessary evil” was leaked to Deadline.

Strike Of 160,000 SAG-AFTRA Members Imminent Tonight

July 13, 2023 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! Actors, AFTRA, Hollywood, SAG, Strikes, WGA, Worker Rights and Jobs

It appears imminent that 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA will go on strike tonite at midnight PST (3 AM EST), joining 11,000 Writers Guild, who have already been on strike for nearly three months. SAG-AFTRA and the studio association AMPTP appear very far apart on several key issues, particularly the use of Artificial Intelligence, and a strike seems imminent. Additionally, many members of SAG-AFTRA have been angered by comments by studio directors that they intend to “starve out” the Writers Guild and only return to the bargaining table this fall.

Hollywood’s Next Big Question May Be: Is SAG-AFTRA Next To Strike?

June 7, 2023 Katie Kilkenny, The Hollywood Reporter. Resist! Actors, Hollywood, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Three weeks and two days. Starting Wednesday, that’s how long SAG-AFTRA will have to negotiate a set of agreements that affect a vast swath of union performers working in film and television — about 160,000 members, from actors to dancers to stunt performers — before those current contracts expire June 30. Within this compressed period, and as thousands of the industry’s writers continue to strike following the breakdown of their own negotiations, Hollywood’s largest union is aiming to tackle both present, meat-and-potatoes and future-looking issues, including the threat of generative AI and streaming residuals that many members believe are insufficient.

The WGA Strike Is More Than An Issue Of Pay

May 14, 2023 Jireh Deng, In These Times. Resist! Diversity, Hollywood, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs, Writers

When Caroline Renard moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago, she had zero connections to Hollywood. But she was determined all the same to break into the industry and did all sorts of side gigs — from working at Veggie Grill to driving for DoorDash and Lyft to babysitting — all to pay the bills while she worked on her craft. And that hard work eventually paid off. She moved up from production assistant on set to an executive assistant at Disney before becoming a writer’s and showrunner’s assistant until she became a staff writer on a show. But throughout that decade breaking into Hollywood, she oftentimes noticed she was one of the few or only Black women in the room.

Hollywood Writers Strike To Save The Industry From Corporate Destruction

May 11, 2023 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. Resist! Hollywood, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Writers

Hollywood writers represented by the Writers Guild of America, East, and the Writers Guild of America, West, are on strike for the first time since 2007-08. As Alex Press writes in Jacobin, “The WGA (West and East) called the strike just before midnight on May 1, with its leadership unanimously voting for a work stoppage after six weeks of negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over a new three-year contract that covers some 11,500 film and television writers. Announcing its decision, the union said that the bargaining table responses of the AMPTP, which consists of Amazon, Apple, Discovery-Warner, Disney, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount, and Sony, had ‘been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing.'”

The Israel Files: Wikileaks Docs Show Top Hollywood Producers Working with Israel To Defend Its War Crimes

September 25, 2022 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. Educate! Hollywood, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Palestine

As Israel was launching a deadly assault on Gaza, killing thousands of civilians and displacing more than 100,000 people, many of America’s top TV, music and film producers were organizing to protect the apartheid state’s reputation from widespread international condemnation. Together, the Sony Archive – a cache of emails published by Wikileaks – prove that influential entertainment magnates attempted to whitewash Israeli crimes and present the situation as defending itself from an impending “genocide”, liaised with Israeli military and government officials in order to coordinate their message, attempted to cancel those who spoke out against the injustice, and put financial and social pressure on institutions who hosted artists criticizing the apartheid government’s actions.

Top Gun Maverick – A Counter-Narrative

June 14, 2022 Pat Elder, Military Poisons. Educate! Hollywood, Media, Militarization, Propaganda

I saw “Top Gun: Maverick” yesterday. It was absolutely horrible. The film sets a new standard for state-orchestrated, pro-military, mass indoctrination. Goebbels, chief propagandist for Hitler’s Nazi Party, would be in awe of the shiny death plane and the spotlights and the movie star in his tuxedo. Tom Cruise stars as Captain Pete Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. In 1990, Cruise expressed misgivings about the original film when he said, “Some people felt that ‘Top Gun’ (1986) was a right-wing film to promote the Navy. And a lot of kids loved it. But I want the kids to know that’s not the way war is. That’s why I didn’t go on and make ‘Top Gun II’ and ‘III’ and ‘IV’ and ‘V.’ That would have been irresponsible.” - Indiewire That was 32 years ago. Men change their minds about things.

The Real Scandal At The Oscars Was When Celebrities Crossed A Picket Line

April 1, 2022 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. Resist! Hollywood, Picketing, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

While the world reacted to movie star Will Smith’s altercation with comedian Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony Sunday night, a different Oscars controversy was brewing — one centering on the struggles of hospitality workers at a hotel that caters to Hollywood elites. Following the awards show in Los Angeles, rapper Jay‑Z hosted a party at the Chateau Marmont hotel, where workers with UNITE HERE Local 11 have been leading a boycott since February 2021 amid allegations of rampant sexual misconduct, racial discrimination and union busting. The billionaire hip hop mogul refused to respond to the union’s requests that he honor the boycott by moving his party to a different venue.

Beijing’s Movie War Propaganda — And Washington’s

January 1, 2022 Robin Andersen, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! China, Hollywood, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party, the powerful Chinese Central Propaganda Department commissioned a blockbuster film that depicts a US defeat in the Korean War. Under fire from US bombs, the heroic People’s Army fights a brutal ground battle and emerges victorious. Brave Chinese soldiers are caught in a hellish landscape as air attacks riddle the earth all around them. A villainous US Gen. Douglas MacArthur, shot Nazi-style from a low camera, shakes his fist and shouts into a microphone, “I believe we will succeed!” Spoiler: He doesn’t. This Chinese war entertainment opened the 11th Beijing International Film Festival and made audiences cheer as they flocked to theaters in China.

Why Hollywood Workers Are Threatening A Massive Strike

October 16, 2021 Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post. Resist! Hollywood, Labor Union, Strike, Worker Rights and Jobs

Roughly 60,000 film and television workers in Los Angeles and other cities plan to walk off the job early Monday if the major studios don’t offer a satisfactory union contract before then. It would be the largest strike to hit the U.S. private sector in 14 years. Matthew Loeb, the president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts (IATSE), said his members hope it doesn’t come to that. But after five months of negotiations, he said it was necessary to Set A Deadline and force the studios’ hand. “Otherwise you’re kicking the can down the road,” said Loeb, who spoke with HuffPost on Wednesday just before heading into another bargaining session. “It’s time that the employers make a decision.”

Why More Celebrities Don’t Speak Out On Israel-Palestine

August 18, 2021 Lowkey, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Arts, Hollywood, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

The new MintPress podcast “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip-hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know — including intelligence, lobby and special-interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media. Hollywood is not exactly known for being a hotbed of anti-war, anti-imperialist activism. Indeed, so close is the relationship between the national security state and Tinseltown that the Department of Defense casually tweeted out on Oscar Night that it works closely with its “partners” in Hollywood to ensure the military is presented in a positive light.

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