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Unions & associations full of rich people don't deserve anyone's support. And it's a stretch beyond all imagination to think for the second that entertainment industry writers & performers associations have even the slightest thing in common with the actual working class. The closest any of those fops & coke-fiend degenerates ever get to having dirt under their Hollywood-manicured fingernails is when they're doing an adaptation of a Steinbeck novel and have to dress in poor people costume from the 1930's.

   

And here's what the leftist Hollywood heavyweights really think about the poor & downtrodden from the actual working class....

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gala-serv ... t?ref=home

Everything about and from them is nothing but insincere & thoroughly false performance. There is nothing else inside the vast majority of the creatures of the entertainment business.

   

Once again you're seeing the world by outlandish caricature.

The median income for a SAG member is $47,000, and the average wage for a WGA member is $53,000. They're hardly rolling the dough, especially if they live in NYC or LA where people making twice that much are struggling to pay the bills.

   

There's an entire industry on hold. With the writers and actors on strike, there's no work for grips or carpenters or electricians either.

Maher is on his way out anyway. He's forgotten how to be funny. Odd zinger is still good, and New Rule was good for a while, but it's like he doesn't even believe what he's saying any more.

Organizing (e.g. unions) is the only way the working class gets anything. Government and media are millionaires working for billionaires. Sure unions are crooked. Everything involving humans is crooked. But the outcome is wealth FROM the rich TO the rest of us, and that's good enough for me.

   

You can see the disconnect in the industry as a whole. It's not just the boomers that are tone deaf either, Exmample: Selena Gomez Is Accused of Breaking SAG-AFTRA Strike Rules: Here's Why

There are a lot of people who are chomping at the bit for this to get resolved and yet there has not been any serious movement made by the industry leads here. It is as if they are expecting that it will all blow over and there is nothing to see here but the union isn't breaking and why should they? Collective bargaining is hard, it is nearly impossible when you are breaking in new revenue streams to an industry that previously did without. The gig economy is a lie there is no way we are going back to a failed business model. Hollywood needs to pay its workers.

   

It's also a meritocracy, as it should be, simply because no one is going to watch a film or TV show that comes off of an assembly line. The best have to get paid the most because they're the ones, actors & writers both, who generate the most interest and therefore the largest return on investment. A hack job made by no names who got the gig through seniority or whatever doesn't make any money. That's why the hack work ends up in direct-to-video and Netflix. Entertainment is a specialist sector. And in a specialist sector what Bill Maher said remains true - you have to be good to make it here and no one out there is going to hand you a job if you haven't shown that you're one of the best.

And I'm not against protections for these people, increased royalties if they're deserved, or coming to an agreement that prevents them from being replaced by AIs. But no matter how big it's become the entertainment business will always be a niche sector. As opposed to the upcoming auto workers strike, or a public sector strike, the entertainment strike affects very few other sectors. It doesn't have the potential for mass harm to the overall economy the way a trades strike does. Like who has this affected at all outside of Los Angeles and New York City anyway? Practically no one, except for those who were going to score some temporary input revenue for services provided to location shooting. And that sort of hurt is temporary at at best because everything, like hotels & catering, can be re-arranged and re-booked for production when the strikes are settled.

   

i think the folks in the biz understand that. I was a semi-pro musician for years. I was in pretty good bands. Could have used a bit more money sure, but this is Vancouver the cultural dead point of the planet--virtually no music scene, no art scene.

What would have been nice is not getting treated like shit. Not getting a ticket for unloading 200 lbs of gear while parked in a loading zone, because musicians don't count apparently. Not constantly being ripped off, asked to play for free, cancelled gigs on the night of with no recourse other than court.


\there was a musicians union but nobody was in it.

Anyways Vancouver sucks.

   

See if your current garage band can do this one. You might have a reasonable facsimile of an Ashcroft in your group but I don't think any of you will be able to go full Nick McCabe wit' teh ghee-tar......

   

Oh, I can go full Nick McCabe all right. Been using a wah pedal since I was a teenager and can rip with it pretty good. We even did Say What? (Stevie Ray) with the old blues band. Can still do Eruption by Van Halen after all these years.

But up in the country it's mostly acoustic so playing a lot of Billie Strings up here. Wonderful story. he was a meth head, as were both his parents. He was discovered playing an original bluegrass song about meth on youtube, amazed everyone, got famous, both he and his parents kicked the meth and now he's playing concerts with his old man. Plus he's a super-nice guy.



Check out Frodo in the background listening to the guy play. Just giggling at the sheer joy of it.

   

You can do McCabe? Cool! Now do Wiggum!

   

Just as long as it's not the piece of dogshit called "Bittersweet Symphony".

Fuck, I hated that song back in the day...

   

Drew Barrymore chickens out, delays return of her show, issues mandatory groveling apology to those who have been "hurt"......

https://www.mediaite.com/news/drew-barr ... have-hurt/

So sad. Maybe she can can Dylan Mulvaney over for a sympathetic girl's night. They can cry together, braid each other's hair, eat butterscotch ice-cream until they puke, and hopefully have their menses synchronize in a stunning & brave moment of female unity.

   

Darn. Bill chicken's out too. That's a genuine shame. I was looking forward to adult-level conversations again on Real Time, as opposed to the struggle sessions the other side provides.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher- ... rs-strike/

At least he didn't do the tearful apology though, the way 99.9% of others do in similar situations. The movement will be enraged at the lack of performative emoting tribute towards them that they've come to expect as their rightful due when these course changes occur.

   

Talk Shows Off-Air Again

Bullying works.

   

Writers Strike Officially Over

   

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