I didn’t write this article, but I wish I had. I find myself agreeing with Zack Arnold (below) as much as I did with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a few weeks ago. And that was a hell of a lot of agreement.
What do you all think?
Guest Column: If Writers Lose the Standoff With Studios, It Hurts All Filmmakers
by Zack Arnold
No matter the job title or craft, the writers strike is the inflection point for the future of how all filmmakers will make a living (or won’t) in the entertainment industry. As artists, creatives and storytellers, this is our last, best and final opportunity to refuse the way we currently do business as “normal,” because as we learned three years ago when the world shut down, “normal wasn’t working.” If we want things to change, It’s now or never.
Whether it’s the acceptance of 16-hour-plus days (and “Fraturdays,” late Friday shoots that go into early Saturday hours) as normal, rolling lunches with no actual meal breaks, wages not even remotely keeping pace with inflation, the expectation anyone working from home is available 24/7 for notes and revisions, the Uberfication of mini-rooms (a small group of writers assembled before a formal series order) that exploit writers’ time and ideas, hiding residual pay in mysterious streaming data, and the complete erosion of any boundaries between work and life — we are dangerously close to the extinction of filmmaking as a sustainable career path….
Read it all at the Hollywood Reporter
LYMI,
Laughing Eagle