The Great Writer & Actor Strike of 2023

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It’s official: Actors are on strike.

SAG-AFTRA members will join Hollywood writers on the picket lines for the first time in 63 years, as part of a historic labor battle.

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Fran Drescher, President of SAG-AFTRA, in her stunning strike announcement: “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines.”

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A SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical/Streaming Strike has been ordered effective July 14, at 12:01 a.m. Additional details are forthcoming. The Strike Order can be found here: https://ow.ly/aqOK50PaX2W

[John Thomas8]

No more Fast and Furious movies? No more rehashes of comic book characters? No more lame remakes?

I'm trying to see the downside....

[John Thomas8]

[raison de arizona]

An interesting way to look at it.
https://twitter.com/melissakchan/status ... 42276?s=20

Concerning the WGA and SAG strikes — as a foreign correspondent based in Europe and previously in Asia — wonder how cheaper productions, labor, and esp. in Asia fewer unions impact how streamers / studios think about longer term content strategy from non-US sources.

t seems as if the creative economy in the US is facing challenges similar to what happened to American manufacturing when everything went overseas 20 years ago. That diverse, global films/TV are more welcomed by US audiences is good but there are unintended consequences.

[raison de arizona]

Thanks for the full video John, I hadn't found that yet!

Here's some serious bullshite.

“They proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan ... to be able to use it for the rest of eternity.”

— SAG-AFTRA Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland reveals the AMPTP’s AI proposal

[John Thomas8]

AI is going to destroy the movie/tv/music rank and file.

[AndyinPA]

It's certainly going to try.

[neonzx]

I spoke with orlylicious on this and we both of are SUPER EXCITED!! He said it's a dream come true.

We can't wait for the new explosion of reality TV shows! Plus, more prime-time game shows!

[Volkonski]

Fran Drescher, President of SAG-AFTRA, in her stunning strike announcement: “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines.”

Well, they wouldn't be the first group of workers replaced by new technology.

The movie industry itself put large numbers of stage performers out of work. The small town in which I grew up in MA once had two vaudeville theaters. Neither survived long once talkies arrived in the movie theaters.

Why pay money to see mediocre live performers when for the same money you can see the best in the world on film?

Workers have slowed the introduction of technology but they have never stopped it for long.

John Philip Sousa wrote an editorial about the threat of recorded music to performing musicians. He was correct.

Harpo Marx in his autobiography wrote about his time in vaudeville during the days of silent movies. On his evenings off he would seek out a Charlie Chaplin film (which he loved) instead of going to see live performances of any kind even though he was then a live performer himself.

A few vaudevillians made it in the movies. Most didn't.

Later many silent film performers couldn't make the transition to talkies.

Technology advances. You can adapt to it and use it to your advantage or you can let yourself become obsolete.

[Volkonski]

AI is going to destroy the movie/tv/music rank and file.

Just like audio recordings and movies did decades ago to the then rank and file live performers.

[pipistrelle]

Fran Drescher, President of SAG-AFTRA, in her stunning strike announcement: “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines.”

Later many silent film performers couldn't make the transition to talkies.

Buster Keaton films are still classics.

[RTH10260]

The US film industry will go overseas? Like Bollywood makes the new Spaghetti Western?

How about that matching sound track?

Chinese farmers posing as Apalachian Hillbillies ?

[Grumpy Git]

I spoke with orlylicious on this and we both of are SUPER EXCITED!! He said it's a dream come true.

We can't wait for the new explosion of reality TV shows! Plus, more prime-time game shows!

Sick puppies, the pair of you.

[Foggy]

Technology advances. You can adapt to it and use it to your advantage or you can let yourself become obsolete.

I'll go a little further. Technology accelerates, is what we're seeing in real time right now.

Do you know how long it took to move from having fire, the wheel, and the harness to the first printing press? And how long it took after that before we invented the steam engine? And how long after that before we invented the ICE?

My children's toys are all obsolete now. Nintendo DS, WII, etc.

When I was a boy, none of my toys became obsolete. The biggest tech change when I was growing up was color Tee Vee. And it took a lot of years before everybody had one.

Today's tech - that new machine you bought last week - is already obsolete.

Tech is advancing ... faster and faster and faster every day. I used to think I could sorta design a primitive website. Nobody designs websites now. They design one little tiny part of a website, and it takes dozens of hours to create. There are jobs in tech now that didn't exist five years ago.

And it's going to rev up some more today. OMG, you blinked, and the entire world changed again. You can't keep up. All you can do is try to follow along.

On the bright side, it's entertaining AF. That, and these silly Earthlings.

[Foggy]

Off Topic

Last word (from me) on the subject:

Last week, as y'all know, I managed to dislocate both shoulders, and found myself in my shoulder specialist's office, looking at all the expensive and amazingly detailed books my doctor studied to become a shoulder specialist. There were tons of great books about how to fix me up.

But of course, all those books are obsolete, and I'd be shocked if anyone writes or reads books about shoulder surgery, when it's all online and with infinitely detailed photos and videos that you can't put in a book.

From the invention of the printing press to books are obsolete, by the poor ol' rooster.

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Drescher: Let me just say that for anybody to say that shows the arrogance and complete disregard and disrespect for a community that contributes so much to the industry upon which they prosper

This AI takeover has already happened in the voiceover industry. And now in the corporate video industry. All those voices you hear in the ads on tiktok and Twitter etc, that's almost all AI.

And if you want to make a corporate video their websites that let you choose race, gender, hair color, outfit, language and accent for about 30 bucks. The computer will do the work that I used to get a thousand bucks to do and you don't even have to worry about putting out a snack table.

[Ben-Prime]

I'd point out the difference between, for example, movie theaters replacing live stage acts and of AI replacing actors is not one of degree but one of kind. And that's important.

When movie theaters replaced live stage acts, the money went from one group of performers to another selected instead. The contract proposed as noted by Drescher would allow the producers to make money in perpetuity with a single-off payment for a single-day's work to a performer. This is literally more like the producer's guild wanting to change all SAG contracts to say that no performer can ever get a cut of a movie -- they are paid to do work for hire at the time of shooting, and then they get nothing more.

So when performers and writers find this one-off-and-done pittance unacceptable, it's not just because some other performer is putting them out of work using technology advancements as a means of laying claim to a remote audience; it's because the producers are using the technological advancement to rachet away from the now-well-established notion that an artist deserves payment for reproduced work.

My tuppence. YERMV (Your exchange rate may vary).

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Life imitates art.

Jurassic Park's Creator Predicted The Strangest Part Of The SAG Strike In A 1981 Sci-Fi Movie

Crichton's visions of the future had more truth to them than not, however, and today one was virtually proven completely true, full stop. As SAG-AFTRA officially moved to strike against the AMPTP, it was revealed that one of the movie studios' proposals to the union was to use AI to form a digital likeness of an actor to be used, as union negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland explained, "for the rest of eternity with no compensation," possibly even past their actual demise. As it turns out, that proposal is the exact dastardly plot by the villainous corporations in Crichton's 1981 sci-fi thriller, "Looker."

During the press conference held by SAG-AFTRA, chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland made public that one of the AMPTP's (alleged) ideas on the table was "a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses." As Crabtree-Ireland made clear, however, the proposal actually was more along the lines of paying the likes of background actors for just one day of work, after which their digital likeness could be used by the studios however and for as long as the companies' wished.

As Crichton pointed out in "Looker," fair wages and compensation are only the beginning of this digital dilemma. In the film, the actors and models are first required to physically change their bodies to suit what DMI's viewer data says are the most attractive attributes possible. In this, there are shades of what's already happening to shows and movies on streaming services, where series and careers are being canceled because a given work doesn't fit some algorithm's "taste clusters."

The next step of the evil plan in "Looker" hasn't quite taken place in the real world yet, but we've gotten dangerously close to it. In "Looker," when actors like Cindy aren't able to hit their perfect marks, their work is given over to their digital double. Soon enough, doubles replace the now-deceased originals, forced to not only unscrupulously advertise whatever product DMI wants to sell, but with DMI making doubles of public figures — including politicians — using them as literal mouthpieces to their own ends.

The continued usage of "de-aging" technology in films and television is edging perilously close to this ghoulish possibility of using a dead person to perform in things that they may not have wanted to when they were alive, and the presence of "deep fakes" makes the possibility of putting lies in someone else's mouth that much more likely.

Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/1339304/juras ... 81-sci-fi/

[Volkonski]

When movies to a great extent replaced live performances the number of movie performers was very much smaller than the number of live performers who were replaced.

Today there is an issue about the likenesses of live actors being used by AI but soon AI systems will create their own human characters complete with faces and voices. Live movie actors won't be needed at all.

Maybe a few exceptionally good looking people will be able to license their looks. Most won't.

I'd point out the difference between, for example, movie theaters replacing live stage acts and of AI replacing actors is not one of degree but one of kind. And that's important.

When movie theaters replaced live stage acts, the money went from one group of performers to another selected instead. The contract proposed as noted by Drescher would allow the producers to make money in perpetuity with a single-off payment for a single-day's work to a performer. This is literally more like the producer's guild wanting to change all SAG contracts to say that no performer can ever get a cut of a movie -- they are paid to do work for hire at the time of shooting, and then they get nothing more.

So when performers and writers find this one-off-and-done pittance unacceptable, it's not just because some other performer is putting them out of work using technology advancements as a means of laying claim to a remote audience; it's because the producers are using the technological advancement to rachet away from the now-well-established notion that an artist deserves payment for reproduced work.

My tuppence. YERMV (Your exchange rate may vary).

[Foggy]

I'm old enough to remember when computers were going to put millions out of work and destroy our way of life. But I'm under the impression that the computer industry employs more than a few Earthlings.

I'm too young to remember when the motor vehicle was going to kill millions and destroy our way of life, but I've read about it. You just can't see things fast enough to make intelligent decisions, if you are going faster than 15 miles an hour. The human eye isn't designed for that.

Maybe we can retrain all those unemployed writers and actors to reverse climate change or sumpin'. I jest, but I suspect something will come along. I don't plan to go to any AI movies, but who knows?

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Hollywood Is Going on a Dual Strike for the First Time Since 1960. You Won’t Believe Who Led the Last One.
Ironically, you have Ronald Reagan to thank for SAG-AFTRA actors’ welfare.

On Thursday, the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG-AFTRA, announced that it would join its sister union, the Writers Guild of America—who have already been on the picket line for more than 10 weeks—in a full-out strike. This news, which is the result of weeks of attempted bargaining with streaming services for better residual payments and protections against prospects like outsourcing work to artificial intelligence, marks the first time both unions have struck simultaneously since 1960. The last time both unions went on strike, SAG in particular was led by an unlikely familiar figure: Ronald Reagan. Writer, actor, and comedian Wayne Federman wrote a piece for the Atlantic in 2011 titled “What Reagan Did for Hollywood,” in which he details the unprecedented advancements that Reagan helped secure for workers in Hollywood before going on the path to become one of the most emphatically conservative presidents in contemporary American history. I called Federman to discuss the significance of the 1960 strike and its relation to the state of Hollywood today. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Paywall: https://slate.com/culture/2023/07/sag-a ... eagan.html

[AndyinPA]

He changed a lot after Nancy came into his life.

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Ron Perlman has some words for Bob Iger, head of Disney. NSFW language.

Shit's getting real in the WGA + SAG strike.

"There's a lot of ways to lose your house."