UPDATED 5:30-ish
It's 12:20 and after a two-hour pep rally with an estimated 4,000 striking WGA members and moral supporters, the Los Angeles Police Dept. is just now reopening the stretch of Pico Boulevard in front of 20th Century Fox Studio and Avenue of the Stars in front of the Fox Plaza building.
The rally shut down the length of Avenue of the Stars between Pico and Santa Monica boulevards as an overflow crowd of red-shirted picketers poured into the intersection of Avenue of the Stars and Galaxy street in front of Fox Plaza to hear from Rev. Jesse Jackson, WGA west prexy Patric Verrone, WGA exec director David Young, SAG prexy Alan Rosenberg, guild member Seth MacFarlane (who delighted the crowd by throwing in a few "Family Guy" voices) and a surprise appearance by Norman Lear. Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine did a two-song set that brought to mind the sights and sounds of 1960s anti-war marches.
Rally at times had the feel of a scribe-tribe family reunion, with many attendees commenting that everywhere they turned the saw old friends, old bosses and "people who beat me out for jobs," in the words of one scribe. As Lear put it in his brief remarks to the crowd: "This is my nuclear family."
Even as the strike moved in to its fifth day, scribes voiced strong resolve to keep up the pickets and pressure as long as necessary.
"My basic thing is: Whatever we get is going to be way worse than what we deserve," said multihyphenate Judd Apatow. "We have to fight this hard and we'll still not reach that one percent" of revenue generated worldwide by film and TV productions.
"I'm a guy who won the lottery," said "Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal, responding to the suggestion that the guild members are well-paid and thus hypocritical for mounting a blue-collar protest on behalf of their contract. "But I only have what I have because somebody struck for it before me. I feel like it's an honor and a privilege to be here on behalf of the next generation of writers."
Chuck Lorre, creator of "Two and a Half Men" and CBS' promising newcomer "The Big Bang Theory" (which is cruelly seeing its momentum interrupted by this strike) echoed Rosenthal's sentiment.
"The future of TV is what we're fighting for," Lorre said. "I've been blessed. This (strike) is about the people who are coming up. Residuals are how people in the business pay the rent."
Filmmaker Paul Haggis said he sees the WGA strike as part of a larger battle in contempo times about income equality among the haves and have nots.
"The overarching issue is one of extremely excessive corporate greed that has been permeating our country for the past 20 years," Haggis said. "They can't break us. We will do what it takes to get a fair deal."
After Morello and de la Rocha (pictured above) performed a few songs with WGA strike-tailored lyrics, including "Bulls on Parade" ("Rally round the writers/for their share of the wealth"), the speechifying by Verrone, Young, Bowman, Rosenberg and Jackson was brief.
"You are part of a larger struggle in America today where too few control too much," Jackson said, citing media consolidation and the bid by some at the FCC to further relax ownership rules.
"We're shutting down production...and we're kicking corporate ass," Verrone assured.
MacFarlane (pictured left) noted the unfortunate side effect of so many below-the-line and entry-level workers feeling the squeeze from the strike. He urged those in the crowd with means to do so to keep paying their assistants.
"What you're doing here is working," he said. "The companies can survive without us for long...There are a lot of decent people at every studio who want a quick end to this thing just like we do. I look forward to working with them again when this is all over and we're all awkwardly pretending like it didn't happen."
--Cynthia Littleton (Top pic by Michael Jones/Variety; De la Rocha and MacFarlane pics by Michelle Sobrino-Stearns/Variety)
"Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine did a two-song set that brought to mind the sights and sounds of 1960s anti-war marches."
Sigh.
Please please please don't compare this to ANY anti-war movement.
Posted by: . | November 09, 2007 at 03:05 PM