HOLLYWOOD ON STRIKE?

You may have a hard time believing this one, but it appears more than probable that Hollywood is facing an absolute production shut-down come July 2001, as the result of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild.

It seems highly unlikely now that the showdown can be averted it s been brewing for quite some time, with actors feeling increasingly disgruntled and marginalised thanks to the advent of new forms of technology which they feel ill-compensated for but has only publicly come to a head in the wake of Liz Hurley s recent scabbing spat with protesters.
Hurley s offence is to have filmed a non-union commercial for Estee Lauder, thus making her the only name actor to have broken the picket-line. As a result, a militancy of almost Scargill-esque intensity has broken out in the most unlikely of quarters, with actor after actor denouncing Hurley from on high, and vowing revenge. Hurley pleads ignorance, but very few in Hollywood believe her.
But an all-out strike surely sounds too apocalyptic to be true? Not at all, as it happens: the stars have already been enthusiastically engaged in a separate but unrelated advertising strike since (appropriately) May 1st.
The studio s strategy has been to avoid, as far as possible, all negotiations with the union, in favour of a battle-preparation approach which may well come to backfire long-term. All the same, given that Hollywood studios are mere subdivisions of larger multinationals, they are hardly lacking the financial capacity to sustain them through a strike, and probably feel well capable of facing down the impertinent ingrates who dare to bite the hand that feeds them.
At present, the state of play is as follows: on June 30th next, the three-year contract between the studios (both film and television) and the actors, who are represented by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), will expire. Unless the relevant parties can come to an agreement, then the two unions will strike, thereby leaving all 35,000 members in an indefinite transition period , while the 11,000-strong Screenwriters Union simultaneously withdraw their labour.
Thanks to this Doomsday scenario, studio producers have chosen to go into overdrive, green-lighting scripts and working round the clock to make sure the shelves aren t too bare next summer. This will almost certainly mean an avalanche of even cruddier fare than usual next year, since quality is not the consideration it might normally be. The prospective blockbusters are being shelved altogether: Batman 5 and Spiderman The Movie have been completely put on hold, in what must be the most heartening developments in my career as a film critic.
To many, the very thought of Hollywood A-listers protesting about their working conditions might seem positively obscene but this is a genuine labour dispute with deep-rooted causes, rather than an outbreak of prima-donna Tinseltown preening.
In summary, these are the issues: the actors want to be paid royalties for repeat screenings of advertisements, while the advertisers wish to continue paying a flat fee. Monitoring of ads is also a contentious area: the union wants a monitoring system akin to that used for calculating record royalties from radio airplay.
This comes on the back of the SAG s efforts to monitor the work of 81 performers last year, which estimated they had suffered an aggregate shortfall of several thousand dollars as a result of unofficial transmissions. The greatest uncertainty of all concerns the union s demand for jurisdiction over Internet commercials: at the moment, such jurisdiction is a matter of principle rather than revenue, but with new media constantly developing, it would certainly be prudent to establish some recognition sooner rather than later. Hence, while the SAG has not officially outlined the demands likely to be made come next May, they re likely to be little short of absolute. The Writers Guild also wants royalties from cable and foreign markets
For the time being, we can enjoy the spectacle of several of Hollywood s best-loved stars letting loose their inner leftie: the campaign is gathering momentum fast, with reliably earnest stalwarts such as Susan Sarandon and Tom Hanks popping up at union rallies to denounce their employers and stand in solidarity with their less privileged colleagues.
In the last fortnight, a Saturday Night Live contingent led by Rob Schneider staged a massive sit-down in front of Proctor & Gamble s world HQ in Cincinnati, demanding a boycott of the company s products in protest at their non-union adverts. Donations have been flooding in from the likes of Nic Cage, Kevin Spacey, Harrison Ford and Helen Hunt in order to help out the thousands of struggling wannabes who largely depend on commercials to make ends meet.
It ain t quite full-scale revolution, but it s a start. Militancy has hit the Hollywood hills. Next issue: flying pigs? Watch this space.