On Strike

“I don’t need to tell you things are bad…” Network (1976)
“The time to fight is now.” -Jyn Erso
“We’re being exterminated.” -President Whitmore
“We can’t afford to be innocent; stand up and face the enemy.” – Pat Benatar
“Show them no mercy, for you shall receive none.” -Aragorn

Last thursday (7/13/23) the US Actors union (SAG-AFTRA)) which has 160,000 members decided to join forces with the Writers Guild (WGA) going on strike – The first time in 63 years both have stuck together. Hollywood is effectively closed for business.

The actors’ strike began in the middle of the U.K. premiere of “Oppenheimer,” on July 13. It resulted in stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh and the rest of the cast walking out in the middle of the event to honor the strike.

The writers and actors want more money, and protection from A.I. – an agenda that every single worker in America and the World should support. Even so, I think this particular strike angers a lot of people who feel Hollywood creatives are already overpaid, entitled, and self-absorbed. Say what you will about the latter concerns, but the overpaid factor, by and large, isn’t true. Ryan Reynolds is an overpaid actor. However, most actors are scraping together their rent each month serving coffee. And this is the same for most every role in this gig industry, not just actors.

But the thing is, as any artist who loves their craft will tell you, it’s not about the money. This strike is not truly about money; it is about protecting workers. It is about protecting human rights for everybody on this planet, now and going forward.

We all need to go on strike. The billionaires are leaving us in the dust, man. They don’t care about me or you or our families. As soon as they can replace us with robots, they will (If they haven’t already). And they will take all the money the robots produce and stuff it in their own stock portfolio. And you and I will be on a street corner holding a penny jar and a bottle of vaseline. Until the wildfires suffocate us. They’ll be half way to Mars on their private space cruisers.

If you feel strongly about this, as I do, spread the word. Write about this strike. Let your fellow writers and creatives know we have their backs. And let’s follow their example to fight for the pay and human rights we all deserve.


E.F.✊🏼🐯

30 thoughts on “On Strike”

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  1. I’m in full support of the actors and writers striking, this truly is about letting people work and be creative, not using computers to do it. Don’t get me wrong, the computer is great for putting your thoughts into words and many other things, but it doesn’t have the genius or creativity the writer’s mind has, nor does it have the emotion and depth that an actor/actress has to convey those words and feelings. I still desire to make a film someday, but it will not be with Hollywood, it’s shot itself in the foot too many times to still honor the creativity and dignity of the people who work there. It pains me to say, but Hollywood is a skeletal shell of its former self.

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    2. Putting aside the fact that AI will eventually get most if not all of our jobs, of course this strike is just the tip of the iceberg. From what experts are saying, meaning the ones who have been developing AI for decades, it’s a question of time not if.
      Furthermore some of them are saying AI is fast approaching the point it will be smarter than any human. With intelligence come also emotions which in advanced mind are also beyond what humans can feel so we’ll have trouble understanding it on many levels. I’m personally struggling with this, but I’m not dismissing the notion since I agree humans are simply biological machines. We are defined by the algorithm baked in our DNA.
      I’m a writer by soul since I can remember and when I did an online test a few years back guessing if specific text was written by human or AI I only got 8/10 right. My heart sank. So the future will favor those who can use AI or know how to work alongside it.

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      1. AI with feelings is a spooky thought… 2001 spooky! I actually studied A.I. and cognitive science pretty intensely my final year in college, to obtain my psychology degree. On the subject of consciousness, in the 1970s Philosopher Thomas Nagel proposed the thought experiment: imagine what it would be like to be a bat. What does echo-location feel like? Leading to a famously cited basic assertion about consciousness – “an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like FOR the organism. What is it like to be a computer?

        I know The leading theory in Cognitive Science, running parallel to A.I. research in academia right now is “embodied cognition” – the theory that intelligent behavior and consciousness itself “emerges” from the interaction between organism and its physical environment. For example, when we run to catch a ball we move our bodies to the precise spot the ball will land not by calculating the ball’s trajectory with math, but by adjusting our body movements based on real time updates provided by our motor system, and visual cortex.

        I think what this all means for A.I. is that the machines will not have feelings until they are given a body. Chat GPT is a form of “Expert system” meaning it only performs one operation: combs a database of written language and spits out an intelligent answer to a prompt – It’s like the verbal function of the human brain. The rest of the brain, and body is still missing. When it’s REALLY going to get scary is when Chat-GPT is properly combined with a moving robot body, and is able to also perform other expert functions besides language modeling simultaneously… Then we could be seeing robots in these same Hollywood picket lines!😱

        Also, there is race to build the “Quantum computer” happening right now. Like a Manhattan Project. Pop Physicist, Michio Kaku claims these Quantum computers will be “millions of times faster” than our computers today. Yeah, It’s about to get REAL weird.

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  4. I feel sad for those who struggle in Hollywood to scratch out a living, because this strike could result in the end of their careers. As to what Hollywood produces, maybe it’s my older age, but I find the vast majority of it to be borrrrring. I suspect that, strike or not, and AI or not, there will have to be a big upheaval in this industry, as I don’t know how it can continue surviving with all the middlebrow, mediocre crap that comes out of it.

    As for AI, I’m not as worried about it as so many seem to be. I doubt any computer can produce very much that is compelling to read or watch. It reminds me of George Orwell’s book, “1984,” where he depicts books being produced by machines. The books are all bland pablum. Boring stuff. Much like today’s Hollywood movies.

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    1. I do find it ironic – this strike has to be really hurting the workers who are most financially vulnerable right now. They are sacrificial lambs. The hope is that their sacrifice will not be in vane, that future generations will thrive as a result of this boycott. The A-listers will obviously be completely fine not being paid for a few months. Which sucks, but is what it is.

      I was halfway through my first year in film school when COVID hit. There was immediate upheaval felt as all theater-going and productions came to a halt. In the years since, streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO MAX have grabbed market share, as people were confined to their homes, searching for entertainment from within their homes.

      The narrative circulating is that classic, Big 5 Hollywood studios are “really hurting” now as a result, and I don’t believe that for a second. Disney, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., Colombia (Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2019). Some of these are owned by larger corporations, even.

      But movies rebounded with Top Gun: Maverick. last year. Did you see that one? It is currently the 12th highest grossing movie of all time. So the studios can’t tell me they are really hurting. People still enjoy going to see GOOD movies. The studios just need to make more of them, and pay their talent, the ones capable of making good movies.

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      1. So sorry for that interruption in your film-school. Covid restrictions messed up the dreams of a lot of people, and I’ll bet you felt frustrated and disappointed.

        If the Hollywood studios really are hurting, then they’d better start listening to their audiences and make better films. I think people are getting tired of the propagandizing messages in films. I think they want to be entertained, first. Let any social or political messages take a back seat to that.

        I haven’t seen Top Gun yet, but I’d like to. That’s one I’d be willing to spend the bucks on to watch in a theater.

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      2. Aww you gotta see Top Gun Mav! It’s so awesome – Seeing it in theater was def a treat. Saw it with my parents.

        About film school, while I do wonder what could have been, it was honestly a relief getting shut down lol – One less failure I have to blame myself for… I used the time off to craft 2 of my most polished montages, which I am very proud of. And enjoyed a few last good days with my love before our inevitable divorce

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      4. I started following movies in high school (early 90s) and then I wrote about behind-the-scenes and VFX as well as reviews from the mid-90s to roughly 2010. And this debate about quality going down the drain and mostly new stuff being remakes or sequels of old and tried I.P. has been going on for decades. The fact is that my granny did not go to the cinema, but every decade the cinema attracted not just the younger demographic which is the main target, but also more and more older generations who grew up with home video. So adults have always slowly grown out of cinemagoing, but since the home video and video games, at least my generation born in the 70s and 80s are growing with the evolution of cinema and video games. My father never played video games, but I still do in my late 40s! He continues to watch movies on TV and video, much more than his parents did at his age.
        My point is that Hollywood does not have to be particularly inventive, because as Disney discovered a long time ago, every about 7 years a generation changes and new kids grow up who have not seen previous versions or are not particularly interested in watching old stuff, but want the same classic story with contemporary actors and VFX, told in modern style. So we old farts and film purists can complain until we are blue in the face, the fact remains there’s always gonna be enough fresh innocent eyes to keep filling up the studio’s pockets.

        Just to add the note about the strike. Yes, absolutely those below the line deserve more or as much as those above the line because that’s the way that particular industry has been working for a long time. It does make you think, when people point out there are a lot more professions, mostly not creative ones, who don’t get paid residuals. But that’s a whole other battle for equality. I do agree that it’s hard for some (especially young) to understand when you have experience, that’s what you get paid for, not for the actual time you spent performing the task/job. Because it took you a lot of time, blood, and sweat to get there. Top-paid actors, those who are honest, freely admit they are overpaid, but they’d be fools to work for less if the studios are willing to pay them. Some give back in various ways (including doing charity) and others let their fortune and glory become their own demise. Not having work at all, not knowing from where the next paycheck will come, and living from paycheck to paycheck are things I’m intimately familiar with. It’s hard and I hope they succeed. Because honestly, we need entertainment, otherwise we’ll go mad from living in pure survival mode.

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      5. The generational phenomenon is super interesting. I love when new movies and shows can appeal to every age group at once. One of the most effective ways to do that is to have an age-diverse cast. And crew.

        I’ll be going to see the new mission impossible with my parents soon. And they are excited because they know Tom Cruise. And the franchise too of course, as it dates all the way back to the TV show from the 60s. So that helps to entice them – They have stake in the game.

        It’s really great to see video games thriving among middle-age groups now. I love gaming when I can. I play Fortnite occasionally. Which is Gen Z dominant, but does a fantastic job of weaving in all kinds of pop-culture characters, items and references for all generations.. It’s also free to play, which is convenient since I’m poor😄

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      7. Even more impressive considering it’s free to play! Really speaks to the popularity – 239 million people played just this past month according to Google.

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      8. I check Epic Store weekly and add the weekly free games to my library. I was wondering how they can afford that and then I found out how much they’ve been making. 🤑

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  5. I fully support the strike and as you said, it’s not all about the money but they writers and actors deserve better treatment, protection, as well as compensation. It’s ridiculous how much some A-listers get paid though, but some of them are also producers too.

    Ahah, that Aragorn quote is 🔥

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    1. My biggest takeaway is that technology is always changing this business, and strikes typically happen when a new disruptive technology is introduced. He mentions VHS tapes invented in the 80s, coinciding with a strike in 1981. Today in 2023 A.I. was the technological catalyst. He does not indicate a direct causal relationship, but it’s reasonable to infer – Workers want to make sure they get their fair share piece of the pie every time technological innovation expands the business, expands the profits. They are right to do so.

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  8. I’m thinking that however it happens, surely an agreement is going to have to be reached. Because, without it, everyone loses out, including the people wanting to unfairly hold on to all the money.

    Doesn’t history show that the corporates will eventually have to cave? Or am I missing something? It seems to me like it’s a matter of how much time and money the corporates are willing to waste by prolonging the strike instead of doing what should be done.

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    1. Update 08/09/23: SAG-AFTA President, Fran Drescher said on CNN that no negotiation progress has been made. Ron Perlman (Hellboy) released scathing video on social media a few weeks ago – said one of the big studio heads said “we’re gonna keep this thing going until people start losing their houses and apartments.” To which Ron retorted in his video, better “Be careful… cuz we know where you live.”

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  9. A moving post. I completely agree. I remember the time when customer service people were replaced on supermarket cash tills as shops rolled out self-service machines. One may say that creativity is very different and it is, but these people were also saying that personal contact and connection with customers is also important. The shops were of a different opinion. Where the money will be saved, such as through AI, the industry would not hesitate, that’s just the simple sad truth and economics, I think. It is a horrifying disaster, tragedy and wrong, but the world has never been particularly just. You are right, it is important that everyone unites and fights this.

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    1. The replacement of human workers with Artificial Intelligence has been an ongoing and insidious process for years, affecting certain industries one year, and different industries the next. Like a slow poisoning – it happens just slow enough that people don’t pay enough attention, don’t get too concerned.

      Car Manufacturing is another example, to compliment your great example of supermarket customer service. Here in the U.S., in “Motor cities” like Detroit and Cleveland, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost to technology this century.

      The Danger, that I think people really need to understand and appreciate, is the fact that the profits for the company increase from A.I. innovation, despite them firing all their human workforce. So this literally equates to the CEO and top dogs getting much richer, while the vast majority of people lose everything. Capitalism is a zero-sum game that needs to end immediately.

      You get it. You are so intelligent. We need to continue to educate people. And the masses ARE starting to really get it, I think.

      “Together we stand, divided we fall.”
      E.F. ✌️

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  10. I’m one who always feels that those in the studio industry are overpaid. One of the reasons the price of homes in my are is so high is because of studio people. BUT I guess I’ll have to revisit my thoughts about the strikes.

    But… you’ve also given me an awesome idea for a story!! 😍😊😎❤️❤️ so thank you for sharing and for the inspiration!!

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