Strike reveals a future feared
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AS the strike enters its second week with the two sides as far apart as ever, it’s hard not to take the writers’ side. I’m not sure I’d go as far as Paul Haggis, who called the dispute ‘another example of massive corporate greed.’ But he’s on the right track. When Tom Freston was fired from Viacom in 2006 he received $60 million in severance pay, more than all of the DVD residuals paid to WGA members that year. I spent much of last week talking to studio executives, eager to hear a good explanation for months of one-sided negotiations, where the studios essentially presented a series of rollback offers and then bashed the writers for not embracing them. None of the studio chiefs would talk on the record, but if I were to sum up their views, I’d put it this way: The future is too uncertain for us to give anything away.
It’s somehow fitting that the best piece of agitprop from the writers strike can be found on YouTube, the kind of new technology that’s helped inspire much of the industry-wide jitters behind this bitter work stoppage. The clip, titled ‘The Office Is Closed,’ features the program’s show runner, Greg Daniels, and his writing staff on the picket lines, mocking NBC’s parsimonious exploitation of their online labors. (You can also see it at UnitedHollywood.com.)
--Patrick Goldstein