COMPANY TOWN : Working Actor Hopes to Give SAG a Lift
Richard Masur is the kind of actor whose face you know. Coming up with his name is the struggle.
It’s the result of two decades of work on dozens of movies and television shows, largely supporting roles and character spots. His resume ranges from the Emmy-winning series “Picket Fences” to such feature films as “My Girl” and “Six Degrees of Separation.”
Indeed, an active career is probably the main thing that immediately sets the 47-year-old actor apart from his 85,000 fellow actors and actresses in the Screen Actors Guild, which for the last two months Masur has headed as president.
For every star who make $20 million a picture, or even makes a good living working in the business as Masur does, there are thousands of working-stiff actors and actress who are perpetually out of work, many of whom struggle to earn the $7,500 annual threshold to even qualify for SAG’s health plan. Eight out of 10 SAG members earn less than $10,000 a year from acting, holding down jobs waiting tables and parking cars to make ends meet. One in four earn nothing at all in a given year.
“We’re not talking about people making gadzillions of dollars here. There is a very, very thin layer of people who are making extraordinary amounts of money, and an almost equally thin layer of people making just good money compared to any other profession.”
Masur follows Barry Gordon, who left the job to run for Congress, joining a long line of actors to head the union that includes Ed Asner, Patty Duke, Charleton Heston and even Ronald Reagan.
For Masur, the question is why would anyone with a successful acting career--who also has won awards for directing--take on a pro bono job with time demands that, as he puts it, present “a toss up between your life and the union.”
Masur’s answer is that he, like many other actors and actresses, can recall vividly the days when he was in that lower tier wondering if he’d ever make it. An insecure lot by nature, even the most successful in the profession know that their careers can be in orbit one minute, crashing the next. So it’s a good to know there is some sort of safety net there.
“The ladder has grease on every rung,” Masur says. “I don’t know anybody who isn’t worried. Any name you could think to come up with, even if they have the next three jobs booked, they’re worried about the fourth one.”
To that end, Masur sees SAG as having to accelerate its traditional role of monitoring how producers treat actors as well as making sure the union is effectively organized in other states.
Masur’s efforts to strengthen the union come at a time when changes are sweeping the industry, creating challenges seemingly beyond the union’s reach. At the top of the list is the increasing concentration of media companies. Pending deals include Walt Disney’s acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC and Time Warner’s proposed acquisition of Turner Broadcasting System. In negotiations, Masur says, that means dealing increasingly with fewer, more powerful players.
“The stronger any individual element on the producer side--the employee side--gets, the weaker we are in comparison,” Masur said.
Still another issue is what, if anything, to do about what seems to be increasing conflicts of interest in the business in which the lines seem to be blurring all the time. In recent years, for example, there has been emergence of the hybrid personal manager and producer, who manage stars careers one minute and produce their films and TV shows the next. Masur notes that there is an inherent conflict in doing that, but acknowledges that there is little SAG can do as long as its members want personal managers.
In addition, agencies that represent stars have expanded their consulting work to include many of the most powerful corporations in the entertainment business. Creative Artists Agency did when it advised French bank Credit Lyonnais about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. International Creative Management introduced fledging studio DreamWorks SKG to its eventual real estate partner in its new studio lot.
What’s more, many stars, using the leverage that box-office clout provides, are now major producers themselves. That prohibits them from becoming SAG board members. Indeed, Masur’s opponents in last year’s SAG race have even raised the issue with him, and are currently challenging the election results because he has a company called Rainy Day Productions. Masur’s defense is that the company is simply a vehicle to attract scripts for him to direct.
Masur is also concerned about studios front-loading a picture with one high-priced star, then skimping on the rest of the budget by hiring actors and actresses willing to work on the cheap. It’s fear of financial flops that drives that action, he says, but he also knows there isn’t much SAG can do about it other than try to persuade stars to use their clout to get the best cast they can.
One of Masur’s chief goals is to realize a decades-long dream of Hollywood union officials to finally merge SAG with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or AFTRA. SAG generally covers filmed entertainment, with AFTRA covering such areas as daytime television, talk shows, news programs and a number of prime time shows. Ending the overlap between jurisdictions, and deciding who covers such new areas as interactive entertainment, would be one accomplishment. More important, it would give the unions more clout going forward in the era of media consolidation. But some hurdles remain, notably working out pension details.
People close to the union say that getting more high-profile talent involved is important as well, which is difficult given the time demands and the restrictions on actors who produce.
“You end up with a lot of professional board members who haven’t acted in years,” said a source close to the union.
To that end, Masur hopes that keeping active in his profession will keep him in touch both with the problems actors face as well as in contact with a broad group of members, including the major stars he wants to increasingly involve. What’s more, he hopes that being a working actor and recognized face helps raise SAG’s profile, especially its national visibility.
“People in L.A. tend to think of SAG as a local club. It’s a national union. One of the very important tasks we have is to continue to raise the profile of the guild out in the rest of the country where we have branches,” Masur says.
