The Hollywood writers’ strike has placed the Democratic frontrunners in something of a bind, forcing them to choose between unions and the entertainment industry executives who are some of their most important big-money contributors. The responses of Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have been revealing.
A strike has long been in the offing. The two unions that make up the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly (by over 90 percent of their 12,000 members) to authorize a walkout on October 18. Their main point of conflict with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (which bargains on behalf of the movie and TV studios) was the royalties associated with downstream revenue.
Profits from computer downloads of movies and TV shows are the most contentious issue. Currently, content is distributed on the Internet in two ways: Some movies and TV shows are purchased and downloaded through services such as iTunes or Amazon Unbox; in these cases the writers get a negligible portion of the take (a third of a cent for every dollar of profit). Alternatively, studios allow viewers to stream TV shows (not movies, yet) from their websites. The studios sell advertising within these streams, but have wiggled around having to share this revenue with writers by labeling the streams “promotions” rather than “broadcasts.” This prevents writers from getting any share at all of the profits. The Writers Guild strike is, at heart, an attempt by writers to claim a small sliver of these two pies. Their position is not unreasonable.
The strike was called on November 5. Within hours, the three top Democratic hopefuls released statements of support. Hillary Clinton’s two-sentence statement said, “I support the Writers Guild’s pursuit of a fair contract that pays them for their work in all mediums.” It then urged the parties to resume bargaining.
John Edwards went a bit further, contributing three sentences to the cause. Characteristically, he noted his own long history of strike support: “As someone who has walked picket lines with workers all across America and as a strong believer in collective bargaining, I hope that both sides are able to quickly reach a just settlement.”
Barack Obama went furthest in his own short statement. “I stand with the writers,” he declared. “The Guild’s demand is a test of whether corporate media corporations [oops] are going to give writers a fair share of the wealth their work creates or continue concentrating profits in the hands of their executives.” It wasn’t, perhaps, everything the Writers Guild might have hoped for, but it was better than the union got from Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, or Dennis Kucinich–none of whom as of Friday, November 16, had pronounced on the strike. (Bill Richardson issued the most substantive, and thoughtful, support of the lot.)
After their brief statements, Clinton and Obama fell silent. When asked whether any further demonstration of support for the strike was planned, the Clinton campaign simply re-emailed its original statement of quasi-solidarity. When asked the same question, the Obama campaign did not respond. After staying quiet for almost two weeks, Edwards attended a rally for the WGA at the NBC picket lines in Burbank last Friday. Clinton was scheduled to make a campaign stop in Los Angeles last Saturday, but as of Friday had no public plans to do any events in support of the union.
Why such tepid support for the most significant union action likely before November 2008? The answer is that the writers’ strike puts Democrats in a tight spot. (So tight that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office will only say that she has no plans to say anything whatsoever about the strike.)
On the one hand, you would expect Democrats to rally to the side of any union, particularly a Hollywood union–particularly a Hollywood union with a legitimate gripe against giant corporate media conglomerates. On the other hand, the management in Hollywood has given Clinton, Obama, and to a lesser extent, Edwards, barrels of money.
Paramount Pictures chairman and CEO Brad Grey has given the maximum to Clinton (as well as to Dodd, McCain, and Giuliani, which makes him a reactionary by Hollywood standards). The Sony Corporation’s chairman, Howard Stringer, has also maxed out his contributions to Clinton. Sony’s film division chairman, Amy Pascal, gave the max to Obama, as did her vice chairman, Yair Landau.
Richard Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, gave to both Clinton and Obama; Oren Aviv, president of Disney’s film production, maxed out to Clinton alone. At Warner Brothers, both the president and the chairman gave to Hillary and Obama, with the president, Alan Horn, also throwing money at Edwards. New Line’s CEO, Bob Shaye, maxed out his contributions to all three.
At DreamWorks, David Geffen gave to Obama and Edwards, while Jeffrey Katzenberg gave to those two, plus Hillary. Viacom’s Sumner Redstone and the Weinstein Company’s Harvey Weinstein gave exclusively to Clinton. There are more examples–many, many more–and when you look down the list you see that nearly every powerful executive in the industry, from Peter Chernin and Kevin Reilly at Fox to Robert Wright at NBC/Universal to Nancy Reiss Tellem at CBS, has been giving to one or more of the big three Democrats.
That may partly explain the candidates’ reticence to stump for the Writers Guild the way they might have stumped for, say, the UAW. Another explanation may be that the writers are part of the overclass in the Democrats’ vision of the “two Americas.” In film, writers are guaranteed a minimum of $106,000 for a screenplay; in TV, networks must pay at least $20,956 for a 22-minute sitcom script and $30,823 for a 44-minute show. (In practice, those numbers are usually doubled since the writer gets a large payoff for the first rerun.) The studios and networks report that the average working writer makes $200,000 a year; the average worker in Los Angeles County makes $52,572.
But if the Democratic notion of “two Americas” is cloying, there are, without question, two Hollywoods. And in the alternative universe of Hollywood, the writers really are the downtrodden.
In the entertainment industry, writing is a sometime thing, with about half of Writers Guild members unemployed at any given time. Because Hollywood writing is rarely steady–movie projects take a long time to complete, but then are finished; TV shows are often canceled–writers rely on residuals to give them some income stability. And Hollywood certainly isn’t averse to giving out residuals. A recent study of the film industry by Global Media Intelligence suggested that studios give away as much as 25 percent of a film’s profits in residual payments. Last year, that amounted to $3 billion in after-release payouts. From this river of cash, writers received only $121 million. By contrast, an actor or director can receive residual payouts anywhere between $20 million and $70 million for a single picture.
The entire situation is richly ironic: Democrats, corrupted by big-corporate money, barely standing by a union composed of liberal, upper-middle-class scribblers. But the final irony is that the writers’ strike presents an actual instance of giant income disparity and economic unfairness. And the Democrats are, for the most part, keeping quiet about it.
Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
