A group of actors celebrate the SAG-AFTRA union and film and television studios’ agreement to renew their collective bargaining agreement after 118 days of strike at a brewery in Los Angeles on November 8, 2023.MARIO ANZUONI (Portal)
On Thursday, around 5:30 in the afternoon, the public address system of a popular supermarket in Studio City, a residential neighborhood just behind the Hollywood Hills that define and divide the city of Los Angeles in two, announced different prices per pound of chicken breasts. The actors’ strike is over. We repeat. The actors’ strike is over. The customers, disbelieving and happy, dropped baskets and carts and began applauding and cheering in the aisles.
They weren’t the only ones. The bars near the headquarters of the actors union SAG-AFTRA were packed with artists celebrating, singing and toasting the health of those who fought for them until they reached a contract after 118 days of strike action. Fair Collective and that in the absence of known details – they will be published when the proposal is approved by vote on Friday – it will change the lives of many of them and the development of the film industry thanks to its regulation Artificial Intelligence. “When we fight, we win,” they chanted, calling out the names of President Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. “We’re sexy, we’re funny, these studios owe us money,” they sang, beer in hand. Even President Joe Biden expressed satisfaction in a statement with the agreement reached by both parties, “which will enable the entertainment industry to continue telling the stories of the United States.”
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The relief over the agreement on the next three years of the collective agreement was evident in many places, in half the city, where the end of the strike was the only discussion in the groups. There were sighs, exclamations of joy and applause in communications agencies, production companies and representative offices. Also at events and film screenings: The premiere of “Wish,” the latest Disney film, took place on Wednesday evening, and nothing else was talked about at the El Capitan Theater, right on Hollywood Boulevard. Also at the special press screening of the next episode of The Hunger Games, where the journalists showed up with their tongues hanging out after announcing the news. Silvia García, a Spanish publicist who has been running talent agency SGG Public Relations out of Los Angeles for 10 years, admits that after hearing the news from EL PAÍS, her excited clients began sending her emails and screenshots of the to send official communication to SAG-AFTRA. The relief was total, he admits, after 118 days of strike, “very hard months, a lot of time, many jobs lost.” Many of them are already irretrievable.
The expected end of the strike has become a nuclear conversation in a city that is cinema. It’s not that Los Angeles is cinematic, it revolves, exists and survives thanks to cinema and through cinema. Beyond the Walk of Fame or the bust of James Dean overlooking the big city from Griffith Observatory, the streets are places where filming is constantly taking place (there have been more than 40% fewer strikes by writers and actors this year than in the last year, according to the FilmLA Association) and where its residents literally make a living from this industry: cinema and television are the country’s main employers, contributing 175,000 million in annual salaries in the United States (according to the Motion Picture Association from the year 2021).
The fact that the percentage of filming and premieres was much lower means that there was no need for cameras, makeup artists, drivers, catering and wardrobe companies, security guards, hotels to host events or flowers to decorate them. Much of Los Angeles County and its 10 million residents are affected by a worryingly shrinking business network. Losses are estimated at around $6 billion. But it is also expected that as the salary conditions of the new collective agreement improve, writers and now actors will live better and driving Ubers will no longer be mandatory to survive in a city with an average rent of $2,800 per month ( 2,600 euros).
In the unstoppable city, everything has slowed down in these months. Unlike screenwriters, who are essential to laying the foundations of a project, be it a series or a film, actors are involved later: they are part of the filming process, but also part of the public’s access to that product. There are no films without screenwriters or actors. But if they’re already made, without these actors it’s almost as if they don’t exist. And this invisibility has made the studios terribly nervous, which have called on the actors’ union to sit down at the table to chat with the awards ceremonies at the doors and hopeless box office numbers.
One example is enough. Martin Scorsese’s “The Moon Killers” premiered on October 16th at the Dolby Theater – the same one where the Oscars will be presented on Sunday, March 10th. A premiere that would have gone off in style and with all seats filled, but which was lackluster due to the absence of the season’s big stars, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert de Niro and the revelation of the moment, Lily Gladstone. Even Scorsese himself, in his speech on stage, regretted that they were not there; He assured that he misses his actors and praised their performances. The film grossed just $23 million (€21.5 million) at its premiere. There are about 52 in total and it’s not even one of the 15 most viewed of the year.
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher and the union’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, at their headquarters in Los Angeles on July 13 after announcing their strike. MIKE BLAKE (Portal)
During these months there were still, in significantly smaller numbers, premieres, events with fans, critics and the press, and parties. In particular, small and/or foreign films that have contracts approved by SAG; of series that have a lot of fan base behind them (like Loki, whose second season had a great premiere without Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson but full of costumed followers); or projects that only had a screening, but no actors or hardly any advertising for them. Unobtrusive profile. Many actors have suffered the consequences of a strike that seemingly would never end. The publicist García recognizes that some of her clients have returned to their homes during these months. “I have a client who wanted to move to Atlanta because there are a lot of productions and not that many actors; She wanted to leave just before the strike and ended up not doing so. There are people who have returned to Spain because they cannot survive or have nothing to do. Another customer has returned to Mexico. “This is a very expensive city,” he admits. “The vast majority of actors are normal people. Fortunately, those who were able, like La Roca, donated money and the others managed to move forward and not give in to the studies.”
García assures that the information that reached the actors is that if the studios stood up and the proposal was not implemented, everything would be paralyzed until after Christmas. With awards season just around the corner (the Golden Globes take place on January 7th and there will be a non-stop string of awards from then until the Oscars two months later), this would be a fatal blow to the actors, the industry and the Oscars have been the city. Now hope has blossomed, and conditions and leadership in artificial intelligence management are expected to improve, which is crucial for the future of the industry.
Now that everything has returned to normal, there are a few weeks of work ahead. Crazy days when premieres and events overlap, when publicists call the press and awards presenters and beg them to come to their films and interviews at short notice. Everything quickly, now everything stops. The great chaos of Hollywood has returned in all its glory and will remain so for at least the next three years.
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