Hollywood’s Hot Strike Summer

Engagement Party

CNN

News, Society & Culture, Entertainment News, Arts

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For Labor Day — the unofficial end of summer and the official holiday celebrating the American worker — we are checking in on the state of the striking actors and writers demanding more from the studios they work for. When the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike earlier this year, no one was sure how long the first dual strike in over 60 years would last. Six weeks later both unions are still on the picket line. This week we speak to industry insider, Franklin Leonard, about the state of the strikes and how this could change the way Hollywood works, and how we watch movies and TV. Franklin Leonard is a film and television producer and the founder of The Black List, a platform for film and television writers to showcase their work to industry professionals. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A few episodes back, we spoke to a flight attendant, a union leader, actually, who told us something
0:05.9	that's lingered in the back of my mind for the last couple of months.
0:09.5	I believe it's going to be a hot labor summer because there's a lot going on and there's a lot
0:14.8	of contracts that are in negotiations right now.
0:18.1	She was right. Hotel workers, Amazon employees, UPS drivers, more than 300,000 workers of all
0:25.9	kinds have already gone on strike this year. We got that data from Bloomberg Law. But no labor action
0:33.9	has captured attention like the double strike that's brought Hollywood to a halt.
0:39.5	As of this morning, more than 11,000 TV and movie writers, they're on strike.
0:44.0	Hollywood actors have joined screenwriters for the first dual strike since 1960.
0:48.6	So the studios and the streamers have tried to turn television writing from a career into a gig job.
0:55.7	The dual writers and actors strike, with both the Writers Guild of America and Screen
1:01.8	Actors Guild, United and on the Picket Lines together. Among their asks, better pay, better residuals,
1:09.4	better working conditions, and the regulation of AI.
1:13.1	And that groundbreaking AI proposal, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be
1:18.3	scanned, get paid for one day's pay, and their company should own that scan, their image,
1:24.0	their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project
1:28.2	they want with no consent and no compensation. The eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of
1:33.8	labor are upon us. What happens here is important because what's happening to us is happening
1:43.5	across all fields of labor.
1:47.1	On the other side of that negotiating table, the major studios and the organization that represents them,
1:54.4	the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP, for short,
2:00.5	which, full disclosure, includes the leadership of CNN's
	...

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