The Strike That Could Paralyze Hollywood
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For as glamorous as Hollywood often seems, the workers behind the scenes rarely experience the star treatment. They do everything from sound design and makeup to cinematography and lighting, and they’ve had enough with the industry’s dizzying production pace and long hours that stretch into the early morning. Motivated by shifts in the industry due to the pandemic, workers from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union are gearing up for a strike that could halt movie and show productions alike.
Guest: Anousha Sakoui, entertainment industry writer for the Los Angeles Times.
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Transcript
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| 1:23.4 | When Anusha Sukhi first started hearing about the Instagram account, IA. Stories, it felt like a secret. |
| 1:29.4 | So I would be talking to sources and they would say, oh, by the way, have you seen this? |
| 1:33.7 | So it was definitely building, definitely getting attention. |
| 1:41.2 | The stories on this account, they offer a glimpse behind the scenes of TV and film sets. |
| 1:47.7 | In post after post, below the line workers, makeup artists, costume designers, |
| 1:54.7 | and audio technicians. They reveal the punishing labor conditions that make your Netflix habit possible. Anusha covers the entertainment industry for the LA Times. So for her, these kinds of tidbits are reporting fodder. |
| 2:04.9 | You know, I thought it was very interesting because people don't usually, in Hollywood, |
| 2:08.6 | you know, they don't really talk negatively about their situations too much publicly because |
| 2:13.2 | of the sort of fear of recrimination. |
| 2:16.2 | Most of the posts here are simple screenshots of direct messages, white text on a black |
| 2:23.0 | background. |
| 2:24.1 | They managed to be dramatic anyway. |
| 2:27.1 | There are a huge variety of stories. |
... |
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