Let’s observe a moment of silence for the first major awards show casualty of The One Strike To Rule Them All.
It seems the Hollywood Foreign Press Association couldn’t broker a David Letterman-type deal with the WGA to move forward with the Golden Globes with a full writing staff so they’ve been forced to scrap the program (and all of it’s subsequent fanfare). You might’ve heard about the 11 week old Hollywood talent strikes (alternately known as The Strike That Came From Hell and The Strike That Sent Our Asses To Reality Hell).
Basically the latest contracts for writers (followed by actors and directors) have expired, and they want to renegotiate for a better chunk of the cash studios tend to hide with shady accounting, plus protection for future profits with new media. To prepare for this possibility, studios had been stockpiling scripts and hustling projects into the pipe before they’re truly ready.
What this means to you as a moviegoer is that the next two or three years will see poorly crafted, craptastic product in even greater amounts than usual…oh joy. While we realize that the doomsday pronouncements now being issued with increasing frequency by both the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers following bargaining sessions in which the only thing being discussed seriously is which side is more committed to destroying Hollywood contain their fair share of public posturing, that knowledge doesn’t stop our sphincters from reflexively tightening following each bellicose statement lamenting the possibility of no end in sight to the disastrous work-stoppage.
One of the latest installments of Variety’s “Strike Fever: Catch It!” series on the acrimonious contract-renewal talks contains more than its fair share of ass-puckering quotes from the writers, studio execs, and agents who all hope for peace (at least secretly), but who are quietly trying to figure out which of their children will fetch the highest price on the black market to help them weather the strike or lockout that could arrive in just three weeks. Reports Variety:
“We tried to get as much stuff as possible shoved through,” said one studio VP. “It’s as crazy as I’ve ever seen it. We had to assume that they would strike on Nov. 1, they did, and this is the hand we’ve been dealt.” On the feature side, studios are no longer taking writing pitches and are pretty much limiting themselves to making deals on fully developed packages. Warner Bros. and Universal, for example, have put out the word to agents: Don’t bring in any spec scripts until the situation resolves itself.
“I’d hate to see this turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, like the Iraq war,” one agent lamented. “I’d like to see people trying to engage in some meaningful and constructive dialogue rather than making boisterous pronouncements, leading to a never-ending stoppage.”
You can always count on an agent to put an explosive situation in its proper perspective, as the run-up to the possible strike was exactly like the Iraq War. After months of tough talk about needing more time to study the financials of the internet fad and threats to blow up the residuals system that’s been in place for decades, the studios will have little choice but to bunker down within their studio lot Green Zones, hoping their surge of hastily produced movies and primetime network schedules consisting of nothing but episodes of American Gladiator, Fat March, The Singing Bee, and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? can keep the masses at bay.
This disastrous cancellation of the Globes will also have a less predictable effect on things. Several movies that most needed the Globes will feel the pinch. Such heavily nominated films as “Atonement” and “Sweeney Todd” have done respectable but not blowout domestic numbers — $19 million and $39 million, respectively — and if history is any predictor, they would have seen a spike after their clips and stars got Globes airtime. Ditto for “There Will Be Blood,” which is just beginning to widen.
Lauded performers who wouldn’t normally be high on awards season or entertainment media radars such as Casey Affleck (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” & “Gone Baby Gone”) and Marion Cotillard (“La Vie en Rose”) could have seen career boosts from red-carpet exposure.
Not now it seems.
Let’s hope that this will trigger some sort of sense of urgency among all parties involved, otherwise this could very well be the first sign that the entertainment apocalypse is truly upon us. Because the thought of even more disappointing feature films & an ever greater onslaught of reality television in the coming years puts me in a really friggin’ bad frame of mind.
