Lee Goldberg

Live from the picket line

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Pb150083
I am at NBC in Burbank this morning, nearing the end of my shift. At about 8, a guy parked across the street and came over to us. His hands were in his pockets and he looked uneasy.. 
He told us he was an editor and that he, and many other IATSE members, were embarrassed and outraged by the conduct of their exec director, especially by the letter that was released today. I didn’t know anything about the letter…I slipped out of the house without reading the paper. He wanted us to know that the editors were with us in spirit and we thanked him.
An hour later, a van pulled up and out spilled three original munchkins, one in her costume from The Wizard of Oz. The three of them must have been in their late 80s and sang the lollipop guild song as they walked with us.

"The lollipop guild is with you," said the lollipop kid and he handed me a donut hole.

John Edwards is coming by later but I doubt that he can top that.  Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

The AMPTP Likes to Buy Pages in Newspapers

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The AMPTP took out more full-page ads in national newspapers today in an attempt to cast the WGA as irrational, unreasonable, and greedy. The problem is that the AMPTP can’t do that and tell the truth at the same time.  So guess how they dealt with the problem.

Here is how Patric Verrone, president of the WGA, responded to the latest ads:

* They say that technology and the Internet is rapidly
changing how Hollywood works. This is true, which is why we need a new formula to
determine compensation.

* They say that writers are already paid residuals for
digital downloads. It’s true some companies are trying to pay us for downloading shows we’ve
created at the abysmal DVD rate of a third of a penny per dollar earned by the companies. But we have
never agreed to this formula, and we have initiated arbitration.

 

* They say we are asking for a 700% increase over
what we currently receive for digital downloads. This is more than misleading. Again, some companies are trying to pay us the DVD rate. And we are asking to receive
2.5 cents per dollar. The only way to characterize our request as a 700% increase is if you accept as a
given the low ball amount they’re trying to foist on us.

 

* They say they have offered to pay us a percentage of the
revenue from Internet streaming of shows we’ve created. Here’s the truth about their
offer. We would get no share of revenue for the first six weeks that our shows air. In other words, they’re offering us a share of revenue after there is little revenue left.

 

* They say that no labor agreement in history has given
writers, actors, or directors a portion of advertising dollars. Nowhere in any of our proposals have we
ever asked for a share of ad dollars. As with every residual, we are asking for a share of the revenue
the corporations receive.

The AMPTP is dealing with the issues by spending lots of money on misleading, full-page ads in national newspapers. The WGA would rather deal with the issues by talking about them over a negotiating table.

The Medium is the Message

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Diane
Here’s my friend writer Diane Ademu-John (back row, second from the left) and the cast of her show MEDIUM on the picket line. She has already logged an astonishing 40 hours of picketing (compared to my meager twelve). That’s why she’s in such great shape and I’m, um, not.

I’ll be out at CBS in Studio City or NBC in Burbank tomorrow.

Variety Wrong Again

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Last week, Variety reporters warned us that we’d be "swift-boated" if we didn’t reply to every ridiculous, inflammatory claim made by the AMPTP. Well, Variety was wrong, as proven by a report in their own pages today that shows the public is solidly behind us.

There’s an image war raging during the WGA strike, and the writers seem to be winning.

Public sympathy sides with the scribes, as a study, released Wednesday, indicates.

[…]The WGA trumpeted a pair of surveys Wednesday showing plenty of
public sympathy with backing of 69% in a Pepperdine poll and 63% in a
SurveyUSA poll, while the companies received a only a smattering of
support with 4% and 8%, respectively.

And the announcement came on the same day that WGA West prexy Patric Verrone and SAG topper Alan Rosenberg huddled with multiple elected officials in Washington, D.C., to explain the guilds’ position.

"These
polls prove that the public understands what’s at stake here," Verrone
said in a statement. "Our fight represents the fight for all American
workers for a fair deal."

Dawn of the Dead

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Pb110070
I was back on the picket line a CBS at dawn today, though I moved to the Colfax gate this time. The writers were blowing whistles and encouraging passing cars to lean on their horns (which they did). This irritated the guards who made a show of scowling, counting the number of picketers, and making notations on their clipboards. I’m not sure why they were counting us, but I think we were supposed to be intimidated by it. We weren’t. I also chatted with my friends Bill Freiberger and Rodney Vacarro, which is one of the benefits of picketing. I keep bringing my iPod along but I haven’t listened to it yet.

Finding Middle Ground at MIDDLEMAN

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The strike has put my friend Javi in a tough situation.  He was in the midst of producing his pilot THE MIDDLEMAN, a dream-come-true for him, when the strike was called. Now he is in a moral quandry:

i can’t be legally penalized by the guild for doing my duties as a
producer: but the guild would certainly prefer it if the walkout was
complete – if people like myself struck not only as writers but also as
producers…because if the paralyzing effect of the strike is felt
swiftly and across the board, the producers might be more motivated to
settle quickly.

so here i am, given the opportunity to see
through to completion the production of a nine year-old dream into a
pilot…a dream i self-financed as a comic book, seen through to three
volumes and fought to get to this place, into a reality…

…and
on the other hand, there’s a labor union of which i am a member,
mounting picket lines i am required to honor, running a justified
strike against a predatory media cabal that has no qualms about taking
from creators as much as they can possibly get (while laughably
pleading poverty when their entire raison d’etre is to monetize the
work of people such as myself) asking me to walk away completely.

I wouldn’t want to be in his position. It seems like an awfully cruel twist-of-fate for him.

A Kick-Ass Pilot

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I just watched TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES and it’s one of the most entertaining pilots I have ever seen. It totally captures the feel of the first two movies on a dramatically lower budget. It picks up where TERMINATOR 2 left off and goes in a new direction that’s consistent with the dramatic line of the movies. It was a fun hour — everything BIONIC WOMAN wants to be and isn’t — but I don’t kn0w what they are going to do week-to-week. I’ll certainly be tuning in to see.

As much as I enjoyed it, there was one false, truly unbearable cliche: apparently Sarah and her son are going to be relentlessly pursued by the FBI agent obsessed with their capture (yet another rehash of Inspector Gerard. Why is it TV can’t resist ripping off THE FUGITIVE again and again and again and again???)