Believe what you wish, but the point made to you was that spending money on The Terminator would be money going towards Ellison - even if it's "fractions of a penny", which you said you'd never spend for Ellison.

I do not know he particulars of the suit, if Ellison simply gets credit or a cut, but given his nature, I bet he sued for a cut or similar payoff.

I never watch the Oscars, so this wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

I still don't understand how picketing an award show is the same thing as picketing the production lots. I agree with the WGA's overall position, and I understand writers not writing for the event, but I don't see how sabotaging an award show helps their causes at all. If anything you would think the writers would want people to be reminded of last year's cream of the crop, to get people to appreciate the type of work they will be missing out on without writers. Plus, it's sort of a slap in the face to all the other talents in other fields who worked their butts off to make great movies last year.

I see it as a much more of a mutual relationship than that. Yeah, the studios put up the money but the actors/directors/writers are actually doing the work that's generating the profits. That has to count for something, and they should be fairly compensated, especially since even in this case the studios would still be keeping the lion's share.

1. The Oscars will go on. Not even worth debating. Instead of the usual crappy "witty banter" we'll just get standard "and the award goes to" lines (along with some improv). Maybe, just maybe, the awards will end at a reasonable hour.

2. The strike will eventually end when the writers capitulate. The producers and studios have more money "in the bank", as it were, and can hold out longer. Once the writers have to go out and get real jobs, they'll want to get back to business as usual.

I shudder at the inevitable writer's strike jokes that would come from that.

"The only thing I can tell you without any equivocation is the show is going to go on. That's absolutely for certain." - Gil Cates, producer of the Academy Awards show

Link

Also, I'm reposting a good summary of why the writers are striking that I ran across at Hollywood Elsewhere a while back:

You've apparently never been in a union that is on strike. And I'm in such a pissed off mood today, that I will not attempt to educate your ass here tonight. I enjoy my time here at DVDTalk too much to get banned because of you.

If I've offended you, I truly am sorry. I am all in favor of the writers' stand on the issues at hand and I said that. I'm asked a simple question, which is an admission that I *don't* understand this, and that question being about the correlation between the two matters.

I'm not as angry as zombiezilla - maybe I should be? Anyway, The Oscars is a celebration of everything writers (and actors, directors, musicians etc) in Hollywood do. For them to be out in the cold being punished by the producers' cartel-while the celebrities, producers and
cool kids inside have their party which wouldn't be possible without the writers-is unforgivable. How would you like to be cast out of the company year-end party because your work resulted in a significant bump in profits and respect for your business-and you had the temerity to ask for a raise? I'd take a whiz in the punchbowl too.
Besides, that's the only thing that could make this ceremony livable-remember Michael Moore raising hell at his acceptance speech? Oh nelly, imagine every writer on the line storming the ceremony.
As for what people are missing out? Go to Blockbuster. Go to Netflix. Hell, go to Facets, HKFlix, and any other DVD distributor. The fans will live and thrive without Hollywood, for as long as it takes. Hollywood will screw itself just like the music industry did-although the plebian writers will ultimately have the most to lose, and lose we will, before we start to rise again.

Screw the writers, a bunch of greedy sons-of-bitches. Of course they should be paid for their services - but they should charge a higher up-front fee instead of trying to leech onto any future profits the show may have through DVD sales and now they are trying to hold the awards shows hostage. I have no sympathy for them. That being said, I'm sure that the show will go on without the union writers - there are plenty of non-union writers plus the actors can write their own lines I guess. Look at the late-night shows, they are back up and running.

As for trying to a short clip, wouldn't a clip of less than twenty seconds be covered by fair use? And what would happen if the writers did complain that a ten or fifteen second clip of a movie was shown? They can't physically prevent it.

Overall you've posted a good summary, but the problem with this statement is that it assumes this is the only payment the writer receives. This is in addition to whatever they've already been paid for the movie. It's essentially a performance bonus.

So the writer of Wild Hogs made over $100,000 from dvd sales? Life is not fair.

There's plenty of screenwriters that I wished would stay on strike forever.

I still do not understand this mentality that some people only deserve money up front and other people get money at every turn.

Well ya know if the DVD's made themselves , marketed themselves, set up their own stores to sell themselves, and they sold every copy of every DVD they printed maybe their would be a bit more money in the pot to spread to the writers. Unfortunately there are many costs that the writers dont have to pay for so I think they are more than adequately compensated for for DVD sales.

Whatever but their stand is genuine. Writers are fighting for 2% of internet sales. 2% credit for something they created. Is that a lot? You should hate the studios that want to keep every cent. May Oscars goes on.

But without the writers (and the rest of the production people), they wouldn't even have a business to be in.

That doesn't count for anything beyond their initial paycheck? For a classic movie or show, studios could pull in millions of dollars a year on something the writer gets paid once for? And what if one of the main reasons that particular movie or TV show is so profitable is because of the writing? The writers don't deserve a VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE of that money? That's fucked up.

Because those people took the risk and put up their own money. It's an investment. If you start a businesses, you front the cash, and hope to turn a profit, but your employees get a wage for their participation. If your business does well, they get a bonus. If it does, they don't, but they still have their wages.

The issue with the raise from 4 to 8 is that it will go from 4 to 8 for the other guilds as well.

I don't doubt that the studios receive a healthy net profit from DVD sales, BUT THEY SHOULD. They are putting up all of the money to make it possible. Additionally, those DVD numbers do not take into account things like marketing, design, remastering, etc. and assumes that each DVD is sold for $16. That's doubtful.

With residuals, the writers seem to want all of the reward with none of the risk.

I hate to keep pasting someone else's quotes, but in this case I couldn't say it better myself, so here goes:

I would agree with this if we were talking about goods, but this argument disregards the whole notion of intellectual property. The studios are earning profits off something that other people created. The creators deserve a share of that profit.

With your argument, it would be ok for you to burn copies of DVDs and sell them to your friends and neighbors and keep all of the profit yourself, because hey, you put up your own money to buy the plastic and distributed the end product yourself.

They have already been compensated for their intellectual property with an up-front fee.

I have yet to hear any compelling response to this. I'm not saying there isn't one, but I haven't heard it yet.

This seems to be the only industry this is true. Do you think that Texas Instruments is giving royalties to the in house creators of the DLP chip? No, they are paying them salary, because it's their JOB to create.

BUT THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. They make money off the work of other people. Those shiny discs are worth absolutely nothing without the content created by...well, the content creators. It's a creative industry and the writers should be rewarded for their creativity.

Those LaChance quotes posted above are spot-on. What about the other creative industries that manage to make money and fairly compensate the people they are making money off of.

Why are movies any different than book publishing? Why are the expectations different?

I don't know what hat/ass/asshat(?) you got that 2% number from but here is what the AMPTP responded with (in December) after talks broke down again due to the WGA being insanely unreasonable.

"Instead of negotiating, the WGA organizers have made unreasonable demands that are roadblocks to real progress:

- They demand full control over reality television and animation. In other words, they want us to make membership in their union mandatory to work in this industry – even though thousands of people in reality and animation have already chosen not to join the WGA.

- They demand restrictions designed to prevent networks from airing any reality programs unless they are produced under terms in keeping with the WGA agreement. This would apply even to producers who are not associated with the Guild. Their proposal artificially limits competition and most likely would not withstand legal challenge.

- Their proposal for Internet compensation could actually cost producers more than they receive in revenues, thereby dooming the Internet media business before it ever gets started.

- They insist that writers receive a piece of advertising revenue – even though the producers that pay them don’t receive any of this revenue in the first place.

- They want a third party to set an artificial value on transactions, rather that allowing the market to determine the worth of each transaction. This would result in producers having to pay residuals on money that the producers never even received.

These are the terms the WGA organizers demand for ending the strike – money that doesn’t exist, restrictions that are legally dubious, and control over people who have refused to join their union."



I would love to support the writers. I really would. I think they are one of the most important (if not the most important) creative force in the entertainment industry. This is about more than money though. The demands they have made are obscene/insane/ludicrous whatever word you wanna use and then some to describe what they have demanded. The terms they have demanded actually frighten me a bit in all honestly in the amount of control and unreasonableness they want.
Please do at least a little research into what the WGA is demanding before you pull out that innocent sounding 2% more figure.