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Cinemetal

TOM MORELLO GETS DOWN WITH THE WGA

 Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 12:49pm by

You may or may not have heard in the past week about the fact that the Writer’s Guild of America – the union of writers for film and television – is on strike (you can find excellent ongoing coverage here). The mass media isn’t giving the strike much coverage because, well, the mass media is largely owned by the same conglomerates that the writer’s are striking against. See, the gist of the conflict is this: right now, when you a buy a DVD, the writer of whatever film or tv program is on said DVD gets about four cents, and the writers would like a raise so they make a whopping eight cents on each DVD; furthermore, writers currently aren’t paid when their work is streamed on a network website (usually complete with paid commercials) or downloaded on iTunes, which is to say: they’re not being paid for their work. Of course, GE and Time Warner and Viacom don’t want you to see it that way; they want you to think that the writers are greedy assholes and they want you to be upset that by the end of November, there basically won’t be anything on tv save for re-runs and reality shows (You won’t feel the effect in movie theaters until about 2009, when every shitty script the studios rushed into production to beat the strike is released. Seriously: the last time Hollywood thought there was gonna be a writer’s strike, Fox immediately gave a green light to… the re-make of Planet of the Apes. Chew on that.).

ANYWAY, leave it our favorite heavy metal crusader, Tom Morello, to take a stand for the writers, joining picketers at last week’s rally outside Fox. Video below:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/oQAzNsPLlDk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR

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  • Sammy

    What do you mean the “mass media” isn’t giving this strike coverage? It’s been on every national TV and radio newscast for the past few weeks, along with AP, Yahoo and Google news pages.

  • http://www.metalsucks.net Axl Rosenberg
  • TedTedPoleyPoley

    come on, please support those writers and all their never ending “adaptations”, “re-imaginings”, and REMAKES!!

  • http://www.metalsucks.net Axl Rosenberg

    TTPP -

    You know I love and respect you, but if you think the writers are to blame for the current state of remakes and such, you are, alas, incorrect.

    The writers, for better or worse, write what they can sell. Studio execs want projects with name recognition value b/c they’re (allegedly) easier to sell – that means sequels, adaptations, re-makes, etc.

    The truth is, the consumer votes for what gets made with his or her wallet. Until people stop paying to see re-makes and sequels, the studios will keep making them.

    Sad but true.

    -AR

  • DeathMetalDave

    Someone who says, “that the decades long conservative assault on the union movement has been a major contributor to the income inequality we are seeing today. Unions are essential to maintaining a thriving middle class…”, and blogs about unfair media treatment of the unions is proof of such unfair treatment? That sounds like a fair objective treatment of the subject.

    I think most people don’t care about unions because they’ve had to go through their professional life letting their work speak for itself and earning what they get. They haven’t had a massive collective decide what their compensation should be, regardless of their personal performance at their job. They haven’t had the ridiculous protection of their jobs that would keep them employed no matter how terrible they are at it. I think when most people see stuff like this, they just say boo-hoo, welcome to the real world. We don’t all have the luxury of strong-arming our employers into giving us what we want. If I’m pissed and decide I’m not going to work until I’m not pissed anymore, my employer will replace me….as they well should.

  • http://www.metalsucks.net Axl Rosenberg

    DMD -

    I could not agree with you less on this issue.

    Sometimes unions are wrong to strike but sometimes they’re not. In this instance they are asking very simply to be paid for their work. The studios are not refusing to pay the writers b/c they’re unhappy with their work – they’re refusing to pay b/c they’re greedy. If you did a job for someone and they made millions or even billions from your work and then refused to pay you, wouldn’t you be pissed? And there is no “ridiculous protection of their job” – lots of writers are being fired and threatened with law suits for striking.

    If you don’t like the coverage from the previous website, try this one…

    http://weblogs.variety.com/wga_strike_blog/

    ..but I’d beg you to re-consider your general anti-union position.

    -AR

  • DeathMetalDave

    Let me clarify… Although I am generally anti-union, in this case, it does sound like there are legitimate complaints…especially not receiving royalties for streaming access. And the job protection comment was not meant to be directed at this union, but rather just a general comment (I was thinking of teachers), so I should have made that clear. My comments were meant to be my personal assessment as to why there is a perception that the general public doesn’t tend to have sympathy regarding union matters. My guess is that most people don’t even bother to learn about the particulars of a specific situation like this. They just take their pre-existing feelings on the subject and blindly apply it to any situation (kind of like I did!).

    I appreciate your respectful tone and passion in the few comments you’ve made on the issue, so I’ll check out that other site. Although, I can’t promise I’ll reconsider my opinion, since I pretty much feel like unions are an anachronism. But I probably feel that way mainly because admittedly I’m ill-informed on the subject.

  • Sammy

    The union movement in this country helped create a stable middle class and fair work conditions….before it proceeded to put its members out of work by strong-arming corporate America into moving its operations overseas. It’s a case of a good thing gone too far.

    As for the writers’ strike, from what I’ve read – in the major media, by the way – I’d have to side with the strikers. I know bloggers like to think of themselves as the new media and love to hate anything corporate, but in this case, I haven’t seen this anti-writer bias of which you’re speaking.

    As for Tom Morello, if he had the socialist society he so badly desires, he wouldn’t be a famous musician, making money selling albums in a market economy. (And don’t peg me as some right wing, corporation-loving conservative. Nope, just a small “L” libertarian who hates the left and the right.)

  • Sammy

    Who said metal heads are a bunch of mudslinging Neanderthals?

  • DeathMetalDave

    Ok, I checked out the WGA strike blog a bit, and it kind of actually reinforces my existing opinions. I back peddled a bit from my comment regarding job protection, but when I read a whole post about scabs and that “a scab is not someone you really want to associate with”, I can’t help but feel like that is a form of job protection. The idea behind labeling people as scabs, etc. and treating them with hostility is to basically intimidate others from stepping into the jobs from which you have temporarily stepped away. Instead of facing the reality that other people would gladly come in and take your place at your job, the unionist does everything he can to prevent that from happening.

    Furthermore, I disagree wholeheartedly with tactics like blocking trucks from entering the studios, as proudly posted about on the WGA blog. At that point, it ceases to be about how valuable the writers are to the studios or what they deserve from their work and helping the studios realize that to win them over. It then becomes something more like, we’re going to do everything we can to harm your business until you give in to us. I’m sure there is a lot of other business that goes on in a studio that does not pertain to anything the writers are involved with, so why prevent that other business from taking place? It’s simply a bully tactic.

  • Sammy

    Keep in mind, some of those on the strike lines are responsible for According to Jim, Jay Leno’s monologue and Pirates II, which was just a two and a half advertisement for the third installment of the series.

  • Tag

    lol @ sammy…so true. Regardless of the shit writers put out, they still put out lots of good stuff to. And whether or not one person finds it good or not is irrelevant, because people are purchasing their work, and they should be paid for the work that they’ve done.

    I’m down with the message of Tom’s song and all, but that song was really lame…

  • DeathMetalDave

    Tag said something that is causing me to backtrack on something else I said. I said that I could understand the royalties issue. But the more I think about it, the less I believe that. People talk about royalties like they are some kind of inalienable right. How did that notion ever come about? A royalty payment is a job perk, just like health insurance, stock options, 401K, etc. It is something that an employee (or their union) has worked out with the employer in a contract as a perk to the job they do. The old agreement here didn’t cover online viewing (I assume because such a thing did not exist when the last agreement was made). Just because writers may get royalties in some instances now, that does not then logically necessitate that they deserve or have a right to royalties for every instance. I write software for a living. I get paid to write that software. I don’t get residuals every time a customer launches one of my applications. Don’t get me wrong, that comment is not meant to imply that artists should not get royalties, only that they should view them as a perk and not as a right. I’m all for any employee getting anything they can work out with their employer. I’d be interested to know how the royalty concept came into existence. Does anyone know of a good history of such things?

  • http://www.metalsucks.net Vince Neilstein

    @ DMD:

    You don’t get royalties every time someone loads the software you wrote, no. Nor does a musician get a royalty every time someone listens to a CD. But you DO get a royalty (or some percentage of money) every time someone BUYS a copy of your software, just as a musician does every time someone buys a record. TV and internet streams are a grey area though, because you don’t actually “buy” or “own” them — but i think, considering watching them is the equivalent of buying (the “buying” comes in the form of watching the ads that paid for these programs) that the writers ARE entitled to a cut of any revenue generated from watching. The key thing here being revenue generated — for software it’s buying a copy, CD’s same thing, for TV shows it’s watching.

    -VN

  • http://www.metalsucks.net Axl Rosenberg

    Royalties are especially an issue here because people ARE making money off of the internet – when networks stream television they include commercials they were paid for, and when you buy a movie or tv show on iTunes… well, you get it.

  • DeathMetalDave

    Vince:

    You’re right, the buying of the software would have been a more apt analogy. However, it is untrue that I get royalties when copies are purchased, just as it is with all software companies I know of. I’ve been paid to do my job, any money made from sales can be returned back to me in the form of a raise or a bonus or whatever my employer deems is appropriate, but I am not entitled to any of that. My point is that writers (or any participants in creating art) are also NOT entitled to anything that is not covered by any existing agreement. It seems perfectly reasonably given the state of artistic industries that they would desire royalties for every medium of “broadcast”. But like I said, such a thing is far from an inherent right. And again, the tactics used to attempt to achieve that which they desire are, in my opinion, undesirable.

    And Axl, just because someone is making money off the content does not mean that anyone else is entitled to a cut if there is no agreement in place that states as such. So to me, it’s a moot point. But again, I can understand why the writers would be upset about it, given previous agreements on similar things.