Do you uncritically believe everything that’s “in black and white”? Did you not notice the part about “timing is suspect in light of the WGA strike”? Or do you believe that after the three strikers formed a min-picket line that production staff refused to cross, and the strikers crowed that they had “won”, somebody suddenly had a family emergency that shut down production? Believe it if you want. I believe the self-evident fact that three strikers shut down a production that was almost complete and ready to be released, and the studio is trying to save face. Sure, it’s also possible that someone did coincidentally have a family issue, but not one that would have shut production down indefinitely.
You either don’t understand or are misrepresenting the function of picket lines. Members of the striking union as well as members of virtually all other unions alike are not going to cross it in the interests of union solidarity. Even members of the general public tend to be leery of crossing picket lines because it can lead to everything from verbal abuse to outright violence. Stop trying to pretend that a picket line has to be a brick wall or else anyone is free to cross it. It doesn’t work that way. Simply put, if the strikers had not been there, production would have wrapped in a few more weeks.
As for all the rest of your post, please see this post where I quote the pertinent last line below, bolded for emphasis:
You’ve apparently mistaken my objection to a specific WGA action that I believe was not justified as being opposition to the WGA strike in general (and the subsequent SAG-AFTRA strike in support of it). This is false. I don’t need to be lectured on what’s at stake here, or on the ruthless greed of the studios.
No, I don’t believe everything in “black and white.” Which is why I decided to read the primary source and didn’t just rely on what you had to say. Those suspicions are based on nothing more than timing. I think its entirely reasonable to accept what the spokesperson had to say unless I’ve got reason not too.
Who cares?
It doesn’t matter if it was the strikers or a family emergency. The production is halted. We aren’t getting any more Evil this year. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. I love that show. The last season was brilliant. But I can live without it. Because there are more important things at play here.
I’m not pretending about anything. It wasn’t a brick wall stopping IATSE members crossing the picket line. They chose not to cross the picket line. It was a deliberate, calculated decision.
So they didn’t wrap, and join the many other film and television projects that are going to be delayed for a long while. That’s just how strikes work.
If you are gonna call three WGA members on the picket “activist jerks” and blame them for shutting down production on a struck show that you wish you could watch, then do you really support the strike? Because this is what people on strike do.
I’m going to lecture every single say of the week here on this topic. Because Hollywood is facing an existential crisis. This is it. This is where they’ve got to draw the line. Because if they don’t, it’s all downhill from here. No more Evil. No more Breaking Bad. All the great TV shows? Gone.
But it doesn’t with prestige television. The entire landscape of film and television will get turned into generic, souless sludge. These are the stakes. Those "“activist jerks” are fighting not only for their own careers, but for the people that follow. If the studios win then women, Black people, indigenous folks, LGBTQ+, all of the already under-represented people in Hollywood will get shafted. The only people who will be able to have a career in Hollywood will be those who are independently wealthy.
These are the stakes. And if a show gets delayed for a year then :: shrugs :: At least, unlike Batgirl which got scrapped, or Willow that got yanked from Disney +, you will probably be able to see it eventually.
Apparently, the caveat “…unless it interferes with my instant gratification” got cloaked for deemphasis, and is left to be inferred from the surrounding statements.
Generally, any post containing more than two or three simple words can, at least theoretically, be subject to multiple inferred interpretations, even if most of them are wildly implausible. It appears to be your hobby to make the most cynical and uncharitable interpretation possible regarding the post’s meaning and the poster’s motivation, even when the post in question explicitly states otherwise. And even when that explicit statement is repeated a second time, and then reiterated several more times in a different thread.
Specifically:
From post #175:
From post #180:
And finally, in the thread about unions in general in the GD thread that this one spawned, I gave multiple examples of an entirely different union similarly taking actions going far beyond their legitimate right to strike, those actions in some cases posing a threat to public safety and necessitating emergency court injunctions and police intervention to get the union to back down.
This is the principle that I’m arguing here and argued in the other thread. To imply that I oppose the WGA strike (I do not) and that my objection to the union shutting down production of Evil is because I miss my show (that’s not the reason) is completely wrong and cynically disingenuous.
I also miss many other shows, particularly a couple of informative talk shows, but those shows have writers that write, each and every week, and the writers are on strike, so they’re not writing. So be it. That’s a union exercising its preeminent legitimate right. You’ve never heard me complain about that.
At some point, the problem may not lie with your readers, @wolfpup. Your support of the strike is very weak, if it precludes WGA-approved pickets of shows you like.
There’s a pattern in social justice movements, where people are like, “I support you in theory, how dare you say I don’t support you in theory, but this time you’re going too far!” It’s why I recommend folks regularly reread MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and take its principles to heart.
So your argument is “Other unions do things that are illegal and dangerous, so this union, which did neither, is way out of line because I can’t watch my favorite show now” ? That’s some really weak sauce.
As I’ve said multiple times, there are also other shows I like that have been affected by the WGA strike. I’m positively addicted to my weekly dose of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Real Time with Bill Maher and go into withdrawal when they take their summer and their long holiday-season breaks. But these shows need writers who write, and the writers are on strike, so they’re not writing. They’ve been off the air for months now. I’m gasping for lack of political satire. So be it. These are unions engaged in their preeminent right to strike. Have you heard me complaining? So maybe it’s really true that my complaint about shutting down the production of Evil really is about the specific nature of this one particular union action.
In other to avoid a further hijack here, I’m going to respond to that in the GD thread that you created about unions in general (link below).
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…I’m sorry, but what? What makes you think that everyone involved in the production would have prioritized “just wanting to get back to work” over industrial action that will decide the future of Hollywood?
And Robert and Michelle King aren’t merely “writers devoted to the series”, and their involvement with the show didn’t end when they finished writing “a long time ago.”
Because that isn’t how any of this works.
Robert and Michelle are the showrunners. Which means they run the show. They run the writers room: but they don’t write every episode themselves. There are 9 credited writers, a total of 37 episodes, and Robert and Michelle are only credited with writing 5 of those episodes. One of the other writers on staff, Rockne S. O’bannon, has written more. We don’t even know if the Kings wrote the episode in question.
And the showrunners don’t just run the writers room. They run the show. They pitched the show. Robert directed the pilot. They are in charge of the production and the direction of the show.
As for this:
That isn’t how it works!
Televison shows are always being “written.” Even after the scripts have been delivered.
Imagine during filming, the lead actor injures their foot and has to do the rest of their scenes sitting down. Do you think the actor just improvises all of their lines to explain why they don’t stand up? Nope. The writer will just add in a few lines of dialogue.
Or imagine the director decides to stage a scene a certain way that, unbeknown to them, will impact a plot point due to be delivered several episodes later. The writer steps in again here. Because movies and television are two very different mediums. In movies, the director runs the show. They take the script and make it their own. That doesn’t work in television. Because at any one time you’ve got one director in pre-production on their episode, another director who is filming, while a third director is working on their episode in post. Its the showrunners, and in turn the writers, who hold everything together. They know how it starts, they know how it ends. Because they built this world. The created these characters. Everybody else is relatively compartmentalized and won’t see the big picture.
This is what the strikes are about. This is what the studios are arguing should no longer be the system. They think the showrunner doesn’t have to come from the writers room. They think a producer, a bean-counter with no experience in showbusiness, can do the same thing.
The studios don’t understand what the writers actually do. They see it the same way as you do. “They completed the scripts a long time ago…what are they even complaining about?”
That “husband-and-wife team devoted to the series”, who pitched it, lead the team that built this world, created these characters, oversee every aspect of the production, they support this strike.
But it wasn’t just this “one particular union action”. Because how closely are you actually following the strikes? This was the strategy in the early days of the strike. All over my Twitter feed writers were co-ordinating, letting people know what shows were filming and where so they could organize pickets. And that continued right up until SAG joined the party, which effectively shut everything else down. This was the strategy endorsed by WGA leadership and implemented by WGA members. It was a pretty bog-standard union action.
Which is why your line of “I support the strike, but I don’t support this bog-standard thing that unions always do” rings so hollow. What were you expecting them to do? How do you think strikes work?
I’m sorry, I just had to take time to laugh at the thought of a bunch of Hollywood writers, especially “three activist jerks” engaging in outright violence to shut down a production.
It’s been said that laughter is good medicine, so have at it. I have another knee-slapper for ya that may positively make you roar with mirth!
When I was a very small child, my Dad crossed the picket line of a union that is now known as the AFL-CIO. I never knew all the details, but knowing my Dad, providing for his family in the best way he could was always his foremost priority.
One evening when my Mom and I were sitting in our living room, a brick came through the front window. It could have killed me. It could have killed my Mom. But at least I hope the account of this incident gives you lots of laughs.
So you’re saying that my account of a traumatic experience from my childhood is a lie? One that was so personal that I was reluctant to post it in the first place? Let me describe it for you: brick → window. It’s pretty simple.
I’m sorry that happened to you. But for me to see the relevance, I would need evidence that the WGA has engaged in such violent tactics. You can’t use what completely different people did in the past to judge people in the present.
All evidence points to the idea that the WGA people just protested, and those working on the show decided to ally with them. It’s a very, very common thing to happen in strikes. Actors were already joining in the WGA strike before their union struck.
As pointed out, the job of a writer does not end when a script is written. They make sure their script is followed. They keep everything together. They rewrite on the fly.
That’s actually a key part of the strike: writers were being confined to writers rooms and not allowed to do their full job. Part of the issue with AI is that, even if one can write a script, it can’t do all the other aspects of the job.
At the end of the day, what happened was that people did not finish working on a show due to a strike. There is no evidence that anyone was coerced in any way. You haven’t even cited anyone on the show complaining about it. You’re not even mad on behalf of anyone who was harmed.
My original take was that you were just frustrated about losing your shows, and taking it out on this one that did things differently. With the others, you didn’t have an argument they did wrong, but, in this case, you did. These three writers were just an easy target.
But now I suspect that some of your ire about how your dad was treated is being pushed onto these writers, too. Hence my push to see them as different people, not connected to what happened then.
Certainly not; I said what I meant to say, and don’t need to dignify misrepresentations, except to clarify that such misleading paraphrases only solidify my skepticism of the accuracy of your accounts of events.
I don’t want to make it personal, but you’re bringing in a personal account to the thread; my reason for disregarding this anecdote is based on what’s happened when I’ve investigated the cited and less personal claims you’ve made.
Let’s dial it back, @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness and @wolfpup. Mind the forum you’re in and don’t make this discussion personal. @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, you’re practically calling @wolfpup a liar. You know better than to even imply it anywhere but the Pit. Stop now.
…this is absolutely 100% unacceptable. I’m sorry this happened to you and your family. I don’t think that there is anyone here on these boards that would support this type of action, and I’m pretty sure there is nobody on the SAG or WGA picket lines that would support this type of action either.
There is a huge gulf between three people standing with signs outside a production, and someone throwing a brick through your front window. I will laugh heartedly at the idea that Warren Leight, writer producer on noted copaganda shows like Law and Order SVU and Chicago PD is an “activist jerk.” But nobody is laughing at the story you just told here.
That was my not my intention, but I can see how it reads that way. In any case, you are right that it is getting too personal. My apologies, and I will dial it way back.
Currently in the news: A number of talk shows have returned to the air (and some had never left) and are simply functioning without writers. The Drew Barrymore show got the most attention and controversy because they made a public announcement about it, arguing that it provided employment for hundreds of crew members not affiliated with the WGA or SAG-AFTRA:
The reaction to the controversy was swift. Barrymore was supposed to host the National Book Awards but her invitation was immediately rescinded by the National Book Foundation: