Not only has the writer’s strike put many television show writers out of work and onto the picket line, but it has now reached the crews of the shows as well.  With no show to work on, many crew members of television shows such as makeup artists, hairdressers, cameramen, and wardrobe people are now being laid off indefinitely.  The LA Times has this email from Dale Alexander, a key grip on hit show The Office:

Our show was shut down and we were all laid off this week. I’ve been watching the news since the WGA strike was announced and I have yet to see any coverage dedicated to the effect that this strike will have on the below the line employees.

I respect the WGA’s position. They probably do deserve a larger percentage of profit participation, but a lengthy strike will affect more than just the writers and studios. On my show we had 14 writers. There were also 2 cameramen, 2 camera assistants, 4 hair stylists, 4 makeup artists, 7 wardrobe people, 4 grips, 4 electricians, 2 craft service, 4 props people, 6 construction, 1 medic, 3 art department, 5 set dressers, 3 sound men, 3 stand-ins, 2 set PAs, 4 assistant directors, 1 DGA trainee, 1 unit manager, 6 production office personnel, 3 casting people, 4 writers assistants, 1 script supervisor, 2 editors, 2 editors assistants, 3 post production personnel, 1 facilities manager, 8 drivers, 2 location managers, 3 accountants, 4 caterers and a producer who’s not a writer. All 102 of us are now out of work.

I have been in the motion picture business for 33 years and have survived three major strikes. None of which have been by any of the below the line unions. During the 1988 WGA strike many of my friends lost their homes, cars and even spouses. Many actors are publicly backing the writers, some have even said that they would find a way to help pay bills for the striking writers. When the networks run out of new shows and they air repeats the writers will be paid residuals. The lowest paid writer in television makes roughly twice the salary than the below the line crewmember makes. Everyone should be paid their fair share, but does it have to be at the expense of the other 90% of the crewmembers. Nobody ever recoups from a strike, lost wages are just that, lost.

We all know that the strike will be resolved. Eventually both sides will return to the bargaining table and make a deal. The only uncertainty is how many of our houses, livelihoods, college educations and retirement funds will pay for it.

 

And some studios have escalated actions further:

At least two major television studios, 20th Century Fox and CBS Paramount, have sent breach-of-contract letters to the show runners on their current series who have stopped performing their production duties once they went on strike with other television writers.

The move is an escalation of hardball tactics by the studios. This week, the studios said they expected that the show runners — the writer-producers who oversee some of the biggest hits on television — would continue to work on the shows by performing nonwriting duties.

But after many of the industry’s top show runners said publicly that they did not intend to do any work as long as the strike by members of the Writers Guild of America continued, the studios began notifying the writer-producers that they would no longer be paid as producers if they failed to show up at work. […]

As executive producers on the programs that they often created, show runners have many duties in addition to writing, including casting, overseeing sound mixing and editing footage into 22- or 44-minute television episodes.

But many show runners have said they believed that they could not perform those broader duties without simultaneously continuing as writers, and that therefore they intended to stay away from work altogether. […]

In a meeting Wednesday afternoon, a group of more than 100 show runners who had picketed together outside the headquarters of the Walt Disney Company that morning, agreed that they would be willing to go back to work if the two sides — the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — would return to the bargaining table in good faith, according to a show runner who participated in the meeting. 

I understand the frustration of the writers.  I’m not saying they are wrong to want their fair share of residuals for their work.  But this strike is affecting more than just writers now…what is commonly called “below the line” workers (those who do grunt jobs, like the ones mentioned above) are now being affected.

I think it is great that stars like Jay Leno, David Letterman, Steven Colbert, and cast members of shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Saturday Night Live”, and “Desperate Housewives” are supporting the writers who make them funny, dramatic, and endearing.  Let’s face it, without snappy dialogue or humorous jokes, these shows don’t get off the ground.  A show need its writers to put words in the mouths of their stars, otherwise you’ve just got a smartly dressed celebrity standing on a dark sound stage.

 

Or do you?  Without writers to pen lines for celebrities, there is really no need for a wardrobe person to outfit said star in designer suits (or scrubs or jeans or a bathing suit or whatever the case may be).  There’s no need to a makeup artist to powder down the nose and cover the zits and redden the lips of the celeb, and there’s no reason to fluff and crimp and style their hair.  There’s no need for a well-decorated, realistic-looking set for the star to stand on, or for lighting to create the illusion of day or night and to blend away shadows in the background.  And without all of these people, there is no reason to take a camera or two and film anything, no reason to run lines of cable, no reason to follow anyone with a microphone held just out of camera view, no reason for someone to stand in with a clapboard and announce which scene and take they are shooting, and no reason for interns to watch and learn from it all.  There’s not even any reason for the sandwich truck to come by, since there’s nobody there to buy lunch, or for the janitors to come by and clean the toilets, since there’s been nobody sitting on them.

The point is this…the writer’s strike affects more than just the writers and their residuals.  It has started to trickle down into the rank and file, the grunts who make the stars who mouth what the writers write look and sound good, and who create the shows we see to start with.  Are the stars who have pledged their allegiance to their writers, and who in some cases have offered to help them financially, going to do the same for the below-the-line people?  Some grunts make less than writers, but some make more, especially if you have a brand-new writer and a long-term production person.  Who is going to help them pay their bills?

The crew people are just as integral to the success or failure of a good television series as the writers and producers.  When one part suffers, they all suffer.  You can’t have a show without writers, and you can’t have a good show without good production people, and you can’t have a good show without the people who put their backs into it.  All parts of this business called show are intertwined, and you can’t have one without the other.  If the stars are the mouth speaking the words, the writers are the brain coming up with the words, and the below-the-line people are the body, getting everything to where it needs to go and doing what needs to be done to dress it all up.

But it all comes back to this…the ones making the most money are right at the top.

Yes, the bigshots at the heads of the major networks and studios aren’t feeling this much at all.  Instead of trying again to work this out with the writers, they are laying off and firing people in hopes that this symbiotic relationship between stars, writers, and production workers will break down.  After all, you can’t work with people and not create some sort of relationship with them.  People on shows care about each other, whether you’re a writer or the person in charge of shining shoes.  The head honchos are counting on this, and hoping people will agree to come back to work for the same or less than what they were working for before.  Do we really want to support the major studios who are putting so many out of work to line their own pockets?  Something to think about as you watch your last, dwindling new episodes of your favorite shows.

To have the two factions fighting against one another is just what the studios want…but it isn’t beneficial for anyone except the studio bigwigs.  I hope the writers and crews can come to some sort of truce, and I hope they can work together for the good of everyone.

All in all, a dark day for those who star in, write for, work for, and enjoy shows. 

Makes me glad my favorite television show is The Andy Griffith Show.  But…unfortunately, it’s shown on TV Land, owned by Viacom, which may or may not be somehow affiated with CBS…I’ve never quite understood that.

All the world’s a stage, and all of us in a roundabout way pay some bigwig just so we can watch our favorite shows.