Diary of a bunch of Mad Black Writers

According to Nikki Finke, it looks like Tyler Perry finally got the message and is going to sign onto the WGA contract.

"Peace in our time", ladies and gentlemen.

And I'll refrain from referencing Chris Rock's old joke about people who want credit for things they're supposed to do. For now.

Crabs in a Barrel

So, first, let's get to the facts:

A few days ago, Tyler Perry fired a bunch of black writers from his cable sitcom "House of Payne". In response, the Writers Guild of America just filed suit against Perry with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging unfair labor practices. Perry says the writers were fired because of the quality of their work. The writers say they were fired because they were pushing to have the show covered under a WGA contract.

When I first heard this, I did a double-take. The highest rated sit-com on basic cable is a non-union show?

But, as I researched it more, it was even worse than I thought.

"House of Payne" is a DGA signatory. Of course it is: Tyler directs most of the episodes, and he's a member of the Directors' Guild, so it would have to be.

"House of Payne" is also a SAG signatory. Of course it is: if it wasn't, he couldn't have cast actors like Allen Payne, who, like most of his castmates, are members of the Screen Actors Guild.

But, "House of Payne" is NOT a WGA signatory.

I mean, the one group that he COULD screw, he DID screw.

Now, to be totally fair, a number of the fired writers are WGAw members, so, they really had no business working on a non-union show in the first place, unless, of course, part of their agreement when they were hired was that the show would become a guild signatory. The guild has provisions to allow for that. And, if I had to guess, that is probably the essence of the case they're bringing to the NLRB.

Tyler recently signed a deal with TBS to create 100 episodes of "House of Payne" for $200 million, or $2,000,000 per episode. The WGA considers a show a "high budget minimum" if its budget exceeds $100,000 per episode for non-network primetime, in which case, the guild minimum fee for writing one such episode is ~$12,000. It also requires that, if you're on staff, meaning you're under the regular employ of the producer instead of a hired gun who's brought in on a one-off basis to write an episode, your minimum weekly salary for a basic cable show of this length is roughly $3,000.

Plus health benefits, pension, etc.

Pretty good work if you can get it. But even if you assume they make an episode a week (and they clearly work much faster, given how many they've produced in the last two years), and let's assume that the pension & health insurance costs as much as the total salary & writing fees involved for these writers (and it's considerably less), and you round up to the nearest $10,000, you're still only talking about $50,000 per episode, or 2.5% of the total budget per episode.

And it's not like House of Payne is an expensive show. It's a three camera comedy, meaning they have a series of standing sets in front of a studio audience with two stationary cameras and a third on a track, so that the actors get to perform almost like it's theater. No expensive locations. No special effects. Allen Payne is probably the highest paid actor on the show after Tyler Perry himself, and I guarantee you that brother is not making a million dollars an episode.

But let's put all of that aside for a moment.

For a guy who's built his career around promoting a certain kind of Black Christian faith and community responsibility....

I just don't understand.

Just like BET. Actually, worse than BET. At least BET is more up front about the fact that they're making money by getting over on Black people.

I was never particularly a fan of Tyler Perry's work. The minute I'm shown yet another Black man in drag for laughs, I immediately turn off. I think this trend, going all the way back to Flip Wilson, and continued through Will Smith & Martin Lawrence, has always been a double-edged diss against Black people. It perpetuates a de-feminized stereotype of Black women & mothers while simultaneously emasculating some of our more prominent Black male performers. And yet, I always had respect for him as an artist and a businessman who'd found a way to successfully navigate the entertainment industry while still owning his original content. I was really happy to see him succeed in film, especially as his films seem to reach for more authentic representations of Black relationships.

But come ON, man!!!! Pay the fucking writers! It's not like you don't have it.

Jeez.

Striking while the iron is hot

You knew it was bound to happen.

Well, at least, I did. :-)

So, for February Sweeps, the WGA is asking it's members to start producing webisode series en mass, that will all be broadcast online at MySpace TV under the moniker of "Strike TV" - the content will be free and the ad revenue generated will go to support many of the other members of the industry (directors, actors, below-the-line) who've been put out of work because of the strike. But the creators own all of the content and, I believe, are free to put it up on other venues where they can pull their own ad revenue.

Details at www.myspace.com/striketv.

So, if you or someone you know is a member of the WGA, they'd better hop to it.

Hell, if I was a member of the guild, I'd be rolling out my web series (i.e the one I want to start shooting next month) as quickly as possible in the hopes of being one of the first new hits on this brand new "network". Opportunities like this don't come often.

Strike Bullet Points

• For those of you who don't live in Los Angeles, the skyscraper that has its top three floors vaporized at the end of the movie "Die Hard" is, in fact, the corporate headquarters for 20th Century Fox. Can I say it was more than a little surreal to take part in some direct action on the doorstep of Nakatomi Plaza. It's an interesting neighborhood, Century City: the bohemeth talent agency, CAA, and MGM are all on the same street as Fox Plaza, within about two blockf of each other. HBO and Comedy Central are in the skyscrapers around the corner, and I believe Endeavor (another big talent agency) is around the other corner. At the end of the block is the Fox Studio lot.
• So, I parked at a nearby mall and hoofed it the rest of the way - Showrunner sighting 1: Carlton Cuse, co-executive producer for "Lost", had the right idea and brought his bicycle, zipping past the rest of the pedestrian scribes.
• They say that 3,000 guild members have been walking the lines in front of every studio around town, but, today, they asked them all to come to Fox as a show of force.
• Who knew a strike could be so entertaining? Tom Morello & Zach De La Rocha from Rage Against The Machine showed up, pledged their support, and did a little impromtu show, including an acoustic version of "Bulls on Parade". That rocked!
• I think that was Jonathan Gries just over my shoulder. Saw Larry David & Dennis Haysbert in the crowd. SAG is also making their presence felt today, although I overheard one writer say that, because former SAG president Melissa Gilbert negotiated an interim agreement with the studios during the last contract renewal, she pushed the SAG negotiation period ahead by 9 months - effectively cutting our negotiating power in half. Thanks, Melissa. No wonder she didn't get re-elected.
• More treats - I'm about 20 feet from the main stage, and the next speaker is Jesse Jackson! Now, y'all can say what you want about Jesse - the man is still a hero and a legend, if, for nothing else, his work during the civil rights and black power movements. And, just like the Rage guys, he made the point that this is just another chapter in a larger story about workers rights in the face of increasing corporate consolidation.
• I clearly need to put a new camera on my Christmas List :-)
• Showrunner sighting 2: Seth MacFarlane takes the stage and risks litigation by giving us the Stewie voice to proclaim victory is nearly at hand.
• Lots of helicopters overhead. The last time I remember being with this many people out in the open for some overtly political rally, I think, was the Million Man March back in 1995. Although, I had much less fear that SkyCopter 5 was really an Apache assault chopper in disguise today than I did back in front of the Capitol Building with Farrakhan. Less, but not none. But, as Cornel West said, being Black in America requires a baseline level of constant paranoia.
• Which leads me to another point - I think this is the first time I've ever participated in some direct action where the majority of the people were white. As a recovering Howard Dean activist, it was just a bit..... odd. But in a good way.
• Ran into my man Alex Endeshaw (P'96 for you tigers out there) (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1584923/) for the first time in, maybe 13 years in the middle of the strike. Turns out we basically lived around the corner from each other up in Hollywood for 3 years and had no idea. Go figure. Check him out on "My Name Is Earl". Also caught up with Big Shawn (http://www.myspace.com/shawntemccall) in full WGA regalia. As a result, it sounds like CBS Radford is my next strike target.
  
• Showrunner sighting 3 - noon approaches, the permits expire, and there's Battlestar Galactica's head honcho, Ronald D. Moore, chilling on the curb. I resist the urge to genuflect. :-)
• Apparently, if the studios just rolled over and gave not just the WGA, but SAG and the DGA everything they're asking for, with no concessions, the additional amount of money they would have to pay to every single writer, actor, and director in all three guilds combined is still less than the salary of just ONE of their CEOs. A lot less. Like I said, it's greed.
• So, the studios are clearly in the wrong, but, as is often the case, swallowing their pride to even admit that my coming back to the table is a bitter pill. If we're all about getting back to work, someone on the WGA's side should be looking for an olive branch that let's the studios save a bit of face to entice them to come back to the table. Because greed is often coupled with pride.

Strike Lessons

I was 15 years old and starting my 5th year in a private all boy's school when my father went on strike with the Amalgamated Transit Workers against Greyhound Bus Lines, his employers for the previous 20+ years. To this day, I don't know exactly what the issues were that led the bus drivers to walk off the job, but I vividly remember Dad's working conditions. For some time, he'd been on the so-called "extra board", which basically meant he was a driver on call to fill in whenever another driver was unable to complete his route at the given time. He would leave at all sorts of irregular hours, drive potentially hundreds of miles, and then be forced to sleep in a lounge with no bed for a few hours before driving all the way back and hoping he could get a full night's rest before the next call came in.

He'd been exhausted for, seemingly, years. He has back problems and repeat stress injuries in his forearm to this day, some 18 years after he last drove a big blue bus.

I can still see the orange placard with this black letters that he would wear around his chest as he and his fellow drivers walked the picket line. It was the first time I'd ever heard the term "scab". I was a gifted kid in a working class family going to one of the most expensive schools in the country on scholarships and loans floated directly on Mom and Dad. Losing one of the two incomes in the house was not a nice thing. But, Dad knew, if they didn't make a stand there, then the ownership would know they could just roll over the drivers and have even worse conditions.

Sadly, after nearly 18 months of walking the line, the union caved. Scab drivers were easy to find. They received no support from their fellow drivers at Trailways and the other unions, to my knowledge. And, if I remember correctly, Amalgamated Transit's headquarters was actually IN Greyhound's corporate offices. Dad never drove a bus again and found a new career in the local DMV, where he earned a reputation seemingly around the entire city as a model of fairness & decency within an otherwise heartless department.

Point being, collective action cannot survive in a vacuum.

I am not, as of yet, a member of the Writers Guild of America. I hope to be, one day. But I'm also a producer, and one of the reasons why some of my projects haven't shot yet is because it's important to me to make sure I can actually PAY my cast and crew. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and, yes, producers take a measure of financial risk on projects and should be rewarded accordingly. But producers, as the ultimate owners of a title, have the capacity to resell the original creative work of artists in a million different ways. A finished film can literally keep making money for a producer for ever, as long as there is someone, somewhere, who'll broadcast or screen it for a paying audience. And if I'm reselling your story and your words and your ideas (as a writer), and your vision and presentation (as a director) or, even, in the case of an actor, images of YOUR FACE, it's only fair that you reap some of that benefit.

So tomorrow afternoon, I intend to put on my track shoes, head over to Paramount Pictures, pick up a sign, and walk the line for a few hours.

Because the reason that the studios don't want to give the writers an extra FOUR STINKING CENTS on the sale of a $10 DVD, and don't want to give them ANYTHING for the sale of a movie over the internet, which literally costs NOTHING, is the same reason Greyhound didn't want to buy a cot for Dad and all of the other drivers. It's less about who's rich and who isn't (and don't sleep - the studios are banks awash in cash - for every star that gets $20 million to star in a film, there's a producer somewhere who's cutting that 20 million dollar check), and more about what's just simply right.

Fairness. Decency.

See you at Paramount.

Mightier Than Swords
The Writers Guild of America is launching an ad campaign to promote the roles of screenwriters as the well-spring of the great stories of our time. So, here's my contribution to the effort. Free ad space for the guild. Everybody gives directors credit for creating the films, but, if you think about it for a moment, the directors, the cast, the crew, the producers, were all originally inspired by the work of us screenwrights. Every movie starts as a blank page under a waiting pen.

And, just to drive the point home, here are the screenwriters credited for the top movies at the box office last weekend:

written by Robert Rodriguez

screenplay by Nicholas Griffin & Ted Griffin
based on the book by Eric Garcia

story by Eli Roth
written by Eli Roth and Randy Pearlstein

written by Fred Wolf & David Spade

So the next time you go to the cinema, take a moment to check out whp gets the writing credit. Over time, when you start seeing names repeated, you might just find a pattern. Who knows how many of your favorite movies are all written by the same people?