Strike Fallout: Six Months Later Recovery is Mixed

Between September 2007 and February 2008, the Business Journal interviewed screenwriters, business people, below-the-line entertainment industry workers, and academics for coverage of the WGA-AMPTP contract talks and subsequent writers strike. With the walkout ending almost six months ago, some of those sources were contacted to find out what has happened since then and if the are experiencing any lingering effects from the strike. Screenwriter Michael Tabb was a strike captain outside the Alameda Avenue gate of The Walt Disney Co. in Burbank, appearing day after day on the picket line despite an injured foot. The Porter Ranch resident became a familiar presence in media coverage of the strike and later feared that his visibility and outspokenness would keep him from getting writing jobs later. That didn’t happen: Tabb is currently writing a screenplay based on the Russian fantasy novel, “The Knights of the Forty Islands.” Tabb remains outspoken that the walkout was the right choice and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers represented the large entertainment conglomerates and not the smaller producers he works with. “The producers suffered right alongside us. The whole industry did. We literally had no choice,” Tabb said. “When somebody thinks they can take 80 percent of our income by pulling residuals, we lose our healthcare; my children’s healthcare. Those are fighting words.” When the negotiations started, the WGA had many issues it wanted addressed DVD residuals, jurisdiction over animation and reality television writers but put those aside to focus on new media distribution because that was the one place where all writers are tied together, Tabb said. “If we lose the internet and TV merger there goes the livelihood down the tubes for most of the writers in the union,” Tabb said. **** As president and CEO of Panavision, Inc. in Woodland Hills, Bob Beicher watched as one-third of the company’s rental business was lost when episodic television series production stopped during the strike. To ease that loss, cuts were made in discretionary spending and employees at all Panavision facilities took off the last two weeks in December as vacation time. In the U.S. and Canadian facilities, about 10 percent of the workforce had to be cut, Beicher said. Some of the layoffs would have been made regardless but many were due to the strike, he said. “We have brought back a limited number of people but for the most part we have learned to do more with fewer people,” Beicher said. Camera and equipment rentals in April, May and June were consistent with the same months the year before as both television and feature film production began again post-strike. Panavision finds itself in a trough again as production slows due to uncertainty over what will happen in the stalled talks between the studios and the Screen Actors Guild, Beicher said. Twice during the strike Jim Elyea lent the parking lot of his North Hollywood prop house History for Hire for rummage sales by his and other industry supply businesses to make money during the production downtime. While business returned after the February settlement, it is not at the pre-strike level due to the production slow down in the face of the drawn out SAG-studios contract. To make it through the strike, Elyea had to cut costs by not spending money that wasn’t necessary. If a lightbulb burned out, it wasn’t replaced. The part-time workers were let go and overtime was eliminated. “We had an outside cleaning company we had to let go,” Elyea said. “They are still not back.” Post-strike, the part-timers came back but at reduced schedules. Elyea continues to not make improvements as a way to save money. The company can use a new phone system but that won’t be done until after the actors sign a new contract, Elyea said. As a prop house, Elyea can find what production work is out there and send his props out of state, a situation that is different for friends who are studio florists and caterers dependent on local productions. “The business is not there for them,” Elyea said. **** In the weeks after the strike started, Lance Sorenson of 24/7 Studio Equipment decided that if the walkout went more than a month, he would seek out non-entertainment accounts as clients of his rental lifts and cranes. Sorenson never followed through on that decision and remained true to the vision of his Burbank-based company to service only the entertainment industry even during a period when production had slowed to a trickle. “What I am most proud of is, we didn’t have to lay anyone off,” Sorenson said. “From a business perspective we should have but we didn’t and we were able to maintain a quality group of employees.” The spring and early summer months turned out to be good ones as 24/7 brought in record revenues with the busy television and feature film production. In August, feature film production tapered off and television shows supplied most of the business. 24/7 provided equipment to only two feature films “Angels and Demons” and “Transformers 2” at a time of year when typically six to 10 features need equipment, Sorenson said. With a settlement reached in the strike, television scriptwriter Patti Carr was back on the CBS lot in Studio City the same studio where she had been a strike captain. The Valley resident worked on two pilot scripts, but neither were chosen to be a series. Carr and a writing partner, however, are now at work on “The Ex List,” a series airing this fall on CBS. “Every year of the 12 years we’ve been working has been harder than the last in terms of staffing, but this year was obviously especially hard,” Carr wrote in an e-mail. “I’ve heard that development for next season has been very limited as well, so I feel lucky to have a job at all.” While the guild did an amazing job of organizing the members and getting its message out to the public of the issues involved in the negotiations, that the strike took place was a failure of the two sides to negotiate in good faith, particularly when it came to payment for new media distribution, Carr wrote. “But our contract falls far short of protecting all writers with fair payment and reasonable working conditions,” Carr wrote. “And judging by the current situation with SAG, it is not a contract that achieved labor peace in Hollywood.” **** Television filming work was just starting to take off in the Antelope Valley when the writers began their walkout in November. Antelope Valley Film Office liaison Pauline East is hopeful the filming will return once the actors’ guild contract gets worked out. “I think we still have what it takes to keep our product in front of the directors and keep it within the cost structure,” East said. “We have the best crews and best availability to equipment.” When the film office’s fiscal year ended on June 30, the total number of filming days had dropped by more than 100 and the $8 million in revenues was less than what the office typically brings in, East said. Still photography makes up the most filming taking place in the Antelope Valley although episodic television was making inroads. Television will eventually return because production companies based in the Los Angeles area still like to shoot close to home and the Valley offers the closest desert to the city, East said. Corri Levelle, of Sandy Rose Floral Design, has had a tough year. The North Hollywood-based business that provides floral arrangements for the studios saw its workload dry up during the strike and Levelle had to cut her employee ranks. The workers she has been able to bring back are on reduced schedules, she said. Unlike some other business owners servicing productions, Levelle did not see a boost in orders as filming took place in the spring and summer months. “Others are fine but to me there has been a decline,” Levelle said. “Some vendors are lucky to fall into the categories of what the few productions needed.” Diversifying her customers came to mind but the economic slump is not good for the overall floral business as flower purchases are among the first victims when budgets are slashed. Friends who sell flowers at retail are struggling and they already have a client base, Levelle said.