The AMPTP Sounds Scared

Maybe They Should Be?

The next twelve hours will be quite a ride in Los Angeles. By midnight Thursday morning the Screen Actors Guild will have a deal they can vote on or they will be joining the Writers Guild On the picket lines. I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess which way it will go, but if the actors get a good deal, we’d congratulate them and use that as the basis to go get our own fair deal.

For those of you that don’t know, the AMPTP is the producers’ collective bargaining unit, headquartered in a partially abandoned mall in Sherman Oaks. It’s comprised of companies big and small, but one of the major problems at the moment is that Wall Street came calling for Hollywood.

Once upon a time there was an element of gambling in show businesses for all involved. You better make good product and cover your more exotic bets with safer ones incase audiences stayed away. Those days are all gone of course, at the behest of CEOs chasing quarterly corporate results.

That’s all background for what I had to write about this morning. The producers filled the air with propaganda the last couple of days, and here’s one of the most sociopathic bit:

First, I think it’s a demented unforced error. The strike(s) could go into 2024 at this point and the internal support within membership will remain redlined in the high 90s.

Second, for any AMPTP folks that might find their way here — welcome. I don’t think “October” is the threat you think it is considering it usually takes over a year to paper cash a god damn check.

We were born in the darkness of waiting.

October?

October…of which fucking year?

Third, and I take no delight in this, it’s always sad when someone loses a job — but who do these “insiders” think they’ll be working for if the CEOs decide the strike(s) do Buck Rogers time? Hint: It won’t be the studios.

A piece of prison slang from the previous century that killed me was when was one said to be “doing Buck Rogers time” you’d be watching the years tick by. Get comfy.

Not only are these “insiders” next to the gallows, but I have worse news for them about A.I. The studios should fear it more than the artists, but that’s a wholly different subject for another time. And something I’d not give away for free here.

Back to their panicky propaganda.

The streets are understandably angry about it, but I’m not angry — I was surprised. Threatening to bankrupt the workforce without which they are nothing — harming and de-housing the souls that are the spark plugs for our entire industry…is not a showing of strength.

It’s weakness.

The AMPTP is afraid.

Afraid of a double strike. Afraid of the optics of Meryl Streep and Jon Hamm with picket signs and they’re very afraid of actors walking off sets of foreign productions, another hit they can scarcely afford.

But what they’re most afraid of is of course…each other. What does a streamer care for a small film studio? Can a network last as long as streamer? When do the individual CEOs start calculating how much they’re hurting themselves to help the competition?

First the AMPTP whispered, then they yelled about breaking the WGA, but after the last decade in America, we can spot sociopathic narcissists from a mile away. We know their game.

They’re projecting their fears.

They’re afraid this is their end if they lose. It’s exactly how the agency campaign played out, and you know they were watching.

I’m simply proposing a necessary evil…and we should get on with it. Let’s not make them wait until October.

In solidarity,

Gerry Duggan

PS - More comics in this space very soon.