“If you want to start a revolution, tell your workers you’d rather see them lose their homes than offer them fair wages. Then lecture them about how their “unrealistic” demands are “disruptive” to the industry, not to mention disturbing your revels at Versailles, er, Sun Valley.
Honestly, watching the studios turn one strike into two makes you wonder whether any of their executives have ever seen a movie or watched a television show. Scenes of rich overlords sipping Champagne and acting irritated while the crowd howls for bread rarely end well for the Champagne sippers.
This spring, it sometimes seemed like the Hollywood studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers were actively itching for a writers’ strike. Speculations about why, exactly, ran the gamut: Perhaps it would save a little money in the short run and show the Writers Guild of America (perceived as cocky after its recent ability to force agents out of the packaging business) who’s boss.
More obviously, it might secure the least costly compromise on issues like residuals payments and transparency about viewership.
But the 20,000 members of the WGA are not the only people who, having had their lives and livelihoods upended by the streaming model, want fair pay and assurances about the use of artificial intelligence, among other sticking points. The 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists share many of the writers’ concerns. And recent unforced errors by studio executives, named and anonymous, have suddenly transformed a fight the studios were spoiling for into a public relations war they cannot win.
Even as SAG-AFTRA representatives were seeing a majority of their demands rejected despite a nearly unanimous strike vote, a Deadline story quoted unnamed executives detailing a strategy to bleed striking writers until they come crawling back.
Days later, when an actors’ strike seemed imminent, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger took time away from the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho not to offer compromise but to lecture. He told CNBC’s David Faber that the unions’ refusal to help out the studios by taking a lesser deal is “very disturbing to me.”
“There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic,” Iger said. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
If Iger thought his attempt to exec-splain the situation would make actors think twice about walking out, he was very much mistaken. Instead, he handed SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher the perfect opportunity for the kind of speech usually shouted atop the barricades.
“We are the victims here,” she said Thursday, marking the start of the actors’ strike. “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly: How far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right, when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”
Cue the cascading strings of “Les Mis,” bolstered by images of the most famous people on the planet walking out in solidarity: the cast of “Oppenheimer” leaving the film’s London premiere; the writers and cast of “The X-Files” reuniting on the picket line.
A few days later, Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group and a former Hollywood studio chief, suggested that studio executives and top-earning actors take a 25% pay cut to bring a quick end to the strikes and help prevent “the collapse of the entire industry.”
When Diller is telling executives to take a pay cut to avoid destroying their industry, it is no longer a strike, or even two strikes. It is a last-ditch attempt to prevent le déluge.
Yes, during the 2007-08 writers’ strike, picketers yelled noncomplimentary things at executives as they entered their respective lots. (“What you earnin’, Chernin?” was popular at Fox, where Peter Chernin was chairman and chief executive.) But that was before social media made everything more immediate, incendiary and personal. (Even if they have never seen a movie or TV show, one would think that people heading up media companies would understand how media actually work.)
Even at the most heated moments of the last writers’ strike, executives like Chernin and Iger were seen as people who could be reasoned with — in part because most of the executives were running studios, not conglomerations, but mostly because the pay gap between executives and workers, in Hollywood and across the country, had not yet widened to the reprehensible chasm it has since.
Now, the massive eight- and nine-figure salaries of studio heads alongside photos of pitiably small residual checks are paraded across legacy and social media like historical illustrations of monarchs growing fat as their people starve. Proof that, no matter how loudly the studios claim otherwise, there is plenty of money to go around.
Topping that list is Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Davd Zaslav. Having re-named HBO Max just Max and made cuts to the beloved Turner Classic Movies, among other unpopular moves, Zaslav has become a symbol of the cold-hearted, highly compensated executive that the writers and actors are railing against.
The ferocious criticism of individual executives’ salaries has placed Hollywood’s labor conflict at the center of the conversation about growing wealth disparities in the U.S., which stokes, if not causes, much of this country’s political divisions. It also strengthens the solidarity among the WGA and SAG-AFTRA and with other groups, from hotel workers to UPS employees, in the midst of disputes during what’s been called a “hot labor summer.”
Unfortunately, the heightened antagonism between studio executives and union members also appears to leave little room for the kind of one-on-one negotiation that helped end the 2007-08 writers’ strike. Iger’s provocative statement, and the backlash it provoked, would seem to eliminate him as a potential elder statesman who could work with both sides to help broker a deal.
Absent Diller and his “cut your damn salaries” plan, there are few Hollywood figures with the kind of experience, reputation and relationships to fill the vacuum.
At this point, the only real solution has been offered by actor Mark Ruffalo, who recently suggested that workers seize the means of production by getting back into the indie business, which is difficult to imagine and not much help for those working in television.
It’s the AMPTP that needs to heed Iger’s admonishment. At a time when the entertainment industry is going through so much disruption, two strikes is the last thing anyone needs, especially when the solution is so simple. If the studios don’t want a full-blown revolution on their hands, they’d be smart to give members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts they can live with.”
Their flagship store and New York has unionized along with 3-4 other stores! This is happening! People are tired of being seen as dollar signs and being made to work just to get to work more, to survive instead of thrive. Keep it UP.
did you know that in this scene Phil Dunster actually in real life made the goal from the halfway line!!! and all the guys jumping on him celebrating was their genuine reaction 🥺 (x)
also according to michael collins when the three of them were discussing what neil armstrong should say when he first stepped on the moon, collins suggested armstrong say “Oh, my God, what is that thing?” and then scream and cut out his mic.
Everyone forgets Michael Collins and it’s fucking tragic.
“Huh? What’s that?” Stiles mumbles the query without looking away from Derek’s laptop screen. The laptop Derek kind of bought for Stiles for when Stiles is at the loft.
Whatever.
There’s a ballpoint pen shoved in the kid’s mouth, God, that mouth, and another slid behind an ear to click to death in the In Between Typing Times.
The others had dispersed a couple of minutes ago. Apart from Derek and Stiles, only Lydia and Deacon now remained and they’re deep in conversation about the preliminary theory of who or what is killing the humans of Beacon Hills this week, and they’re at the opposite side of the vast top-floor space, making coffee. Scott and Malia left to the rally the other ʼwolves for a pack meeting proper about the situation, before it gets dark. Granted, Peter is probably still lurking somewhere, what with it being one of his favourite pastimes, and can obviously hear any and all conversations that are or could be going on—but Derek has sadly never been able to hide much from his uncle, anyway.
Derek tries not to stare at Stiles, and fails.
Stiles looks like he has forgotten Derek said anything at all, or is even in the room still. Derek is just standing there awkwardly in his own fucking home, looming over Stiles like a creeper as Stiles taps away furiously at the keyboard and violently zig-zags the mouse like an actual lunatic.
Derek almost laughs.
The Boy Who Runs With Wolves.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Derek is caught off guard.“Why what?” Always and only by Stiles.
Stiles doesn’t skip a beat, unlike Derek’s heart. “Why wouldn’t I ask?” he adds.
Oh, right.
“I, uh, I don't—” Derek swallows any confidence he’d mustered and trails off, looking away even though those big brown eyes are still on stalks and gazing intently at only whichever web page is currently the most interesting.
Dusk is starting to close in and around them and the light from the multi-pane window has dimmed somewhat. The glow of the computer screen now fills Stiles’s eyes with arrythmic shapes and sparks as he flicks like lightning from one tab to another. As mesmerising as it is, the sight becomes a little too much for Derek, and he has to force himself to look away.
It doesn’t last.
Stiles’s long, big-knuckled fingers then still and Derek watches the kid more as Stiles takes the pen from those devastating lips, and sneaker feet spin the swivel chair around slowly to face Derek where he stands, arms crossed reactively over his chest. His heart.
“I wanted to know if you were okay, man. Like. I was concerned, y`know?” he says, like that’s nothing at all. Tilts his head to catch Derek’s eye—which works, of course. It always does, no matter the moment.
Derek feels guilty just looking. And not only because he wants to touch, but because he wants to let Stiles care.
“I care, dude,” Stiles says on cue, and he waits for Derek to look at him and say don’t call me dude, andmaybe hopes to not have his head bitten off or his throat ripped out.
Derek does look again, but not for long. Can’t afford himself too much. Just brief glances, because it’s safer that way. Self-preservation and all that.
“You do know that, right?” Stiles tries again. “That I care.”
Derek wants to ask Stiles if they can talk. If Derek can tell Stiles things, tell him all of it. Derek wants to ask Stiles if he will stay and if he’ll let Derek spill everything, like Derek never does anymore, and if he’ll hold Derek’s hand when Detek cries about it, like Derek won’t let himself these days. Derek wants to ask Stiles if Derek can touch him and hold him and if Stiles would hold him back and if Stiles could ever be his.
“Don’t call me dude,” he answers, because he can’t not. And then he steals himself, head staticky and heart thumping, and dares himself to say, after what is probably too long, “And yeah. Maybe.”
Then they look at each other. They just, look. Look and look. And they keep on looking at each other for a very, very long time, too long for two people supposedly not much more than allies or acquaintances. Comrades, at tenuous best.
Then they look for longer. Look for more. Until it seems like they’re the only two people in the room, in the building, in the world. Something is happening, and Derek is pretty sure it’s not just to him. He is equally stunned and completely fucking terrified about it.
Eventually, Stiles says, “Derek, we’re friends.” And then he’s licking his lips and looking Derek up and down, shameless, and adds with a shrug of one shoulder, “Till we’re not.” The latter is spoken like a secret, but without the slightest hint of malice or threat. That’s not how he means it.
It sounds more like a promise, if Derek is remembering correctly what genuine affirmations sound like.
The sparks from Stiles’s eyes then flash blue in each of Derek’s and all of Derek’s neurons and mutated cells flare into overdrive as his fingertips tingle and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He has to fight not to whine like a pup and has truly never been more happy of the fact Stiles is unable to scent chemo-signals, because he’d be fucked.
Derek has a reply for Stiles but it’s caught in his throat, sentences forming then solidifying as fast as a quick-drying glue. He’s just. Standing there. Statuesque. Alternating between trying to swallow his words and attempting to speak them, like a dipshit, and just looking and looking and looking at Stiles.
It’s entirely mortifying, but it is actually the sound of Peter’s low, mocking chuckle from some tucked away shadowy place in the loft that forces Derek unstuck, and it takes all Derek has to not both roll his eyes to the back of his skull and growl, I’m going to kill you again now, Uncle.
Instead, he unclenches his fists and tries for a smile, or at least a hint of one—he doesn’t want to freak the kid out—and manages to repeat Stiles’s words back at him.
“Till we’re not,” no more than a whisper.
Stiles is looking and looking and looking at Derek, before he’s asking, “Can I stay for the evening? You can talk to me while I research. I always work better with noise. It’ll be soothing,” like he’s ordering pizza instead of answering all of Derek’s prayers, his usually erratic eye-contact as unwavering as his usually erratic heartbeat that is now weirdly steady as a metronome.
Derek fights the urge to bite into his lip with his fangs. He wants to draw blood, and to taste it.
He embarrassingly feels his eye twitch and his breath hitch as he sputters, “What would you want me to talk about?”
Stiles slowly swivels back towards the glow of the laptop, milky skin and dark moles once more luminous in its white light, at the very same time the evening’s first moonshine peeks through clouds and seeps in through the loft’s huge window. He annoyingly clicks away at the Clicking Pen while shoving the other back between his beautiful, beautiful lips, now mumbling his words around it, speaking them as if they’re the most obvious thing in the universe.
I see Hollywood is now very into the idea of buying something once and then owning it forever and being able to make infinite copies. Which. Isn’t quite the message they imparted upon me in my childhood. In the spirit of their own long-held stance:
love how s3 Jamie is like on a mission to fix Colin’s self-esteem. “smart choice for a smart boy” the hugs. being one of the first members of the team to reassure Colin they love him after he came out. grabbing him to tell him what a great job he did at multiple points in the season. long way from “jaundiced worm”
You know what dynamic doesn’t get talked about enough? admittedly because there is almost no screen time of it?
Jamie and Coach Beard, like Beard was the one who actually went to throw Tartt Sr out when everyone else stood about doing nothing for a while and I don’t think that’s something that Jamie is going to forget.
Jamie’s casual interactions with Beard throughout the whole series are epic because they’re like a marker of Jamie’s developmental learning because Beard pointed out once how Jamie was using the word philistines wrong.
Additionally, when Beard talks about how he used to be and his family not wanting him after he got out of prison, I think there’s like this kindred similarity in finding new family when you’re at your lowest between these two characters.
All this to say, that I am definitely going to write about their potential dynamic more.
like wait there’s more
During the total football presentation, Beard includes a picture of Jamie for no particular reason, just that he wanted to and calls him “a very talented young player” then “a beautiful dum dum”
Or! When Roy is Ok with Jamie playing hurt, Beard points out that Roy can’t walk up the stairs anymore.
Ted might be the father figure, but Beard is the uncle figure who supports you when you think you’re not expecting it.
Derek’s one of my favorite characters partially because in any other story, he would be the villain. His life would be the back story to a man intent on destroying the world. Yet, he doesn’t. Every choice he makes is because he still wants to help people, to save people. Yeah, they aren’t always the best decisions, but he’s like 23. He doesn’t know everything, and he’s trying to get past his mistakes, to mourn the loss of his family. But he can’t because the world keeps cutting him off at the knees once he gets close to finding his feet.
And still he tries. To save his pack, his sister, the stupid teenagers who got dragged into a supernatural mess they were never meant to be a part of. He tries to stop the world from crashing down around their shoulders, despite knowing it means he has to hold up just a little bit more than before.
And I was put in the seat instantly, of course. I said, “your honor, I can’t be a juror on a two week trial, I have opera rehearsal.” And she said, “opera huh, well, sing something for us.”
And I did. In a federal court of law, in front of the judge, 75 jurors, the lawyers and the fucking DEFENDANT, I sang o mio babbino caro.
YO I DIDNT EMBARRASS MYSELF IN FEDERAL COURT SO YALL CAN DOUBT ME.
I know a lot of opera singers, and singing a full-on aria in a court room with only a hint of provocation is EXACTLY what they would do.
I know a lot of judges, and demanding an impromptu opera solo on a whim is also something they would do.
(And also one of the main reasons you can be excused from jury duty is economic hardship–basically, it would cause you unreasonable financial damage. If you’re a professional singer, a two week gap in your rehearsal schedule could do that for sure.)
As a muso, I absolutely believe this. I’ve got my accordion out of my carry-on and played a tune when airport security couldn’t recognise its weird mass of levers. Singers and musicians are just Like That.
Accurate.
My friend got stopped at the Canadian border coming back into the US. Border patrol took one look at his tattoed, ear-gagued, mutton chop wearing, hipster self, and said “I don’t believe you’re an opera singer. Sing something for me.”
His wife immediately put down her knitting and plugged her ears, because Matt’s a contrabasso, and he does NOT sing quietly.
Every other booth along the border stop had a head poking out of it within twenty seconds. And they let them pass without further contest.
The unwillingness of some people to believe that literally anything remotely interesting happens in other people’s lives is truly astounding.
Can we all please just take a moment to appreciate that OP’s url is literally @melodramaticsoprano and yet she still was doubted?
