tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post8000920747790853116..comments2023-10-17T02:44:03.005-07:00Comments on Animation writers: Micah's PostStevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17349670871562090251noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-50240123382697500812007-12-21T15:53:00.000-08:002007-12-21T15:53:00.000-08:00Mind you, some of the dogpiles I've had coming.Mind you, some of the dogpiles I've had coming.Matt Waynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16072155061020369468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-15290845531710727422007-12-21T14:55:00.000-08:002007-12-21T14:55:00.000-08:00I get the glory of the paid TAG position. You'll ...I get the glory of the paid TAG position. You'll notice my many posts here. Not.Steve Huletthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05537689111433326847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-22744722131344795302007-12-21T13:15:00.000-08:002007-12-21T13:15:00.000-08:00My mistake. I thought being President was a paid p...My mistake. I thought being President was a paid position.Matt Waynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16072155061020369468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-70770576075289362262007-12-21T12:16:00.000-08:002007-12-21T12:16:00.000-08:00No, Matt, TAG doesn't pay me a cent. I perform th...No, Matt, TAG doesn't pay me a cent. I perform this selfless service absolutely for free. Consider it my gift to you. Happy holidays!Kevin Kochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14678528568112279975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-23574887316810824532007-12-21T10:16:00.000-08:002007-12-21T10:16:00.000-08:00I think I've given up on debating union matters he...I think I've given up on debating union matters here.<BR/><BR/>My union apparently pays Kevin to put up 2000-word blog posts during business hours. To me, that's a good day's output, and I can't afford to argue this stuff for free.<BR/><BR/>I mean, Why bother jumping in when you're just gonna end up under a dogpile of the opposing view?Matt Waynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16072155061020369468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-13433817839738228532007-12-20T20:25:00.000-08:002007-12-20T20:25:00.000-08:00Dear anonymous; It doesn't work that way. When ...Dear anonymous;<BR/><BR/> It doesn't work that way. When I work in animation, I am not given a choice between unions... I have to join the union that the studio has signed with.<BR/><BR/> If it was totally my call, I chose to be repped by IATSE rules and then I complained? You're right. I'm a dick.<BR/><BR/> But if I'm hoping for changes within a union that I must belong to, that's different. That's dissent.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17349670871562090251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-48459291970628536812007-12-20T19:51:00.000-08:002007-12-20T19:51:00.000-08:00A debate that added up to a big zero. Here's a be...A debate that added up to a big zero. Here's a better debate. Add up all your checks through IA shops in the last five years, then add up all your checks through WGA shops. Guess what? The bigger number wins! See how simple that is? The only debate here is your own. BTW, if the bigger number is WGA, remove that link to the IA and get on with it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-12569113009461609782007-12-20T13:56:00.000-08:002007-12-20T13:56:00.000-08:00Kevin; It wasn't a waste. If you read between t...Kevin;<BR/><BR/> It wasn't a waste. If you read between the trolling, there was some valuable info there.<BR/><BR/> Agree or disagree, at least a debate.<BR/><BR/> - SteveStevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17349670871562090251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-6736728589319506772007-12-20T13:43:00.000-08:002007-12-20T13:43:00.000-08:00I bow to the combined power of the anonymous inter...I bow to the combined power of the anonymous internet troll army. I suspected I'd be completely wasting hours and hours of my time, and I have. Stupid me. <BR/><BR/>Peace out, and happy holidays.Kevin Kochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14678528568112279975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-59870334557645556132007-12-20T12:22:00.000-08:002007-12-20T12:22:00.000-08:00wow. that's what you think this discussion has bee...wow. that's what you think this discussion has been about? It's been more about who said what to who when and on what date and who's lying about this or that.<BR/><BR/>I gotta agree with the earlier post that the SAG awards, while maybe not pertinent to this particular discussion, does show exactly how self centered both groups are. If no wriers should work during the strike than the SAG awards should be included not waivered because thy give some camera time to the WGA.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-83241642590817149232007-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:002007-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:00I think that's a fairly trivial part of all this -...I think that's a fairly trivial part of all this -- the SAG Awards are, well, for SAG. They get virtually no attention outside of Hollywood. SAG has been a staunch supporter of the WGA, so of course they're going to get a waiver.<BR/><BR/>Much more interesting is the discussion of what any labor organization can do in this day and age to (1) organize individual studios -- 'cause we all know there are plenty of non-union places, and (2) get significant improvements in the contracts they have.<BR/><BR/>That's what this discussion should be about, with the current WGA strike, the failed effort at ANTM, the organizing of Nick, etc., all as illustrations of broader issues. I think that's why Steve M. started this thread, and I think it'd be a useful discussion.Kevin Kochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14678528568112279975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-23591857692947004142007-12-20T07:43:00.000-08:002007-12-20T07:43:00.000-08:00Now that this horse been beaten to death, how abou...Now that this horse been beaten to death, how about talking about what a bunch of hypocrites SAG and the WGA is. No special deals or crossing the picket lines for the Oscars or Golden Globes, but for the SAG Awards? Sure thing. Not that anyone except them give a shit about the SAG awards, of course.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-18941251559166833872007-12-19T15:45:00.000-08:002007-12-19T15:45:00.000-08:00no but maybe try making your points without endles...no but maybe try making your points without endless stories from your life. personal experiences dont prove anything because we have no idea if your lying or not and in with the case of micah he most assuradly is.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-40898190005905519312007-12-19T13:11:00.000-08:002007-12-19T13:11:00.000-08:00"jesus you people are verbose. are any of you able..."jesus you people are verbose. are any of you able to support your arguments without rattling on and on?"<BR/><BR/>So it's more intelligent to make broad, idiot statements with no facts to back them up? What a Frank Burns this tool is.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-72874621811637340752007-12-19T12:28:00.000-08:002007-12-19T12:28:00.000-08:00jesus you people are verbose. are any of you able ...jesus you people are verbose. are any of you able to support your arguments without rattling on and on?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-64033659430665843632007-12-19T12:26:00.000-08:002007-12-19T12:26:00.000-08:00Oops, an anti-union troll slipped in while I was w...Oops, an anti-union troll slipped in while I was writing the last post.<BR/><BR/>Hey, my kind and thoughtful troll, did you see how useless 839 was at Nick a few weeks ago. You know, right around the time Viacom was announcing huge profits, when they also, in their abundant holiday cheer, shafted their non-union staff by slashing their benefits? <BR/><BR/>Let's see, the Nick animation staff has their excellent benefits intact. Thanks to a union contract. But over at Nick Animation's CG Division (they do "Tak" and the new "Penguins" show and some other stuff), which is non-union, and which is so successful they're significantly increasing their output . . . their benefits got slashed, too.<BR/><BR/>So maybe unions can and do protect employees from those cigar-smoking fat cats sitting on their piles of money. Maybe this whole union thing isn't so silly and obsolete, huh?Kevin Kochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14678528568112279975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-4799800529528493672007-12-19T12:14:00.000-08:002007-12-19T12:14:00.000-08:00In the interest of getting this discussion back to...In the interest of getting this discussion back to where I think Steve wanted it to go, I'm reprinting a piece of that LA Times editorial about America's Next Top Model that sounds pretty similar to some of what happened at Nick. First, recall that Micah has used his Nick "story" to illustrate that the current WGA leadership is far different from that six years ago (the last line of his original post: <I><B>Or perhaps you prefer presidents like the President of the Guild back in 2001 who just threw up her hands when we were fired and blacklisted out of our careers and said, and I quote, "oh well, it was a good try</I></B>.") <BR/><BR/>And now, a few key sections of the LA Times opinion from an ANTM story editor:<BR/><BR/><I>There was no talk of losing our jobs. We believed the guild's ambiguous promise, "you'll come out of this better than you went in."<BR/><BR/>We hoisted our WGA strike signs and never entered those offices again. In the weeks to come, our supporters would dwindle, then disappear.<BR/><BR/>The last week of September, we all received letters notifying us that our jobs had been eliminated, the entire story department abolished. The guild had vanished from our cause,</I><BR/><BR/>It doesn't sound like the WGA leadership changed that much from 2001 and 2007 -- people risked their jobs on a WGA organizing effort, people lost their jobs, the WGA moved on. Discuss.<BR/><BR/>Now, some smart person will come along and shift the thread to what I <I>didn't</I> reprint, namely the rest of that final sentence I excerpted from the LA Times piece:<BR/><BR/><I>The guild had vanished from our cause, <B>and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents the video editors, swooped in to unionize the show, freezing the WGA out of "Top Model" for good.</B></I><BR/><BR/>Of course, that charge is very much like the one Micah makes. "Yeah," the story goes, "the WGA screwed the pooch, but it's 839 that swept in and froze the WGA out." Except it's false in both cases. It seems to me that this is another consistency between the WGA in 2001 and in 2007 -- when you fail, blame it on the IA.<BR/><BR/>We've documented chapter and verse how it's false in the Nick case, how the "sweeping in" came a year later, how the WGA had already walked away, how there was never any back rooms involved. But what about in the ANTM case? That accusation about the IA was made over on The Artful Writer blog (by Patrick Meighan again), and one of the IA folks who was actually involved spoke up (the stuff in boldface are Patrick's statements that Dan Silvertree of IA Local 44 is responding to):<BR/><BR/>"<I><B>…Tom Short should be reminded that the WGA was the first union … to attempt to organize reality writers at ANTM. And in both cases, the IA swept in, after the fact, and undercut the WGA’s organizing efforts by agreeing to a backroom deal with the studios to cover those very same jobs.</B><BR/><BR/>That’s a bit of a rewrite- IATSE did not ‘organize ANTM writers’ following the WGA’s strike, they organized the production crew. The editors on ANTM were already under contract to IATSE. In fact, no one organized ANTM “writers” or the story departments on any reality show. I wasn’t there for the nickelodeon deal, but I was for Top Model. (bear in mind that there are ‘reality’ shows that are under contract to the WGA’s MBA, such as Dancing with the Stars, with a fully covered WGA writer. Why the WGA didn’t force the jurisdictional issue with ABC over the others on that show that were creating ‘literary materials’ is unknown.)<BR/><BR/><B>I’d just like to point out that there’s nothing unprecendented or “beyond the pale” about a union using its organizing efforts as bargaining chips. For example, I happen to know that it’s a valuable and oft-used tool for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE). They spend years getting cards signed by workers in non-union Hiltons (while the Hilton chain, of course, fights the union off in as many hotels as it can for as long as it can), and then when the next negotiation cycle comes around, HERE uses those cards as chips. (i.e., “Let us cover the Dallas Hilton and the Miami Hilton, and we’ll drop our demands for more overtime.” Or, alternately, “Give us more overtime, and we’ll stop trying to cover the Dallas Hilton and the Miami Hilton.”) it’s a perfectly legitimate bargaining tool. And it’s effective, too.</B><BR/><BR/>Only if you have the leverage to push the employer. A problem with the WGA’s reality organizing campaign, the WGA’s strike at ANTM and perhaps the current strike, is the WGA doesn’t have the leverage it needs to quickly force the AMPTP’s hand. That’s why I thought that for the last few years, as well as trying to organize Reality TV, it would have behooved the WGA to form a real alliance w/ the IATSE and DGA, much the way they been trying to with SAG, and i guess SEIU…(?)<BR/><BR/><B>In any event, we all know we’re not on strike over reality jurisdiction. Does anyone here seriously believe that if the studios gave us what we wanted on new media residuals, we’d tell ‘em to go f themselves and just stay out on strike indefinitely over reality jurisdiction? Seriously?! </B><BR/><BR/>Patrick, it would seem that is exactly what just happened.<BR/><BR/>I know many are loathe to compare an labor action to a war, but strategically there are many parallels. Jeff Hermanson, the Organizing Director at the WGA has made that comparison many times, as he refers to his dog eared copy of “The Art of War.”<BR/><BR/>Rumesfeld said (paraphrasing) “you don’t go to war with the army you wish you had, you go to war with the army you have” - well, if you build up the army you ‘wish you had’ you will get far more predictable results. The WGA did not have the army it wished it had at ANTM and payed the price.<BR/><BR/>I believe that the WGA’s demands (all of them, including jurisdiction) are beyond reasonable, as I believe in the WGA’s membership’s right to strike- I think, however, that taking less then optimal leverage to the table is not responsible- to the members or to the community. Regardless of right or wrong, the AMTPT isn’t about to give you, or us, anything for free.<BR/><BR/>Dan Silvertree IATSE #44 Member </I>"<BR/><BR/>I think Dan's last couple of paragraphs are pretty wise, and relate to issues that I find too few writers are willing to acknowledge.Kevin Kochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14678528568112279975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-53304255939407175752007-12-19T11:19:00.000-08:002007-12-19T11:19:00.000-08:00thank god we have communist frauds like micah and ...thank god we have communist frauds like micah and socialist beaurocrats like the union leaders to save us poor helpless idiots from the big mean corporate giants who sit on big piles of money smoking cigars laughing at our struggles. <BR/>anyone with any brains sees how useless the union is and anyone with any integrity shuns micah for his deceptions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-51679413825071067042007-12-18T22:12:00.000-08:002007-12-18T22:12:00.000-08:00BTW, Steve, a suggestion for a future entry that's...BTW, Steve, a suggestion for a future entry that's sans-strike: your favorite examples of animation writing (TV/films/shorts), and why they're good. I'd be intrigued to see what you highlight.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-34706590039599093872007-12-18T21:55:00.000-08:002007-12-18T21:55:00.000-08:00And it took this meandering thread to figure THAT ...And it took this meandering thread to figure THAT out? Sure explains why it takes 15 writers and an oil tanker full of residuals to script a Jay Leno monologue no one under the age of seventy will watch. Ice cube, gentlemen, ice cube. Drip, drip, drip...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-57265320054040001992007-12-18T18:49:00.000-08:002007-12-18T18:49:00.000-08:00micah is an egotistical scumbag and a disgrace. en...micah is an egotistical scumbag and a disgrace. end of story. i dont need to prove it because he has proven it himself.<BR/>his high opinion of himself is the only thing about him that is entertaining.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-33666469076181322022007-12-18T18:01:00.000-08:002007-12-18T18:01:00.000-08:00I'd add something of great significance and powerf...I'd add something of great significance and powerful insight (yeah, right), but I got lost in all the talk about helium-voiced sitcom stars.<BR/><BR/>One more thing I can blame "Will & Grace" for.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-81431142214604201682007-12-18T17:16:00.000-08:002007-12-18T17:16:00.000-08:00This is why I spell your name wrong every time, by...This is why I spell your name wrong every time, by the way.<BR/><BR/>:)<BR/><BR/>On to the next fragfest.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17349670871562090251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-85486662662516446912007-12-18T16:36:00.000-08:002007-12-18T16:36:00.000-08:00Cripes. Third paragraph should read: "...saying i...Cripes. Third paragraph should read: "...saying it wasN'T a Warner Bros. show ... doing sub-contract work on for A non-signator producer ..."<BR/><BR/>Non-proofed first drafts are not my strong suit.Steve Huletthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05537689111433326847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8022653905840889580.post-17766580418473619782007-12-18T16:30:00.000-08:002007-12-18T16:30:00.000-08:00I'm steering clear of all the incoming and outgoin...I'm steering clear of all the incoming and outgoing mortar rounds here except for this:<BR/><BR/>Micah alluded to my use of the word "prophylactic" in a private e-mail to him. I did indeed use the word; here's the context (paraphrased, since I don't have the e-mail and ain't gonna retrieve it):<BR/><BR/>"... Warner Bros. labor relations refused to process a grievance of ours on <I>Baby Blues</I>, saying it was a Warner Bros. Animation show, but one they were doing sub-contract work on for another non-signator producer.<BR/><BR/>"Six months later, the WGA moved to organize the writers on <I>Baby Blues</I>, and Warners came to me saying: 'We gotta do a deal on this show. Get it under your jurisdiction to block the WGA ...'<BR/><BR/>"I said: "Nope. You told me six months ago it wasn't ours. So now when you want contract-block because the situation's changed, the answer is unh-unh. We're not gonna be your <B>prophylactic</B> when its convenient ..."<BR/><BR/>I don't put this up to show what a starry-eyed boy scout I am. (I'm not; I'm an IA organizer, among other things. Just as Daley was once a WGA organizer ...) <BR/><BR/>I just wanted to explain the context of the word "prophylactic" up above.Steve Huletthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05537689111433326847noreply@blogger.com