I’m Still on Strike!
I’ve been pacing at the gates of Sony Pictures this week. It’s the closest studio to my house. On a normal day, here’s what it looks like as you enter the main gate.
Here’s what it looks like this week.
Until 2005, Sony Pictures Entertainment was called MGM Studios, home of the roaring lion. MGM was one of the original studios in Hollywood, dating back to 1924. The words above the lion in their emblem, “Ars Gratia Artis,” is Latin meaning “Art for art’s sake.”
Two years ago Sony bought the beautiful, historic, white pristine studio for $5 billion with their partner, a little Internet company called Comcast, which owns 20% of the company. Cleary this can only mean one thing: there ain’t no money and there ain’t no future in the Internet.
Sony Pictures is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, which is Japanese meaning “Art for our sake.” The studio reported earnings of $7 billion last year, which must certainly be a disappointment for the corporation hauling in a revenue of $67 billion. It helps to understand why the studio needs to preserve their 22 year old residual structure with the creators of their product. Another million or two to its writers, director and actors, and that whole place becomes a house of cards.
I’m starting to really understand their side of things. After all, it was Sony who spent years and many millions of dollars developing the Blu-ray format. Instead of picketing, we should be on our hands and knees thanking them for their innovative technology that will help distribute our product to more and more people. We’ll be seen and heard, we just won’t be paid. That seems totally reasonable.
Okay, I’m not quite there yet. Silly me. I’m still walking erect, holding a sign in protest. Me and a few thousand others.
Now that this little strike is marching forward, it’s a grand time to be in Tinsel Town. On any given day, you can walk right up to any studio in Los Angeles, and without any sort of pass, badge, clearance or identification, you can take a meeting with all the major players. In fact, today you could have shown up outside Universal and mingled with the stars of nearly every show on television. Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Back To You, Cold Case, CSI, and 50 others. Two thousand people were picketing outside Universal today and that’s not including the throngs of news crews trying to get interviews.
Nope, there ain’t no better time for photo ops and autographs.
Contracts, not so much.
Nick Counter, the negotiator for the studios, says this thing could go on for nine months. Goodness me. I’m going to need another strike t-shirt for that kind of time.
I actually saw Nick outside Sony this morning. I was doing the 6 AM shift and he leaned out of his black Mustang muscle car as he drove by and yelled, “Go back to work, you bastards!” I can’t be certain it was actually Nick, but it sure sounded like him.
For the record, though, that’s the only unkind thing I’ve heard anyone say to us in 7 days.
Category : Random Thoughts 
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