Opinion: Even During A Strike, Some SAG-AFTRA’s A-Listers Want To Be The Star Of The Show

The recently-resolved WGA strike and the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike are centered around some extremely complex issues. For instance, even people who have been dealing for years with the questions of how SAG-AFTRA residuals are paid out can easily get some details wrong. 

Still, there are some ideas and the resulting news stories that are so profoundly dumb that you would expect someone in the process would have stood up, cleared their throat, and mumbled "Um...I don't think this means what you think it means."

Proof that does not always happen is front-and-center in a new proposal from some of SAG-AFTRA's more high-profile members, who have stepped up to try and move negotiations along between their striking union and the studios (represented by AMPTP).

Based on news reports (and verified by people I have spoken with today on background), a group of "celebrity" SAG-AFTRA members held a Zoom call with SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and president Fran Drescher on Tuesday. The group of A-listers reportedly included George Clooney, Tyler Perry, Scarlett Johansson, Kerry Washington, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Emma Stone, Laura Dern and Ryan Reynolds.

Now, a cynic might note that while this SAG-AFTRA strike has been going on for months, few of these actors have been seen on the picket lines. And they generally haven't exactly been actively discussing the issue in interviews, either. Other to say express one of those safe "I hope we can all agree on a deal that is fair for everyone" statements.

And it's probably to fair to note that some of the stars pushing this idea are at best ambivalent to role of Hollywood's unions in their day-to-day lives. Tyler Perry famously doesn't much care for the WGA and their guidelines. He also is no longer a member of that union, having renounced his membership and becoming a fi-core member of the WGA. Which means that he is required to pay a "fee" that would cover a share of the union's collective bargaining costs, but isn't a formal member of the union. As a result, he was able to write during the recent strike, although he isn't able to participate in any union activities.

George Clooney also became a WGA Fi-Core member following the result of a WGA decision in a credit arbitration vote which decided that he would not get screen credit for his writing on Leatherheads. Clooney also was part of a group of stars who sent a letter to SAG-AFTRA members in 2008 urging them to vote down the guild's strike authorization vote.

A cynic might also mention that these stars could have easily made the proposal quietly and waited to receive a response from SAG-AFTRA executives before saying anything publicly. Instead, news of the call was magically showing up in the Penske Media-owned Hollywood trades within hours of the call taking place. Clooney provided a short statement to Deadline for a Thursday morning piece that nearly framed him as one of the potential saviors of Hollywood. Although I should mention that on the other hand, a sister piece in The Hollywood Reporter included a wonderfully passive-aggressive shot at the stars from an unnamed "SAG-AFTRA insider":

It’s awesome that they want to be helpful. There are structural issues with what they’re proposing that isn’t how our contracts and union works. We’d love for them to get involved as captains right now.

The unsourced SAG-AFTRA characterization of the idea reportedly being floated by the stars is a lot kinder than the truth. Which is that the idea as it has been reported publicly manages to somehow be entirely unhelpful while also managing to insert the stars into the process by highlighting what they're willing "give up." This is the strike-oriented equivalent of those situations where a celebrity turns over a check to some needy family and a camera "just happens" to be there to memorialize the kindness for Entertainment Tonight.

So let's take a look at how Clooney explained the idea in the Deadline piece this morning, with the "look at me!" headline Hollywood's Biggest Stars Offer To Kick In $150M Over Three Years In Dues To Help End Actors Strike Stalemate:

‘A lot of the top earners want to be part of the solution,” the two-time Oscar winner told Deadline. “We’ve offered to remove the cap on dues, which would bring over $50 million to the union annually. Well over $150 million over the next three years. We think it’s fair for us to pay more into the union. We also are suggesting a bottom-up residual structure — meaning the top of the call sheet would be the last to collect residuals, not the first. These negotiations will be ongoing, but we wanted to show that we’re all in this together and find ways to help close the gap on actors getting paid.”

Sigh. There is so much wrong with this framing of the proposal. The biggest problem is that this proposal doesn't actually address any of the biggest stumbling blocks in the current negotiations - AI or the so-called "subscriber levy." The latter proposal in particular is notable because it would come on top of any existing residuals and just the idea of it so incensed Netflix's Ted Sarandos and Disney's Bob Iger that it led to decide to walk away from talks.

So a star-driven proposal over how residuals are paid out doesn't really address any of the core strikes issues. But it also doesn't make any sense. The order people are paid for residuals doesn't matter. It's not like profit participation, which is often dependent on the project making a profit. That money can also be paid out in a specific order. So I suppose changing the order of who gets paid would matter if this was a strike over profit participation. But since it's in part about residuals, the order of payment doesn't matter. The dispute is over the total amount of money, not the order in which anyone is paid. 

This proposal is roughly equivalent to a situation where someone pays all of their household bills in full on the same day. Then decides one month to call up the electric company to brag about how that check will now be the first one of the day signed and sent off. It's just not the way things work.

And while the Deadline piece suggests that the money that would come in from removing the cap on dues would help to be used to bolster health benefits, several people quickly pointed out to me today that the money from dues goes directly to the union for its expenses. The union negotiates the deal for the health insurance plan, but that plan is run by a separate organization and the plan is paid for not by the union, but by the health plan payments made by individual union members.

So simply getting rid of the union dues cap wouldn't help with any health insurance issues. Unless somehow the stars could negotiate a deal which would earmark that extra money towards lowering the threshold SAG-AFTRA members need to make each year to continue qualifying for the union health care plan. But I haven't seen any indication anyone has floated that idea.

Perhaps I am becoming more of a curmudgeon as I age, but nearly everything about this story annoyed me. From the carefully-placed leaks to the trades, to the way the resulting stories framed the proposal as almost being a selfless act of charity from a group of stars who aren't exactly bystanders in these negotiations.

Yes, these A-listers are union members. But they also own production companies with ongoing deals that aren't happening in the midst of a strike. They can afford to make this grand offer because they'll likely make much more from the production side of their career than they will from whatever acting roles they sign.

Also, since many of these stars are also producing TV shows and movies, they could have decided to pay their writers or actors better even before the strike. Or they could have decided not to take that huge streaming TV salary and spread around the riches to other people much lower in the pecking order.

I don't doubt that most of these stars sincerely believe that they mean well and or only trying to help. But if you've ever spent extended periods of time with any A-lister, you quickly discover they tend to create their own bubble of reality, which often doesn't quite match up with the world in which the rest of us live.

As for the entertainment journalists who are covering this story...Deadline managed to end one story with a line that would be seen as too cheesy and gushing if it appeared on someone's LiveJournal fan site back in the day:

It seems admirable that this group is willing to kick in this amount of money to move the negotiations to a close.

Shame on all of you.