Violence is Golden

Strikes Without Violence Ain't Strikes

All the writers are mired in the thirties (maybe even the twenties: 1947 strike at left with no millionaires on the picket line) when strikes, destructive as they were, could force almost all management to the bargaining table and allow the FDR Administration's New Deal favoritism toward Labor to do the rest. But that was when the movie studios actually produced movies with capital generated from actual audiences; car companies made cars with capital earned from sales; steel companies made steel capitalized by profits; and it was possible for labor to pressure the small exposed belly of each company. Today we are looking at multi-national conglomerates who "own" every business you can imagine so that risks in one business are hedged by ownership of many many more. There are no studios. There are no producers. There is no such thing as studio financing. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, British Banks and foreign governments of dictatorships are the financial muscle today together with movies that are made by limited partnerships formed by other entities. Try striking Putin and see what you get. It might be possible to picket the investment banks but they have outlets in 80 countries so realistically they cannot be hurt. So, in spite of the pot dreams of columnists like Nikki Finke, and union press blurbs, strikes with today's rules are a joke.

So if strikes are useless and basically exist as reminiscences of tired old men, what tools can a labor class exert in order to bargain for an esoteric thing like DVD residuals? Fom whom are they to extract this money? Today movies are routinely pirated by entrepreneurs in foreign countries, shipped into this country and then sold for big and small bucks without any accounting whatsoever. They're going to get money from Black Marketers?

Union Labor used to own the Democratic Party. The desires of Big Labor became law without much discussion. Now Big Labor only represents 17 percent of the workforce, which means companies can get non union labor without fearing that the government will send in the troops. This means that small family or individually owned companies make the movies----with other people's money.

So what to do? We could all go back to the really old days: stand up and violently attack both the studios and the employees ("scabs") who cross picket lines and still work there. Beat the shit out of them and burn the studios.? Go after the individuals who control the multi-nationals and kidnap their kids, burn their homes and destroy whatever they own? That kind of stuff happened in this town in 1947 (right) and if it hadn't been for the cops and National Guard, studios would have been burned. In the old days all strikes against all companies everywhere in the world involved violence or the serious threat of same. Hollywood "Guilds" don't have the stomach for a real strike, one that is engaged in by desperate men and women facing virtual starvation willing to risk everything every day. We are all too rich. Too successful. Too worried about "stuff" and "relationships" to conduct a real strike. We are to believe that 100k per year desperate writers walking up and down in front of a building dressed in the latest fashion with signs waving and friends honking the horns of their Ferrari sports cars in "support" is a strike. What crap. This "strike" isn't SERIOUS and the suits know it.

Busting up every vehicle that goes in or out is what works, (top right) but we are all so genteel; so well educated; so full of ourselves that we won't "stoop to that." Strikes without violence ain't a strike (Jack Warner early supporter of 1947 strike who changed mind). The only thing writers can realistically do is combine with the other unions and from one or two very large production companies financed by a lot of their own money, but mostly by the Limited Partnerships that finance film production now. All the main movie stars, all the directors, writers, and most below the line crafts have to be united. The unions themselves have to be the producers of their own product. That would be a real threat to the status quo. Not only are the guild members (SAG, DGAetc.) pretentious bastards, but they ain't gunna do that because they are afraid. To actually join all unions together for the purpose of amassing the capital necessary to make movies and completely bypass the current system is a horror. That would mean that the actors and other self desiginated "artists" were actually capitalists and not the socialists, ultra Liberals, Marxists, or "progressives" who hate money, that they claim to be.

So writers will eat the scraps that the real owners of the corporations decide they will throw to them. After the caterers, costumers, privately owned sound studios, and all the other small business entities that are the real core of the movie business are starved into extinction. The Writers Guild will show those assholes who is powerful.