DGA settles with Producers. Why?

The real reason a deal with the DGA was possible is that directors understand the economics of the business (and that it is a BUSINESS before an art form). Every director knows that his job and future are on the line on every movie he helms. If he goes over budget as much as a thousand dollars he might be dead in the entire business. His future depends on being able to stay friends with, and have the respect of, the entire crew (IATSE), most of the production crafts like editors, negative cutters, and even the janitors who clean up the sets. And oh yeah, those ego maniacal actors whose only concern is how they look, today. The directors need writers like an Eskimo needs cold weather. (Yeah, it takes ice to build an igloo but there's lots of ice around) They “get it” that a movie, of all the so-called arts, is a collaborative venture. This demands that directors bring a total vision to the bargaining. From what I’ve seen of the agreement, they allow the goddam producers to make enough money to pay off the investors (writers hate capitalists with money to put into movies) before raking off their “take.” The writers, from the inception of the union, one that was formed by the hard core communist John Howard Lawson, are totally Left. It has remained the most Left of any union in the country. They toe the old Party Line regarding anyone who isn’t gripped by a “social conscience” (meaning a view that everyone is exploited and victimized by capitalists) and every decade or so they don their red Armani vests and go on a stupid strike so that they can continue to stoke their private coals of class hatred for another ten years.

I go by their picket lines once or twice a week and note that they ain’t singing them old time 1930s Woodie Guthrie songs no more (who but a communist would know the self pitying lyrics to “Tom Joad?"). They are silently moping the the picket line probably thinking that it’s all Bush’s fault and that real artists have it tough.

It was real life that settled the DGA potential strike. Now the actors have to be settled with, not an easy task since SAG is 80,000 strong and no more than 5,000 of them worked as much as a day last year. Once the SAG finally settles maybe the stupid writers will sit down and claim victory over the hated capitalists.