Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 187 posts

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#121

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gruez wrote: post #91
ohgodplsno wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to misunderstand what unionisation is. The current state of things has been reached as kind of a gentleman's agreement. If employers want to revert to life threatening solutions, unions will revert to life threatening solutions too. Sequestration, destruction, tarring, and other fun things. But then again, defenestration of a bunch of execs might just be the exact thing the world needs to put some fear back…

> You seem to misunderstand what unionisation is. The current state of things has been reached as kind of a gentleman's agreement. If employers want to revert to life threatening solutions, unions will revert to life threatening solutions too. Sequestration, destruction, tarring, and other fun things. Weird, my definition of "unionization" is "workers bargaining collectively". It doesn't involve any veiled threats of…

That is what it means, but it's an arrangement that replaces the previously "we'll resolve this with violence" situation. If one party wants to dump the "new" way of doing things, mostly likely it just goes back to the "old" way.

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#122

Post by falcolas »

CSMastermind wrote: post #79
Arrath wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the explicit "we'll just wait for them to lose their housing" messaging from the Hollywood executives... Yeah, that was fuckin disgusting. Its tar and feather territory if you ask me. I'm in full support of this strike and I applaud the actors for getting in on it. Bring the studios to their knees if that's what it takes.

What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content? It made sense to me when you had terrestrial television stations with actual monopolies over broadcast rights. But now with the internet they have many vectors to share and market their content. So you won't be on NBC or Netflix or whatever, so what, post it on Twitter and YouTube. If they move to alternative distribution platforms and the stu…

IMO, it's because writers and actors form a seriously minor part of the labor needed to make a film or TV episode.

From VFX to catering, there's a lot of labor needed - much of which is highly specialized - that would cost too much to contract or develop independently.

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#123

Post by gruez »

Woberto wrote: post #95
gruez wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Its tar and feather territory if you ask me. Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence? I feel like the pro-union rhetoric is getting hyperbolic, and is detrimental to the quality of the discussion. If simply refusing to accept a deal is "tar and feather territory", then what do you call it when studios are literally covering union members in tar and feather? "tar feather (fr!) territory"? Rather than di…

I think you're vastly oversimplifying their stance as merely "refusing to accept a deal". If studios are waiting for writers to "start losing their apartments and losing their houses,"[1] that is a major negative impact to people's lives. [1] various sources, e.g. https://www.ign.com/articles/hollywood-studios-want-writers-...

>that is a major negative impact to people's lives.

I fully acknowledge the hardship that the union members are going through, and that the impact is likely disproportionate. However, that's a negative impact brought on by themselves by choosing to engage in said strikes. The union might still be in the "right" in terms of what they're demanding, but they're still the proximate cause of their own hardship.

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#124

Post by yafbum »

endisneigh wrote: post #120
yafbum wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear that AI will be a productivity boost for writers of any more magnitude than the move from the typewriter to the computer word processor. It can improve productivity, but only marginally so, and without need to replace writers altogether. An AI is about as useful for screenwriting a complex show as a spell checker. The kinds of productivity boosts that studios and streaming houses have already gotten fr…

I don't know how you could possibly compare AI with the typewriter to word processor evolution.

I'm just talking about it for screenwriting specifically. It can improve productivity like GitHub copilot can for coders, which is to say, incremental improvement (vs firing the software engineering department and replacing it entirely by GitHub copilot)

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#125

Post by Sterm »

monkeyodeath wrote: post #19

The business philosophy of "maximize shareholder value above all else" is going to eviscerate our society until there's nothing of quality left. Hollywood has always been a dirty and money-focused business, but it seems like the latest crop of execs are hellbent on entirely divorcing the creative enterprise from its human elements. Now studios are just exotic financial instruments that seek to turn "content" into sto…

The quality of movies released from Hollywood in the last 5 years has been abysmal. It made sense to have large studios when film cost dollars per foot and needed an army of editors in post. Today you could film a 1960s blockbuster on 10k of equipment and a medium sized desktop computer with a few friends.

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#126

Post by Sterm »

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #77
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The business philosophy of "maximize shareholder value above all else" is going to eviscerate our society until there's nothing of quality left. Well no, because there are literally an entire industry (luxury goods) where the main selling point is quality, and I don't see any sign that's going to disappear anytime soon.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with luxury goods, but there are lots of YouTube channels and analyses of the quality of luxury products, and it’s not what you think it is. They’re maximizing shareholder value too, they’re just going after people narcissistic and wealthy enough to not notice that they’re buying junk that’s dressed up because the brand name means something to them.

[dead]

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#127

Post by 26fingies »

merth wrote: post #113
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

> “In that ground breaking AI proposal, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation,” he said. “So if you think that’s a ground breaking proposal I suggest you think again.” I m…

well, alternative they will just create non-existing actors with generative AI. my guess in 50 years, almost everything will be extremely cheap including human labour. except land maybe?

i guess we are about to embark on a grand experiment to see if Marx was right

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#128

Post by Arrath »

gruez wrote: post #81
Arrath wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the explicit "we'll just wait for them to lose their housing" messaging from the Hollywood executives... Yeah, that was fuckin disgusting. Its tar and feather territory if you ask me. I'm in full support of this strike and I applaud the actors for getting in on it. Bring the studios to their knees if that's what it takes.

>Its tar and feather territory if you ask me. Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence? I feel like the pro-union rhetoric is getting hyperbolic, and is detrimental to the quality of the discussion. If simply refusing to accept a deal is "tar and feather territory", then what do you call it when studios are literally covering union members in tar and feather? "tar feather (fr!) territory"? Rather than di…

> Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence?

Its not 'refusing to accept a deal', its this:

"“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline." [0]

I don't think I can get more hyperbolic than "our stance is we won't talk to them until they're freezing in the streets".

[0] https://deadline.com/2023/07/writers-strike-hollywood-studio...

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#129

Post by Arrath »

gruez wrote: post #87
Arrath wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its such a shame that the laws of the universe only allow the studios to make that one offer they want to bring to the table.

The same could be said for the union. Why should either side be forced to make concessions?

Same argument could be made in the vein of why should one side be forced to accept the other's demands unilaterally? Thus the deadlock and the strike. After all, each side making concessions is how this usually works.

Re: Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood

#130

Post by endisneigh »

KerrAvon wrote: post #118
endisneigh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Ironically the kind of people who frequent this forum will be the ones to end labor once and for all. Unions are only helpful with leverage. For now labor has inherent leverage as capital production fundamentally requires some labor. As AI increases productivity of certain individuals the amount (of people) of productive labor will become less, thus making unions ineffective.

Wild! And when it doesn't happen this way, are you -- presumably on the "productive" side -- gonna go Galt?

It will eventually happen, and it already is happening.
Post reply on HN