by
Mark London Williams

“This decision by the membership marks the end of a very long process. We can now move forward with a new sense of certainty.” Those were the words of actor Sam Freed, a 2nd National Vice President in SAG, as quoted in Jonathan Handel’s showbiz column over at Huffington Post, rounding up reactions to SAG’s settled-at-last de facto “strike” of the last year, bringing to a close — for better or worse — Hollywood’s inordinately long shutdown season, nearly two years long, when one factors in the WGA walkout as well.

And it would seem that things should be “certain” for awhile — working actors are getting a 3% raise in an era where most people are getting layoff notices and/or pay reductions, television shows can (theoretically) be organized under SAG contracts again, and the studios lose their last believable excuse for not greenlighting features.

The “yay” vote for the new contract clocked in at around 78%, with 22% against, with higher margins on the “yes” side for union members outside of L.A.

TV Week’s Bizwire took to the web the morning after the vote to pronounce somewhat grandly that Hollywood had achieved “Peace in Our Time,” with an end to labor strife.

But is it, really? One of the only tangible concessions SAG was able to wrest from the conglomerates was an agreement to let their contract expire in two years, instead of three, which is to say, in 2011, when the current WGA and DGA contracts wind down.

What this means of course, is that there is probably only a reliable 18 months or so of feature film production ahead of us (if “reliable” is a word that can, in any way, pertain to working in or for Hollywood). At that point of course, the visual content divisions of said conglomerates — those businesses formerly known as “studios” — will announce that unless/until they can sign new contracts with those guilds, it will be too risky to for those aforementioned green lights to apply to any new features that might have to be shut down.

Not that SAG’s contract shouldn’t be synchronized with the other guilds. One disadvantage Hollywood’s labor force has had compared to say, the UAW (back when there was a UAW, in that before-time when America had its own manufacturing base), is that they must negotiate with all the “producers” at once, rather than walk out against a single company — GE, Viacom, take your pick — at a time.

(Of course, it was when single companies began to peel away from the monolith and settle with writers, that there was, at last, some movement in that shutdown).

But just as “governance” in America is really an unending campaign season — we have, instead of in-depth analyses of where the Obama administration has succeeded or failed in the early going, media speculation on whether Sarah Palin has her garter in the ring for 2012) — so one must wonder if Hollywood will be steadily marked by a seemingly unending slowdown/shutdown mode.

SAG President Alan Rosenberg, who would seem to be a lame duck when his term comes up within the year, announced that on the heels of his faction’s position getting roundly rejected (by a majority of the 35% of SAG membership who actually voted), he would take to the phones and contact other guild leaders about coordinating strategies early for that potential shutdown in ‘11.

Of course, things aren’t as simple as a traditional labor vs. management dynamic — the economy still seems only as steady as a Jello bowl in an aftershock, and it was to a large degree a “one in the hand” attitude that fueled the large “yes” vote for a contract that really didn’t settle the streaming/digital revenue issues that have been punted a couple of years down the road.

And not everyone survived to celebrate this putative “peace,” either. Venerable Pacific Title — which was founded as silents gave way to talkies, and endured a previous Depression — shuttered their doors before the “green lights” of feature production could start winking again. They were unable to secure bank loans to see them through the rest of the year.

On the Millimeter website, writer Michael Goldman set out to do a piece on “post-recession strategies” for Hollywood, and instead found himself writing about companies — like Pacific Title, FX house The Orphanage, and others — that didn’t make it. He interviews producer/director Marshall Herskovitz in the article, who observes that the larger systemic issues of the credit industry’s breakdown have affected the film biz in unpredictable ways:

“My feeling is that [the recession] has definitely impacted the movie business [longterm] for the first time,” Herskovitz comments in the piece. “In many ways, we were recession-proof in the past. But there has been a complete shift in how investments and loans are made [globally] now. Those big companies have their own problems, and that never happened before… The potential of an actor’s strike had an intermittent effect, but what I think is more germane is the simple difficulty in raising money, along with the lowered valuation of some of these [media] companies and seeing ad dollars on TV diminish.”

Herskovitz also comments about being at the end of the DVD product cycle: “The other aspect to this is that DVD [sales and rentals] have leveled off. DVDs propped up our industry for the last 10 years, and the movie business without DVDs is not really a profitable business. It used to be, but now the business model doesn’t work without DVDs. There is also the problem of huge actor fees and other things, so in many ways, it’s a shaky business anyway.”

And, per that Jello bowl, only going to get shakier, outbreaks of “peace” notwithstanding.

You can’t definitively negotiate labor contracts when no one knows, exactly, where the revenue is going to come from. Or what it means that people are able to watch things at home, without commercials, because they’ve downloaded them in ways both legal, or otherwise.

Nobody wants to give up the old salaries, or the old perks, of what “making it” in Hollywood used to mean. But nobody knows, really, where the money is going to keep coming from to prop up those edifices.

Welcome to 2011.

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Location Manager Jeremy Alter Moves to Director’s Chair for “The Perfect Sleep”
by
Mark London Williams

When one considers “traditional” below-the-line avenues to directing, it’s usually editing or cinematography — or lately, visual effects supervising — that come to mind as usual routes to that storied above-the-line perch.

For Jeremy Alter, whose “The Perfect Sleep” is currently in release, it was location managing.

“I’ve always loved films,” he recounts. “By the time I flew out to UCLA to go to school there, I had a fairly good idea that directing and producing films would be my life’s pursuit.”

It was something he kept pursuing while building a name for himself in locations, eventually teaming up with “Sleep’s” writer and star, Anton Pardoe — who had the bulk of his credits as an assistant location manager.

“The project came about when, some years back, Anton and I were frustrated trying to get a couple
projects past the development stage. We had previously done an award winning short film and we were now more than ready to make a feature. We talked about doing a hard hitting genre film for next to no money that could really stand out. Intent on writing something to serve that purpose, Anton asked me what locations would be optimal for cost effectiveness. At that time, there was a state funded incentive called optical channel ‘Film CA First’ whereby location fees for certain government owned properties were reimbursed to film companies along with some permit fees and manpower, (so) I put together a list of good, inexpensive locations and other general concepts to keep costs of a potential film down. Anton then went off into writing mode and a short time later, ‘The Perfect Sleep’ was born.”

The film –quite practically - was written around the available locations. But knowing your locations was no guarantee against bumps in the road:

“We then found that trying to raise even a small amount of money was incredibly difficult and ended up getting the remake rights to an old horror film and began to package that project. Eventually, that script garnered some attention and a new company called Unified Pictures loved the script but said that they didn’t have access to the amount of money we were looking for but did we have any lower budget films ready to go?

Enter ‘The Perfect Sleep,’ back from the dead, and Unified Pictures to the rescue.”

But the film no longer had the built-in rebates it once did, since “the Film CA first program had dried up and we had to break virtually every rule on how to make a low budget film. We had elaborate stunt scenes, very challenging/expensive locations, children actors, period cars and wardrobe, and enough ambition to sink two ships. The only reason we were able to get through a shoot like this was because I had worked below the line on nearly 40 features and was fortunate enough to convince many overly qualified professionals to lend me their time and expertise.”

Among those colleagues was “first hire” Clayton Harley, “production designer extrordinaire. I met Clayton on ‘Anchorman’ which he production designed and I location managed. He read the script and thankfully agreed to do the film. We then worked together to try and find the right DP for the project. This turned out to be a very difficult task as I had very high aspirations visually but was limited in our budget. Eventually, I called Charles Papert — he and I worked together on additional photography for a Disney film called ‘Mr. 3000′ — and he thankfully came on board. My line producer was Jay Sedrish who had worked with me on a New Line film a few years back.

“Our gaffer was Rafael Sanchez, who I had worked with on ‘Sideways’ and ‘The Million Dollar Hotel,’and he brought his crew as well as Key Grip Ray Garcia. Similarily, my transportation coordinator, Charlie Ramirez also worked with me on ‘Sideways.’ I had worked with my first and second A.D.s, Chris and Michelle Edmonds, on a film called ‘11:14.’”

And what about his location manager? That’d be “Jun Lin, an old friend and locations compatriot.” Rounding out the rest of the crew, his stunt coordinator Jeremy Fitzgerald “came to me as a recommendation from Scott Rogers. Finally, my costume designer Kristen Anacker had been through all the fun and madness with me previously on our short film. I was and am extremely lucky that I have worked with so many talented, generous crew members!”

That generosity was needed in a shoot which Alter jokingly concedes had an “unstated mission to make things as difficult as possible for ourselves,” which included shooting “in some very large spaces. We were able to make up for what we lacked in manpower and equipment with a clear idea of what I wanted the film to look like and some very talented people like Charles, Rafael, and Ray Garcia made the look happen. Those men really took this film to another level. Thanks to their efforts (and those of many other fantastic crew members), we were able to get a look that I believe matches films with 100 times our budget.”

The “unstated mission” aspects also covered a wide swath of local geography: “We ended up covering a lot of ground filming from Palm Springs and Camarillo to San Pedro and many other places in between. My locations experience paid off in a big way as I had enough relationships that I was able to secure some of the amazing locations where we shot despite our relative lack of funds. Ken Johnson at La Center Studios/Hollywood Locations, Eric Bender from the Bradbury Building, and Peg and Joaquin at Unreel Locations were very supportive of the film.”

But Alter also concedes an ever-so-slight drawback, with his locations experience, which he surmises “probably hurt a little in that I was all too aware of situations where the property reps were not pleased when we were going late into the night, only this time I had a million other things to worry about in addition to that.”

The million other things paid off: At the time of our interview, the film was opening in L.A. and then going wide to New York, Chicago, Portland and Dallas.

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From the current print issue of Below the Line:

Union Roundup
by
Mark London Williams

It’s the economy, smartypants! And it’s everything else!

Of course, what is it that we mean by “economy” anymore, since we seem to allow the word to encompass all human endeavor? — the refusal to confront environmental collapse, the backing of dictators, wives leaving husbands, husbands using their moment of peak earning power to act middle aged crazy; love, politics, and whether any wilderness will remain — everything is subsumed, at some level, through a prism of economic activity.

The “change we can believe in” may refer to the change in our pockets, and whatever other money or wealth we have lying around. Somehow, that’s what we use to calibrate our views of the world.

So what aspects of the economy are besetting Hollywood right now? The usual suspects? Which is to say, fearful, wanting-to-be-salvaged banks not loaning money to make pictures? Parent corporations — who never understood their movie town “assets” to begin with — making bottom line demands incompatible with tinsel town reality? (”Make everything a hit! Fire 10% of personnel!”), etc.

One such parent corporation, General Electric, is busy laying off workers from its healthcare division, and declaring publicly its hopes to get a piece of a US Air Force tanker contract, on the very morning we’re going to press.

So if the tanker contract doesn’t come through, does that mean more layoffs at NBC and Universal?

How much is Hollywood at the mercy of outside forces, or at the mercy of its own?

In the latter category, we have this dispatch from a UPM of our acquaintance, whose daughter also produces. She was commiserating with her daughter about the protracted effects of SAG’s ongoing kinda-strike: “Quite a few movies were shot under SAG waivers. Now, there are production companies who agreed to this and thinking the strike would not occur, they made several features with SAG waivers. One of the deals with the SAG waiver is that before a distributor can ’sign on’ the waivers have to be satisfied.”

In other words, you’ve got to “pay up.” Her tale continues:

“So a studio that had guaranteed distribution might have made 3 or 4 movies, and now they’re stuck until SAG settles. This can be a heavy toll for small to medium production companies. In a sense, they used their credit card to make the movies, and now they don’t have the money to make more product because they haven’t gotten any money out of their pending distribution deals. And the movies shot under the waivers can’t get distribution until SAG decides what to do. It’s a dilemma……or as my daughter described it, a Perfect Storm.”

So the number of features that have been made during this perfect downturn, will continue to, er, “trickle down” to a smaller number, until a contract is signed. Our in-the-field correspondent concludes thusly about her producer daughter:

“She has been working with one company who was using a special effects house — a rather large one –and poof! The effects house closed its doors in the middle of the shoot. I suspect the house maybe couldn’t hold out until they were paid by the production companies who were waiting for money from their to-be-distributors.

“What a mess.”

The longer the not-a-strike continues, the higher the toll, in addition to all the other economic factors. Since our last print issue, SAG has signed a commercial contract, which some viewed as a stepping stone to a larger settlement — especially now that SAG leadership perceived to be more amenable to a negotiation, has taken over the reins of the “thesp” union.

And has been reported around town recently, the main feints and parries to a new contract being signed seem to be the corporations agreeing to a two-year SAG contract — thus allowing it to expire with the contracts of other Guilds. This in theory may give a bigger bargaining chip to “talent,” if everyone walks out at once. Heck, under those circumstances, even the IA could consider striking to try and get some of its health benefits back!

On the other hand, recall that writers and actors were supposed to walk out together this time, too, but the word-slingers had to pull the trigger early, before GE & and its management confreres could stockpile too many scripts in advance, which kind of left the actors dangling, after Hollywood had already been hit with a big strike.

And would those high and mighty directors agree to strike with everyone else?

Questions for another day, of course, and digits will have further radicalized the landscape (as will rising sea levels, but that’s taking the metaphor literally!) by then.

In turn for this synchronicity-of-contracts-concession, actors will have to agree to settle ongoing force majeure claims for lost wages from the writers strike, for far less than they wanted.

So the studios will save some money up front, and gamble, I suppose, that they won’t face a walkout circa 2011-2012.

Of course, isn’t the world supposed to end around 2012?

If everyone in Hollywood walks out then, it might in a certain sense.

That is, if you believe things like YouTube aren’t ending it already.

On which note, while we in the trades rarely write about each other, it turns out the Hollywood press is itself part of Hollywood’s news. Variety recently ran a piece attacking various Hollywood bloggers, like Nikke Finke, who stole so much of their thunder with updates and dispatches during that writers’ walkout.

Now, Variety editor Peter Bart is out — kicked upstairs, as these things go, after a 20 year reign. Does full disclosure require me to note I wrote for Variety as well, some years back, during the Bart reign? It might, though our paths never crossed during my time there.

But certainly I used words like “thesp” a lot more often then.

In any case, some of the reports indicated that Bart had resisted a more aggressive online/digital strategy for Variety, or at least, wanted to stay committed to a print platform as well. I’ve never talked to the man about any of this, but a reading of those tea leaves may indicate that the show biz Ur-trade may realize its “newspaper” days are numbered.

To what degree ad buys will return to their pages, or the Reporter’s — or ours — after a SAG settlement remains to be seen. But the idea of keeping same overhead in terms of paper, print, warehousing and distribution so people can read news in their Beverly Hills offices or Agua Dulce set locations on slivers of dead trees, would seem to be a bit ridiculous in an age where most of those same people loitering by craft services also have iPhones and Blackberries.

How do papers like us “monetize” those delivery systems?

How do networks “monetize” you watching a show on your laptop, anytime you want?

These are the interesting questions of our times, compadres. At least in this business. And for those of us whose job it is to gaze into the abyss, Hollywood-wise, and report on what we see, the abyss is also — interestingly — gazing back.

One way or another, we’ll be here to tell you what it sees.

Write: mark.williams@btlnews.com

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Get ready to work longer hours for your health “benefits,” BTLers! From the IA press release earlier today:

IATSE LOCALS UNANIMOUSLY RATIFY NEW HOLLYWOOD BASIC AGREEMENT

The 15 Hollywood-based locals representing over 35,000 members of the IATSE working in motion picture and television production have ratified the new Hollywood Basic Agreement with the AMPTP. The three year contract, which will go into effect August 1, 2009, was tentatively proposed last November, with drafting completed last month.

At the time of the November negotiations, IA President Matthew D. Loeb stated, “This was a tough negotiation during tough economic times but both sides worked hard and negotiated reasonably to come to this agreement.”

After each of the 15 locals covered under the new contract ratified the agreement, Loeb added, “We have delivered a strong contract in a very chaotic economic climate. We feel we have given our members the best protection we can at a time when the bottom is falling out of a lot of traditional business models. We look forward to three years of labor stability and a commitment to keeping our members working.”

On the other hand, if Loeb knows something about delivering “labor stability” over the next three years - in any field whatsoever — maybe he has more tricks up his sleeve than we realize..

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