The Writer's Strike
You may be able to tell that I do not side with the writers. Some people expected me to and have already emailed me their disappointment. The fact is, I am not going to be someone you agree with every time. I am an environmentalist, I am pro-choice, and I believe in people not getting screwed over by corporations.
But I do not like this strike. I do not like the fact that people that make pretty nice money doing a dream job believe they are being screwed over enough to stop working. If you are sick of being screwed over to that point, start your own company and see if you can make the same wage. I have done that and I do not make good money off this. However I love it and I do it regardless of the money. I hope one day to live off of this work (I don't care if I am rich - just living off this would be a thrill). But until then, I don't like seeing people that do live off it bitch.
Yeah, you aren’t making the same money off the internet that the corporations are. I’m not either. But that is part of the reason I don’t work for them. Tomorrow, I will own everything I've ever made. I will do with my content as I please and reap all the rewards and deal with all the consequences.
There
haha! i will send you good intentions, how's that?
-koval-
Works for me.
Peter,
You sound like a damn Republican, just kidding, not really. Keep doing what ya doing...iz funny.
Lupiani
"the Immaculate One"
i don't even really know what that means or if that's even really an insult.
-koval-
If I were a republican, I'd support the corporations. I think it's actually not fair. But the difference is that I would rather see the writers just quit and start their own stuff. That way, they'd retain the rights to everything they make.
But that is just the independant in me speaking.
COMMIE!!!!!!!!!!
do americans still take offence to that?
-koval-
If we do, we're idiots.
You're extremely ignorant, you claim that movie writers make $200,000 a year but the majority of writers make $80,000 and they make taht off of the residuals and new shows/movies they write.
Yes, big budget movie writers get paid $100,000 for one script. But how many huge budgets are out there? Out of the 3 million scripts written each year, 135 are produced from the big studios. Of those 135 maybe 15 are huge budgets.
Get your facts straight before you make something like this.
Oh, and I've reported you to Revver for violating copyrights.
Doesn't feel to good to not be paid for what you worked on does it?
I am well aware the numbers are wrong - it has been addressed several times, but no copyrights have been violated. It's called fair use and it protects parody.
i hope reporting you to revver makes anonymous feel like he has a big penis.
-koval-
It certainly stopped Revver from featuring my video on the front page. Ooops, sarcasm.
So, if you admit that the content of the video is wrong, why are you still pushing it? Take it down and redo it, if you even can.
I support you're right to free speech, I do. But, if you were actually one of these writers, you would be singing a different tune.
So you aren't being screwed over by a big company, good. But these people are.
P.S.
Naveed,
By responding to an attack of fact with a penis joke, you lost the argument and actually came out looking like even more of a moron. You affectively used high school logic to prove this guy right. Way to go.
Dude, I'm not going to take it down or re-do it. It's a parody. I could say they make a million dollars six times over - the info is irrelevent. It's the point made.
Your parody of _Family Guy_ is fantastic. And I'm a huge fan of the show since the pilot episode, too. Congrats. But your arguments against the strike are off the mark.
From the MetaCafe posting:
> Writers: people would kill to do what you do. In fact,
> I would like to so much that I ALREADY DO IT with
> NO (corporate-based or even substantial) pay or
> (any) benefits.
Big deal. Do you do it 40+ hours a week without any other financial support? I love playing softball, but I'm not going to spend most of my waking hours doing it without getting paid, especially if I were really good at it AND someone was making a ton of money off of my talent.
Re: your implication that $200,000 is somehow an upper limit on a salary for a writer...
First of all, the free market, theoretically, determines how much somebody should get paid. Good for the writers' union for standing up for equity, and for refusing to work for less than not only what random people outside of the industry_think_ they should work for, but also less than they are _actually worth_. If writers of hit shows shouldn't work for a certain amount, then... should shows be not allowed to make lots of money? That would be odd, no?
Second of all, $200,000 isn't much for a family in a reasonably-sized apartment in a city where professional TV writing is done. And the "reasonable salary for a [insert profession here]" issue is irrelevant anyway.
You want to be a writer, but you're devaluing _yourself_ by putting a limit of how much you think you should make when you're contributing to a for-profit (often big profit) project. Should real estate agents refuse bigger commissions when brokering the sale more valuable homes, because they don't feel like they're worth it? Please. If you _do_ end up being a professional TV writer and you pull a salary far higher than $200,000, you have the awful whiny union, working on your behalf before the fact at great professional risk to themselves, to blame. What awful people they are.
Hey, FFC. I would like to thank you for being one of the less than 20 people I've encountered on either side of this argument that doesn't sound like an idiot.
The truth is that this video is an exaggeration of one of the two viewpoints that most people see on this issue. I don't think that there SHOULD be only two viewpoints on this and quite frankly, I like to even it out. I like to see the less popular side get a moment (especially if it is the side I feel is at least closer to "right").
I think it is not fair (as I have stated quite a few times) that writers do not get royalties for internet revenue. I realize that 200,000 is not a lot of money in Los Angeles and similar places, as well. I also realize that not every writer makes that. Quite frankly, if I thought that the Hollywood system should be in existence, I would be on their side.
The angle I have both come to realize and have always felt (in a "so this is what my thoughts mean" sort of way) through the ensuing argument of this video is the dismantling of "Hollywood" as a way of doing business. To me, this strike represents people wanting to get further into that way of doing things; to be further entrenched in it. I disagree with that.
I don't disagree with people getting paid for their work. I just don't see how, in this age of technology and connectivity, there is a need for Hollywood and the current iteration of the "entertainment industry." I see the strike as a lot of people saying "I want a tiny-ass piece of a pie that I made mainly for someone else." No one wants to walk into a pie shop and see a bunch of almost pies.
I don't want to see people making pies for conglomerates. I'd like to see people making pies for themselves. I want to see the beginning of something huge that runs contradictory to Hollywood in such a way that the stars leave the sidewalk there. I don't think there should be a center where talent is corralled.
Basically, I see it as such: people trying to become bigger players in a system of industry that I find to be exploitive, hypocritical, and - in some cases - even evil. So I played Devil's Advocate with a cartoon and it made a lot of people mad. It isn't the first time I've done it and it won't be the last.
I do thank you for the comment about the cartoon and the well-presented argument. It is refreshing, to say the least.
Thanks for the compliments-- though it's a sad comment on our ultra-partisan talking-head society when making a coherent argument is inherently praiseworthy. And thanks for the clarification.
In college I used to run through scenarios in my mind about how different governments would work (socialism, anarchy, etc.) and how people would react, and I always end up back at a capitalist democracy. Or, to put it more pithily, if there were no such thing as government, we'd end up inventing it anyway.
The "Hollywood way of doing business" evolved naturally; no one mandated that it happen, either by legislation or religious fiat. Years later, it's changed a bit (particularly where the relationships between actors and movie studios are concerned), but it's still there. I suspect that as artistic media becomes physically decentralized, it will become no less efficient (or profitable all around) to keep talent "corralled" together anyway. Or, to paraphrase myself, if the studio system implodes due to a shift in media, it would re-invent itself. That's my suspicion, anyway.