Speaker 1: Welcome back to It could happen here a podcast about
Speaker 1: things falling apart, and you know, when things fall apart,
Speaker 1: one of the few things that can keep you on
Speaker 1: an even keel, you know, keep you feeling like there's
Speaker 1: something that makes sense in the world. It's good TV.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we can all agree no job
Speaker 1: more important than making television because it's really, for a
Speaker 1: surprising amount of the population, the only thing keeping them
Speaker 1: on the ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're
Speaker 1: at all aware of the news, both the Writers Guilt
Speaker 1: the WGA and the Actors Guild sag AFTRA have both
Speaker 1: separately although they are now you know, on strike at
Speaker 1: the same time, have both kind of independently announced strikes
Speaker 1: after a breakdown in negotiations with the major studios. And
Speaker 1: to talk with me today about what's going on. What's
Speaker 1: it like being a writer on strike? Is my friend
Speaker 1: and one of the people who makes a show that
Speaker 1: helps keep me on the ragged edge of sanity. Soren Bowie, Soren,
Speaker 1: how you doing, Woo?
Speaker 2: You're simply the.
Speaker 3: Best money you bet of them all the risks. Stop it, Tina,
Speaker 3: stop it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1: Very good, very good. Sew. You are my former colleague
Speaker 1: at cracked dot com dot net backslash aol.
Speaker 2: Don't send anyone there now, and.
Speaker 1: You are also, at least before the strike hit where
Speaker 1: a have been for the last several years a writer
Speaker 1: on American Dad, one of the most consistently funny animated
Speaker 1: shows of like twenty years now almost.
Speaker 3: It's been on the air, stop it stop. Thank you,
Speaker 3: Robert Tina, You guys are the best. Uh, that's very
Speaker 3: nice of you. Thank you very much for saying that.
Speaker 1: It did cost a lot of money to get her
Speaker 1: in the studio today.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's very kind of you to say. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: we try very hard. But it also has like a
Speaker 3: feel at the show of like the warden isn't watching,
Speaker 3: Like we're kind of allowed to do what we want,
Speaker 3: and it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you love your job. It's very obvious that I
Speaker 1: think probably everyone there loves writing for that show. Most
Speaker 1: of the people I know who write for TV have
Speaker 1: the same attitude of like, Wow, I can't believe I
Speaker 1: get to do this. But that attitude is great and
Speaker 1: it makes life livable. But what doesn't make life livable
Speaker 1: and what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is
Speaker 1: starving to death, which is an increasing reality for a
Speaker 1: lot of writers over the last like ten years. So
Speaker 1: a decade ago, about thirty three percent of TV writers
Speaker 1: got what was paid like the minimum rate, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the minimum rate you get paid to get
Speaker 1: staffed on a union show. And the WGA says that
Speaker 1: about half of TV writers are at that point. Now,
Speaker 1: writer pay has declined about fourteen percent over the last
Speaker 1: five years. And that's with inflation. That's like, if you
Speaker 1: kind of take out inflation, right, everybody's making a Yeah,
Speaker 1: with inflation, it's like twenty three percent writer producer pay
Speaker 1: over the last decade with inflation factored in. So that
Speaker 1: sucks because people aren't watching twenty three percent less TV.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think we're watching more TV than we
Speaker 1: ever have before. Like, so it and I like, if
Speaker 1: you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming
Speaker 1: platforms about how many people are watching, it sure doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like TV writers have have been gotten twenty three
Speaker 1: percent worse at their jobs. So anyway, there was The
Speaker 1: WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to
Speaker 1: kind of you know, shorten it, we're asking for more money,
Speaker 1: more money and residuals, more money and upfront pay changes
Speaker 1: to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid.
Speaker 1: There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a
Speaker 1: while now to kind of kill the concept of a
Speaker 1: writer's room in a lot of shows, and they have
Speaker 1: a couple of different sort of fucky ways to do that.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, Robert, it is a dream to come
Speaker 3: on a podcast with you, because you do your fucking homework.
Speaker 3: I usually I'm the one who has to explain all
Speaker 3: this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this
Speaker 3: is going.
Speaker 1: You're right, Can you walk us through kind of what's
Speaker 1: been happened, because that's a thing that I think is
Speaker 1: sort of you miss that on kind of the big
Speaker 1: level sort of like discussions of this is like what
Speaker 1: like what a writer's room is and sort of what
Speaker 1: streamers have been tiny to try to do to change
Speaker 1: that because fundamentally, like one thing people who know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about will point out is that like movies
Speaker 1: are you know, not that scripts don't matter, but it's
Speaker 1: like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of
Speaker 1: like guiding you know, through the vision of like what
Speaker 1: a film is going to be and TV is a
Speaker 1: writer driven medium more often you'll at least hear that
Speaker 1: a lot, and I kind of want to talk about,
Speaker 1: like what is a writer's room and what has been
Speaker 1: changing in terms of how studios have been trying to
Speaker 1: edge that concept out?
Speaker 3: Great, great question. So, so writer's room traditionally, like you
Speaker 3: think back to broadcast television and it's heyday, the way
Speaker 3: writer's room worked is you had probably first you're gonna
Speaker 3: have like twenty to twenty two episodes a season, and
Speaker 3: then within that you've got a block of anywhere from
Speaker 3: like ten to almost sometimes twenty writers. And the reason
Speaker 3: that you have so many writers on a show like
Speaker 3: that is because while you're working on it, it's also
Speaker 3: in production, so as stories are being broken, and that
Speaker 3: means that there are rooms where people are creating a
Speaker 3: story together. As that's going on, there's like six other
Speaker 3: things going on, like you're gonna have they're probably filming
Speaker 3: during that time, and if that's your particular written by episode,
Speaker 3: like that's the episode with your name on it, you
Speaker 3: might be on set for that because you're going to
Speaker 3: be having to make changes on the fly. While that's
Speaker 3: going on, there's table reads happening, there's joke punch ups happening, so.
Speaker 2: There's generally a separate room for that.
Speaker 3: And so you need like a pretty big group of
Speaker 3: people to just make a show, to just write a show.
Speaker 3: And that's that's to keep the hours within like, to
Speaker 3: keep them bearable. I mean, it doesn't even you wouldn't
Speaker 3: even turn that into a nine to five. Generally, that's
Speaker 3: still a lot of hours with a lot of people,
Speaker 3: but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now, streaming has
Speaker 3: tried to change that because they're tired of hiring so
Speaker 3: many writers and they're tired of paying writers, and so
Speaker 3: with streaming there's different loopholes that they can get into,
Speaker 3: which is, if you start creating a show before it's
Speaker 3: even technically green lit, you can start having writers write episodes,
Speaker 3: but because it's not green lit, you're not beholden to
Speaker 3: the same rules through the WGA. You can start hiring
Speaker 3: people at their at a minimum even if they are
Speaker 3: should be making more than that. And depending on what
Speaker 3: your position is at as a writer, like you start
Speaker 3: as a staff writer, then you move up to story editor,
Speaker 3: then executive story editor, and you move up and up
Speaker 3: and up, from there. Generally, what happens is if you
Speaker 3: leave a show as a as an executive story editor,
Speaker 3: you don't then go to another show and drop back
Speaker 3: down to staff writer. You maintain the position that you
Speaker 3: have because you've now learned the trade enough that usually
Speaker 3: you have a skill set that's valuable enough that you
Speaker 3: should be being paid for being an executive story editor.
Speaker 3: So what they're doing is they're making sure that people
Speaker 3: are not being paid for the roles that they generally
Speaker 3: have because they can do that. Be four show has
Speaker 3: been green lit, and then they will say we're gonna write, like,
Speaker 3: let's just write twelve episodes, and that's a lot, Like
Speaker 3: that's a whole season of television. But they're doing it
Speaker 3: before it's green lit. And then what happens is you
Speaker 3: will have these writers who are burning the midnight oil
Speaker 3: trying to get this thing done and calling in a
Speaker 3: lot of favors from friends because you have such a
Speaker 3: small group of writers. You have maybe like in a
Speaker 3: pre green lit room, you've got like three or four
Speaker 3: people trying to write an entire season of a show. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and as they're writing it, they're like they're calling in
Speaker 3: favors from friends, and be like will you come edit
Speaker 3: this and stuff?
Speaker 2: Because you don't have.
Speaker 3: Enough people for everything. You have to break all these
Speaker 3: stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on in
Speaker 3: each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth for
Speaker 3: all of that. So you're calling in favors from other people,
Speaker 3: like do we just come and like look at this?
Speaker 2: Will you just take a look?
Speaker 3: Like we need like eyes on this, and so you're
Speaker 3: calling in favors from friends. Students have figured out that
Speaker 3: they can. They can you can ask people to do this. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it's like they.
Speaker 1: Get a natural part of the process. Every writer in
Speaker 1: every form of writing does a version of this, and
Speaker 1: they're like, what if we did this to help to
Speaker 1: make it easier to start?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and then and then what they would do.
Speaker 3: There's different tactics beyond that, which is like once those
Speaker 3: are app once those episodes are written, then maybe the
Speaker 3: studio will will uh. They can kind of pick and
Speaker 3: choose when they want to release that. They don't have
Speaker 3: like a it's not like in broadcast television where everything
Speaker 3: gets released in the fall. It's just like you can
Speaker 3: choose when you want to release it, So maybe you
Speaker 3: wait a year or whatever, you release it, and then
Speaker 3: you can release it in two seasons. So if you
Speaker 3: have twelve episodes, you can cut those into six.
Speaker 1: Six six, which I fucking hate. This is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a distraction, Like we miss by because we're
Speaker 1: not doing seasons the way they used to. There's so
Speaker 1: much good shit we miss thin. Like half the best
Speaker 1: episodes are star Trek. We're just like, we have forty
Speaker 1: dollars to shoot this episode on, Like what can we
Speaker 1: do with like three guys in a room? You know?
Speaker 3: I know? Like you, yeah, you're like you miss out
Speaker 3: on those bottle episodes, those like little ones where you're
Speaker 3: just like or like that. If you think back to
Speaker 3: Breaking Bad, like there's the.
Speaker 1: Fly episode episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, it's like the best episode of the show
Speaker 3: because you've got room to stop and breathe and like
Speaker 3: build just characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Yeah, it's like you lose out on all that.
Speaker 3: Then you can also because you're breaking it up, you
Speaker 3: don't have to pay people to like advance them to
Speaker 3: the next the next season, and then that would also
Speaker 3: be released over the course of like two years. And
Speaker 3: so you have a writer who's written for maybe like
Speaker 3: eleven weeks on something on a show, and then they
Speaker 3: don't know that they have that job again for another
Speaker 3: two and a half years, and so there's no consistency,
Speaker 3: there's no and nothing is stable, and that makes it
Speaker 3: very very difficult for writers to keep their jobs and
Speaker 3: like maintain a writing job.
Speaker 1: It's this really fucked up situation in which I think
Speaker 1: the streaming era in freeing sort of television from some
Speaker 1: of like the way that sweeps used to work, the
Speaker 1: way that a lot of like kind of the way
Speaker 1: that you would have to like run shows, and the
Speaker 1: way that they aired when you were you were doing
Speaker 1: it on like fucking cable and they're that supported. Has
Speaker 1: allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows
Speaker 1: that you never could have had, right it was just
Speaker 1: we're just watching the Bear. Probably the standout episode of
Speaker 1: The Bear from season two is this like episode about
Speaker 1: a family Christmas party that's just this absolute, like anxious
Speaker 1: nightmare that's an hour long episode, twice the length of
Speaker 1: a normal episode, And oftentimes that's kind of a mixed
Speaker 1: thing with TVs, but it works in this one, and
Speaker 1: the fact that it's so much longer actually like helps
Speaker 1: with like trans you could you can only do that
Speaker 1: with shows that work the way they do in streaming.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have
Speaker 1: gotten to do in nineteen ninety three. Probably. But while
Speaker 1: I think like there's a lot of cool stuff structurally
Speaker 1: that's gotten to come out of that, it's also it's
Speaker 1: it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the
Speaker 1: job so much less reliable. Like it's it's like it's
Speaker 1: really stark, how much more difficult it's become to make
Speaker 1: a living in TV? Yeah, yeah, is more popular than ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, that's like it's making more money than it
Speaker 3: ever possibly has in the past, and certainly through streaming.
Speaker 3: Like they're not these these studios are not moving to
Speaker 3: streaming because like they they're early adopters of technology. The
Speaker 3: money is there, so they're going to streaming. It's like
Speaker 3: they're making way more through streaming, but writers are getting
Speaker 3: paid les and less because they're finding these, like well
Speaker 3: West loopholes in streaming. Residuals is another one that's like
Speaker 3: it The way that residuals work is it is if
Speaker 3: you have a show that then gets played again through
Speaker 3: syndication or through streaming, you should then get a residual
Speaker 3: check for every time that the wrote episode that you
Speaker 3: wrote shows up on television, and it was very easy
Speaker 3: to track that as it would show up on like
Speaker 3: our show on American Dad. Yeah, I know that it's
Speaker 3: going to get played on Cartoon Network. I know that
Speaker 3: it's going to get played at these other spots. The
Speaker 3: TBS will rerun it at some point, and I can
Speaker 3: I know when those are coming in. With streaming, it's
Speaker 3: much more difficult to determine when somebody watched something, not
Speaker 3: because those numbers don't exist, but because all these platforms
Speaker 3: that are created by studios will not give out that information.
Speaker 3: That information is like in a black box where you
Speaker 3: have no idea how often a show gets streamed. There's
Speaker 3: a couple of reasons, like people are speculating as to
Speaker 3: why that might be. One is that either shows are
Speaker 3: getting watched way more often and people are not getting
Speaker 3: the proper residuals that they should be, or that the
Speaker 3: whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah, it's all yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And if you found out how little people were actually
Speaker 3: watching television, this whole all investors, everything, the whole thing
Speaker 3: would collapse. I don't know which is true.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 3: I just want to know what the numbers are. So
Speaker 3: like a big part of a big part of this
Speaker 3: is is the WJA asking different streaming platforms. You got
Speaker 3: to you got to be more transparent. You got to
Speaker 3: tell us how well our show is doing, so that
Speaker 3: we know if people are getting paid properly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's again, it would be one thing if
Speaker 1: like writers were getting less than ever and TV was
Speaker 1: just like dying as a as a thing, as a
Speaker 1: as a create things that people want. But there is
Speaker 1: the money. We know where the money is going. The
Speaker 1: eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in twenty twenty one made
Speaker 1: nearly three quarters of a billion dollars an annual salary,
Speaker 1: which is more than the value of what the WGA
Speaker 1: and sag AFTRA want to take out of them and
Speaker 1: increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guarantee you ari Emmannual, the highest compensated of these
Speaker 1: CEOs over at Endeavor three hundred and eight million dollars.
Speaker 1: And like, I don't think he made any of your
Speaker 1: He's not responsible for any of your favorite shows whatever,
Speaker 1: Like lying in the great you know made you made
Speaker 1: you laugh? Or cry or like whatever joke from American
Speaker 1: Dad keeps you you know, makes you suddenly start like
Speaker 1: balling out laughing while you're driving down the highway. That
Speaker 1: was not ari am manual. Yet neither the shows were
Speaker 1: endeavor whatever. You know what you know what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do here?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ted Sorrando's whatever. Fucking you know, Bob Eiger, all
Speaker 1: the guys like they're they're I mean fundamentally like Bob Eiger.
Speaker 1: One of the big things he did was pushed the
Speaker 1: Flash movie out into theaters, really put a lot of
Speaker 1: money into that, thought it was gonna be important for
Speaker 1: the brand going forward. Lost so much money lost, like
Speaker 1: probably about as much money as like the Writer's Guild
Speaker 1: is asking for it increased compensation this year, like if
Speaker 1: they just hadn't made that movie. So let's talk. You
Speaker 1: guys went on strike. What it's been like two months
Speaker 1: now already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like day eighty four or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a little more than two months. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling, Like, what does it mean like physically to
Speaker 1: be on strike, like going out and picketing and stuff.
Speaker 3: Great questions, Robert, Uh, it's uh, it's actually really nice.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say like it's I enjoy it
Speaker 3: because I would rather be getting paid and not being
Speaker 3: freaking out about the fact that.
Speaker 2: I don't have a job.
Speaker 3: But going out it gives me gives me a sense
Speaker 3: of purpose first of all, each day to like get
Speaker 3: up and go out of this to the picket lines. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you're out there, you're marching around it. You choose
Speaker 3: your studio, like from the majority of the time I
Speaker 3: go to Sony or I go to Amazon, and I
Speaker 3: know the people there. Now it's like going to the
Speaker 3: gym every day where you get to know the people
Speaker 3: there and then you build your community. And so I've
Speaker 3: got this group of people that, like I go there.
Speaker 3: These are just people that like I happen to talk
Speaker 3: to because like we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I hope that's not teams their truck or whatever. And
Speaker 3: then and then you just like strike up a conversation
Speaker 3: with somebody. You start talking, and then you find out
Speaker 3: that this person like ran Malcolm in the Middle for
Speaker 3: eight years and you're like, oh, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: You know, people talk a lot about how the last
Speaker 1: writers strike, which was kind of like right when I
Speaker 1: was getting out of fuck in high school. They're not
Speaker 1: far from that point, like a year or two later. Uh,
Speaker 1: how the last writers strike was kind of what gave
Speaker 1: us the birth of like a lot of reality TV.
Speaker 1: You can almost argue there was a degree to which
Speaker 1: it like was part of Trump's rise to prominence, right,
Speaker 1: because that's why The Apprentice gets on air, because that's
Speaker 1: a way the studios can get around paying writers. But
Speaker 1: I also wonder on the opposite and like, how many
Speaker 1: shows do we get because of connections people make out
Speaker 1: of the picket line, because like folks meet each other
Speaker 1: and get talking, like I do. I do wonder if
Speaker 1: that's like a thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guarantee it is. I mean it is shocking
Speaker 3: how like how quickly you just chum up with people
Speaker 3: and like, yeah, the the contact I shouldn't call. It's
Speaker 3: like it's not supposed to be a networking experience, but
Speaker 3: it just ends up being that. Like you can't help it,
Speaker 3: Like you're just talking to people and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, your jobs come up and you start talking
Speaker 3: about your work, and then people are like after lit
Speaker 3: while like well like send me something, like send me
Speaker 3: some of your writing and then you just become buddies
Speaker 3: and like you start working on stuff accidentally together. And
Speaker 3: I guarantee that like by the end of this, there'll
Speaker 3: be writing teams that didn't exist before, and there'll be
Speaker 3: people who want to make stuff together. Plus the studio
Speaker 3: pipeline will be empty, so like they're gonna want to
Speaker 3: like fill it with They're gonna want to fill it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when the strike ends. And guarantee there's gonna be people
Speaker 3: from the lines who came up with stuff on the lines,
Speaker 3: So we're gonna be like we've got lots like there's
Speaker 3: what about this and be like, yes that by it,
Speaker 3: we'll take that.
Speaker 1: And I like just kind of in general, the fact
Speaker 1: that like that's sort of the the hope, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant industry colossuses,
Speaker 1: not just like writing TV shows with other people, but
Speaker 1: like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building connections
Speaker 1: with people, the fact that you there's an understanding of
Speaker 1: shared interest. You're seeing this especially like now that like
Speaker 1: sag After has joined the strike. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are very famous and prominent
Speaker 1: talking about issues that go well beyond Hollywood, right, the
Speaker 1: the incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has increased
Speaker 1: over the years, the fact that a lot of companies
Speaker 1: that used to do things of value and employee people
Speaker 1: and good jobs have been hollowed out for the short
Speaker 1: term profits of you know, vulture capitalists who's job is
Speaker 1: to you know, fucking suck money out and hand it
Speaker 1: to shareholders and shit like this is not just a
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this started in the fucking nineties.
Speaker 1: We've talked about like uh, Jack Welch and Ge and
Speaker 1: kind of like how that company was turned from something
Speaker 1: that made stuff to something that produced stock value and
Speaker 1: fired people. And you're you're getting that all across entertainment
Speaker 1: right now. And I think this is I think, and
Speaker 1: this is something I think kind of everyone knows on
Speaker 1: some level. This is an inflection point, right, you know,
Speaker 1: AI is a part of it, the fact that we're
Speaker 1: about to see them try to use this technology to
Speaker 1: cut down the number of people they have to pay
Speaker 1: even further. But it's like this is bigger than Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Hollywood is just getting a lot of attention because actors
Speaker 1: know how to get attention. Yeah, that is the job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 3: Writers are good at building the narrative and right, actors
Speaker 3: are very good at getting attention.
Speaker 1: Then you exactly, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like it was a it's a worst case scenario,
Speaker 3: want to say, for like for the studio is and
Speaker 3: just because it's no coincidence the UPS is going on
Speaker 3: strike that all these companies are going on strike right now,
Speaker 3: because the same thing's happening across the board where it's
Speaker 3: like this consolidation of power and then consolidation of money.
Speaker 3: And then it's just like all that you are beholden
Speaker 3: to when you are at the top of these companies
Speaker 3: is the shareholders and like getting them money, and so
Speaker 3: whatevery way you can do that, you do it. And
Speaker 3: a lot of times the way you do that is
Speaker 3: that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure
Speaker 3: out how to carve out money from them and bring it.
Speaker 2: Rise it to the top.
Speaker 3: And so yes, I think that it's what happened was
Speaker 3: the WGA went on strike. The WGA is a very
Speaker 3: strong good guild, good union that like does not blink,
Speaker 3: and and everyone saw that, and immediately people were on
Speaker 3: the side of the WGA in a way that I
Speaker 3: think no one anticipated that all everybody else in unions
Speaker 3: is like, no, this is wrong, Like we should We're
Speaker 3: dealing with the exact same stuff, and universally everyone seems.
Speaker 2: To be on the side of unions right now.
Speaker 3: Then that's like we should use that, like we should,
Speaker 3: we should ride that wave a little bit, and absolutely
Speaker 3: they should, because there's there's so many things that are
Speaker 3: systemically broken right now, just happens to be the entertainment
Speaker 3: industry is the only one that I have it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have skin in the game on.
Speaker 1: We had this moment about a week or so ago where,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of weeks ago that it came
Speaker 1: out that like some anonymous studio executive told a writer
Speaker 1: at I think it was Deadline, that their plan was
Speaker 1: to the wja's demands were un reasonable and we're just
Speaker 1: going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes,
Speaker 1: right until we're on the street, and then well then
Speaker 1: we can get them to accept it. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is right around when SAG was, you know, deciding
Speaker 1: to strike and Ron Pearlman gets on and makes a
Speaker 1: little video where he basically says, you know, we can
Speaker 1: burn your houses down, Like there's more than one way
Speaker 1: to lose a house. And I thought the important thing
Speaker 1: about sharing that because one of the ways you know,
Speaker 1: media works is that there's people. The things that people
Speaker 1: are willing to listen to and that can like affect
Speaker 1: them and change their minds is partly dependent on the
Speaker 1: situational context that the time. This is why so many
Speaker 1: of like the journalist, much of the journalism have done
Speaker 1: the far right, like has been articles that I felt
Speaker 1: like I had to get out within an hour or
Speaker 1: two of a shooting because people will pay attention to
Speaker 1: these these things that are problems that are important. They
Speaker 1: won't lead if I do a deep dive on how
Speaker 1: this specific kind of radicalization works normally, But if somebody
Speaker 1: has just been shot, they'll listen, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: like unfortunate, but that's the way people are. And there's
Speaker 1: this I thought. What I thought was important about that
Speaker 1: is that not that you know, Ron Peerlman threatened to
Speaker 1: burn down a guy's house, that's just kind of funny,
Speaker 1: but what he was doing there that's really valuable that
Speaker 1: I think more people need to think about is accepting
Speaker 1: that when you're saying something like, well, we just need
Speaker 1: to wait for writers to lose their homes. That's a
Speaker 1: violent threat. That is a threat to harm somebody for
Speaker 1: your own personal gain, and we shouldn't view that as
Speaker 1: like fundamentally morally different than saying I want to go
Speaker 1: rob a guy with a thirty eight, right, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like there's a big moral gap between them,
Speaker 1: And you can get people to actually kind of who
Speaker 1: maybe wouldn't think about that, to think about that this way.
Speaker 1: And I think that's an important thing to transmit in
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 3: Oh man one hundred per Yeah, the fact that that
Speaker 3: what it gives, it gives you real context for what
Speaker 3: they're actually saying when they say we just got to
Speaker 3: wait them out till they don't have any more money,
Speaker 3: and like it really starts to h hurt their health
Speaker 3: and well being, Like, yeah, you have somebody else being like,
Speaker 3: oh I can hurt your health and well being and
Speaker 3: be like, okay, I get how those are the same thing,
Speaker 3: but but but that's not what the way I was
Speaker 3: saying it was. It was more removed, you see, And
Speaker 3: so you're absolutely right, Like having hell Boy come out
Speaker 3: and be like there's lots of ways to lose a house,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh.
Speaker 1: Shit, Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's there's like
Speaker 1: potential right now that I'm glad to see recognized. How
Speaker 1: are you doing, like just in general with this because
Speaker 1: it is you know, we've talked about all the good parts.
Speaker 1: There's a lot that's good. This is like, this is
Speaker 1: a stressful time, Like I'm wondering like when you wake
Speaker 1: up and like you here for acknowledging that. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: it's like how you be.
Speaker 2: It sucks.
Speaker 3: It sucks real bad. It sucks particularly badly because I
Speaker 3: loved my job. When I talk about all these things,
Speaker 3: a lot of this wasn't happening at my job. My
Speaker 3: job was a I had working for an animated show
Speaker 3: that ran twenty two episodes a season that was it
Speaker 3: would get We knew when we were getting our pickups generally.
Speaker 2: And it was a system that worked.
Speaker 3: And I was really really enjoying it and very happy
Speaker 3: at my job. I was getting paid well, like I
Speaker 3: liked everything about it. I felt like it was financially
Speaker 3: stable and I was getting what I deserved and I
Speaker 3: was just happy. And that's not what's happening across like
Speaker 3: eighty percent of other shows right now. And so like
Speaker 3: we left we left our show in solidarity of other
Speaker 3: writers because at some point, you know this, I maybe
Speaker 3: won't have this job anymore and I'll have to go
Speaker 3: get another job. And also for all the people who
Speaker 3: are working those other jobs, and it is really really
Speaker 3: struggling right now to even make ends meet. We know
Speaker 3: they're watching what they're working on three different shows a year,
Speaker 3: like they came and pay their rent, Like we're working
Speaker 3: on behalf of them, but more importantly, like we're striking
Speaker 3: on behalf of all of the other writers who are
Speaker 3: going to come along after this. Like the fact that
Speaker 3: the two thousand and eight strike happened was the reason
Speaker 3: that my show is so good and has such good benefits,
Speaker 3: and like why the show is is comfortable for writers
Speaker 3: because they fucking went to work and like they got
Speaker 3: what they needed from the studios, even though it was
Speaker 3: hard and it was bitter, and a lot of them
Speaker 3: lost their jobs over it. And so now it's just
Speaker 3: like even though it sucks and I'm not happy about it,
Speaker 3: it's it's our turn to do it. It's like our
Speaker 3: turn to make sure that everything works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an important detail that like a lot
Speaker 1: of the people striking there's been this kind of like
Speaker 1: bad faith theme I've seen. I've seen some people on
Speaker 1: the left do it online where like they'll post some
Speaker 1: video of like an actor, you know, talking about why
Speaker 1: they're doing this striking, like this person's net worth is
Speaker 1: this many millions of dollars. It's like, yeah, well they're
Speaker 1: not striking for them, Like Ron per ol Man is
Speaker 1: going to be okay. Ron Perlman is not going to
Speaker 1: be forced out of his home. Like that's not why
Speaker 1: they're doing this, because I mean, yeah that.
Speaker 3: You can have a you can you can have a
Speaker 3: good job but also have a sense of the bigger
Speaker 3: picture and like a greater a greater good.
Speaker 1: You can just like care about the art form. You know,
Speaker 1: we're watching journalism get fucking eatn Alive right now, and
Speaker 1: AI is gonna has been a part of like people
Speaker 1: have already lost their jobs because this shit, and like
Speaker 1: the thing that keeps getting brought up to me when
Speaker 1: I'll I'll talk about it to like family or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know they're using it to replace
Speaker 1: these low level jobs. You know, some up sports articles
Speaker 1: or like you know this kind of coverage or that
Speaker 1: kind of coverage like it's not the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: you do. It's not like investigation. You can't have a
Speaker 1: machine do that. And it's like we have, but how
Speaker 1: do you think people learn to do what I do?
Speaker 1: Like part of it is like doing the Like that's
Speaker 1: the feed, right, It's part of what you're saying about
Speaker 1: like TV writing. It's like they're trying to kill the
Speaker 1: way in which people learn how to continue this art form.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many parallels between this and what's happening
Speaker 3: with journalism in terms of like it's turning it essentially
Speaker 3: into a gig economy, which is exactly what destroyed the news, yeah,
Speaker 3: or is destroying the news, but like, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 3: the same thing. And when you talk about AI, like
Speaker 3: you if you were to write an episode of a
Speaker 3: show and you ever written by credit on it, you
Speaker 3: get a script fee for that, and ultimately, like what
Speaker 3: the studios want is to just have a piece of
Speaker 3: shit AI written script to begin with, and then they're
Speaker 3: not paying a script fee to anybody, and then writers
Speaker 3: just fix that and so like yeah, it's it's all
Speaker 3: these different like cost saving measures then ensure that no
Speaker 3: one will ever come up through this industry again.
Speaker 1: And learn all the things. Yeah, there will still be
Speaker 1: people who become writers, but there'll be people whose parents
Speaker 1: are rich and so they can afford to work for
Speaker 1: free for forever and then and then you know what,
Speaker 1: we don't get the Bear. Yeah, the bear in it's
Speaker 1: curiously jacked leading man. Where's where's he get the time?
Speaker 1: When's he putting down the protein? We're not saying him
Speaker 1: jug a protein shake every twenty minutes. You can this
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and I agree with you.
Speaker 3: The structure that requires the like to get a body
Speaker 3: like that, the structure you need in your life and
Speaker 3: like the regiments that you need to follow, need to
Speaker 3: be like to a tee every single day. And there's
Speaker 3: just he's too sponteus. There's too much going on in
Speaker 3: his life.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have time.
Speaker 3: He doesn't have two hours to carve out to go
Speaker 3: to the gym every day.
Speaker 1: No, this is my only issue, Like, this is what's
Speaker 1: really threatening my support of the WGA. I just need
Speaker 1: an episode of the Bear where all it is is
Speaker 1: going through his workout routine. He's in the back room,
Speaker 1: he's doing some pearls, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got bags of rice back there and he's
Speaker 3: doing squats with them on his shoulders. I even I
Speaker 3: want to see him at three am in the morning
Speaker 3: and I'll buy it. I'll be a five at three
Speaker 3: am in the morning and he's like going to it anytime,
Speaker 3: fitness or fucking whatever, and he's like work it out
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 2: I can be like, Okay, there it is.
Speaker 1: That's when he's doing it. There, we got benefits of it.
Speaker 1: Let me see him get his BCAAs you know, have
Speaker 1: fucking ritchie be like you're taking your pre workout today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it give me a little bit, you know. All right, Soren,
Speaker 1: you got it out here. Do you have anything you
Speaker 1: want to plug before, like perhaps a podcast with our
Speaker 1: with our other former colleague Dan O'Brien.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, I got a show called
Speaker 3: a Quick Question with Dan and Soorn. No, Soren and
Speaker 3: Dan oh got him a headliner. Uh yeah, Quick Question
Speaker 3: with Soren and Daniel. You can check that out anywhere
Speaker 3: you listen to podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I
Speaker 3: catching up because we live on opposite coasts.
Speaker 2: And we're good buddies.
Speaker 3: And uh that's about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent. Check out Quick Questions with Sorn and Dan.
Speaker 1: Special show just a thank you. It's a wonderful time, Soren,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, and you know, good luck out
Speaker 1: there on the picket line. To you, to all of
Speaker 1: the other writers, and to everybody at SAG after, thank you.
Speaker 2: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 3: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.