Wednesday, November 21, 2007

WGA rally in Hollywood




M and I met down at Hollywood and Vine's metro stop and he signed in at the WGA table. I signed in at the SAG table since there was no official IATSE table and SAG was happy to have me sign in along with members of other labor unions, SEIU specifically. It was very crowded. At some point we started moving as a group towards Hollywood and Highland. It was a slow march, terminating in a rally in front of the Chinese Theater which was festooned with a rainbow of balloons (in honor of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz who finally got their star on the Walk of Fame).

The Teamsters had parked a big semi in the middle of the boulevard and that's where we stopped for the rally. Several people spoke, though I could see none of them (I'm on the tall side of short). We marched along side Mike White for a little while (which was ironic since M and I were talking about his script for "Chuck and Buck" the other day) There were lots of people there whom I recognized but couldn't place, maybe they'd worked at Fox or CBS Radford or I'd seen them on set or at a party. There were some really clever signs, one in particular on one side invited people to spend Thanksgiving with the Chernins and had their address. On the other side it encouraged people to drop Sumner Redstone a holiday card, also listing his address.

Randall Bobbitt has some great photos of the march on his blog including some of the more notable people/creatures of the day. I loved the CAA Scone Guy, he's my hero! I hope he represents me one day.

As to how may people showed up, well I saw nothing on the TV news to indicate that, though the United Hollywood site had a comment left by someone saying there were 10,000 people in attendance. Would like to hear from anyone who has heard any other estimated numbers.

Here's an interesting article in the LA Times about the changes happening in our industry. I have to agree we are entering a time where the content creators (not just writers but us creative producer types too) can -- and have begun to -- take a more entreprenurial stance to our work.

It was a great event, I realized I hadn't been to a rally in years since my DC days (when there was always one about something or another). The march and rally was just the right length, maybe AMPAS should take note when planning the Oscars? I especially liked that I didn't have to drive down there, could all events be Metro close? Here's a Howlywood dog...



Here's hoping the talks on Monday actually get us somewhere.

2 comments:

Freshwater Mermaid said...

Hey lady, well said! email me if you wish, freshwatermermaid@gmail.com

Freshwater Mermaid said...

http://freshwatermermaid.blogspot.com/2007/12/chasing-their-tails.html

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