For some time now I’ve wondered why SAG wasn’t getting more support from our fellow workers in the film industry as we try to come to a contract agreement with the AMPTP. If you read the various forums, most of the talk has been of the ‘just settle the contract so we can all get [...]

Why The Smoke & Mirrors, SAG & AMPTP? I don’t see why the SAG National Majority and their pals, the Big Media labor lawyers, are needing to waste more than an hour in talks since all they’re doing is Xeroxing AFTRA’s TV/Theatrical Contract. These past two days have consisted of nothing more than playing at [...]

Self-described ‘working class actor’ John Cygan offers his take on the deal that AFTRA signed and why SAG should not agree to that same deal. What do you think?

“The facts of this matter are simple and straight forward. The WGA attempted for eight months, since March, to address via dialogue the AMPTP’s erroneous interpretation of our February agreement. These efforts included a number of conversations between the Guild’s executive director and at least one of the CEOs who made the deal with the [...]

The bad blood between SAG and the AMPTP seems to be getting thicker as both sides take to hammering each other with press releases and letters to their memberships. First is SAGs official release following a full page ad the AMPTP published in the L.A. Times: Los Angeles, CA (December 01, 2008) – Today’s open [...]

SAG members received the following missive from National Exec. Director and Chief Negotiatior, Doug Allen. The impression one would get from reading Daily Variety or listening to other press sources is that there is no ongoing communication and SAG is just stalling with no plan of action in place. Some of the conventional wisdom has [...]

It looks like warring factions inside SAG have found some common ground vs the AMPTP. Finally, all the SAG board agrees that allowing SAG sanctioned, non-Union production and no residuals for certain so called new media production is a bad idea for actors. Daily Variety reporter and AMPTP fanboy, Dave McNary lays it all out [...]

No movement. That’s all there is to report on the ongoing standoff between SAG and the AMPTP. Trade publications put attendance at Saturday’s SAG membership meeting in Hollywood at 450 – 750, depending on which industry rag you want to believe. The producer-friendly Daily Variety article actually has the attendance at the upper end of [...]

Today, SAG distributed a white paper July 15, 2008 that is “is an analysis of trends that have emerged or intensified in the media landscape since the Directors Guild of America negotiated its deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on January 17th, 2008. In sum, what was once termed “new media” [...]

In what is being termed a ‘sidebar’ meeting, an off the record meeting with an unspecified agenda, the AMPTP has agreed to meet with SAG negotiators today to discuss the current contract stalemate. AMPTP insists that the offer on the table is in fact their ‘last best final’ offer and that there will be no [...]