SAG and AFTRA
Current mood: Motivated

To all my actor friends and friends of actors,

This is a long one but it’s incredibly important for actors to read.

Today is an important day. Yesterday AFTRA decided to separate itself from joint negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild on the upcoming TV/Theatrical and Exhibit A contracts, thereby ending our joint bargaining agreement called Phase One.

No matter what you know about or think about the current SAG AFTRA situation, or the failed merger or the various political factions, the time to be informed is now.

Regardless of what mistakes or errors in judgement you may believe either or both of your unions have made, the time to get involved is now.

No matter who you may blame for the current situation, the time to take action is now.

This is nothing less than a war for our future ability to make a living as middle class actors.

I am including Nikki Finke’s article on the subject below for some background. The article is accurate. I was in the board room and I have been a witness to the events of the past year as a Hollywood SAG board member for the past 5 years and as a member of the joint Working and Wages committee. (Interestingly, the group of AFTRA representatives who delivered the message to SAG included only one working actor.)

What can you or should you do?

Please forward this email to every actor or friend of actors you know.
*Tell them that AFTRA is jeopardizing their future ability to make a living as an actor by continually undercutting SAG contract minimums--negotiating cheaper deals with producers.
*Have this conversation as many times with as many actors as you can.
*Talk to each other via email (build your SAG email lists), in audition rooms, at your classes, with your agents (our ability to make a living is directly entwined with theirs), and with your AFTRA leadership.
*Call AFTRA (323) 634-8100 and tell them to get back to Phase One and negotiate jointly with Screen Actors Guild or at the very least stick to the negotiating proposals that were voted up by the joint Working and Wages committee. I can tell you that the negotiating proposals voted up by working actors from both unions are fair and reasonable, approved unanimously by the W&W committee (composed equally of SAG and AFTRA members) and the key to the middle class actor’s future.

The fact that AFTRA has recently followed a policy of undercutting SAG contract minimums is not disputed by AFTRA. I was there when two of their leaders admitted that they had signed contracts with producers for rates lower than the contract minimums negotiated by SAG. Under the Phase 1 agreement neither union is allowed to undercut the other. Put simply--and anyone who has worked on an AFTRA show can attest to this--you make far less in residuals on an AFTRA show than you do on a SAG show. Talk to any cast member from Army Wives, Dirt, Damages, Corey in the House or any other AFTRA-contracted show. They are furious with the terms of their AFTRA contracts.

Due now to AFTRA’s choice to negotiate alone, the danger is that AFTRA will sign on to the formula deal that the Writers were forced to sign after they were shamefully hamstrung by the DGA, who inexcusably played industry patsy and negotiated their deal while their sister union was walking the picket line. Make no mistake. The DGA and WGA deals do no favors for actors. They are apples and oranges when it comes to what actors need to continue making a living, supporting their families, paying their mortgages and surviving as professional actors (not hobbyists).

If we actors are forced to take their deals without serious changes to reflect the needs of actors, then the demise of the acting middle class will be assured.

To continue to make a living as actors, the middle class actor in particular cannot accept the WGA terms. We will effectively be cut out of New Media money as we have been on Home Video and Cable and we will get nothing on DVD--an industry that earned the studios almost 30 billion dollars last year (of which the actors shared 1%). That source of revenue is not going away in the next 3 years I can assure you.

We must ALL now do the work of traditional Union Organizing. That means that we must continue to have this conversation with every actor we can so that we are informed, organized and mobilized as a Union. We need to pay attention to communication from the Guild. We need to answer the call when our Union needs us.

1. Make sure your email address is current with the Screen Actors Guild
2. Check the Sag.org website regularly -- Bookmark it.
3. Attend Members on the Move meetings
4. Join in the Hollywood to the Docks labor march on April 15. It will begin at a rally at the Screen Actors Guild HQ at 5757 Wilshire Blvd. There is a war going on over the entire globe as labor fights to protect its ability to make a living and preserve healthcare and pensions. Stand up with members of other unions. We will need their support as they need ours.
5. Talk to other actors. Get informed and stay informed.

This is where the rubber meets the road.

Are you willing to stand up and defend your chosen careers? Will you show up?

If you don’t, you will lose your ability to make a living as an actor and become waiters, temps, hobbyists, teaching subs, etc. first and actors last instead of the other way around.

It’s time to support the Screen Actors Guild.


Anthony De Santis
web.mac.com/anthonydesantis
818-571-4351

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Deadline Hollywood Daily

UPDATE: Tonight I received the news that AFTRA national president Roberta Reardon and officers including Susan Boyd Joyce, Denny Delk, Bob Edwards, Matt Kimbrough, Shelby Scott held their national meeting and approved a formal rift with their stepsister actors union SAG. They then went to SAG’s national board meeting and declared that AFTRA won’t negotiate jointly with the Screen Actors Guild on the new primetime TV contract. This, in spite of a long-time agreement by AFTRA to bargain jointly with SAG and not undercut rates. So basically those "make nice" pronouncements of recent days are out the window. And all because of a blown-way-out-proportion incident involving AFTRA, SAG and the soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful. Now AFTRA has taken such an extreme position that not even the AFL-CIO may be able to rein it in.

The AFTRA maneuver is disingenuous, bordering on slightly dishonest, because I’m told the union has known about the B&B incident for weeks and done nothing until this weekend. Then there’s the curious and convenient timing of an obviously planted story in the Los Angeles Times Saturday, designed to give Reardon some protective cover. So it now looks like tonight’s announcement was a carefully planned 11th hour ploy by her to get out of joint bargaining and justify AFTRA’s going it alone. My sources assure me that AFTRA has false concerns because SAG has no interest in organizing daytime. If anything, the concern is justified the other way around because AFTRA is already treading on SAG’s scripted TV turf by repping, for example, both Damage and Dirt.
It was hardly a secret, much less a scoop, that the Emmy-winning star of The Bold And The Beautiful, Susan Flannery, has for some time now circulated a petition to decertify AFTRA as the union representing the actors on the long-running soap. But, suddenly, the LA Times was exaggerating a minor matter whereby SAG’s national executive director Doug Allen was approached by two B&B actors for a meeting.

When the duo launched into a litany of complaints about AFTRA’s representation, witnesses tell me that Allen properly turned them aside and sent them back to AFTRA. But it took the LAT until the 11th paragraph to convey that salient point. And the paper never bothered to mention that these two B&B cast members were also SAG members since there are many dual cardholders.

This is, after all, the very same newspaper that took every side but the WGA’s when the striking writers were pressured by the moguls and the directors. And the same newspaper that ignored the recent AFTRA-SAG blame game when AFTRA was at fault. Yet the LAT on Saturday was breathlessly reporting how "AFTRA officials were upset at SAG for not telling them about the meeting until two weeks after the fact, according to Reardon." Interesting that she timed her public hissy fit to the very weekend when both AFTRA and SAG national boards were meeting on the eve of the two guilds starting joint negotiations on the primetime TV contract.

I’m told from inside AFTRA’s board confab that Reardon "misrepresented the incident to blame Doug Allen for encouraging poaching and raiding even though that’s not the case. Reardon said it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She’s using this as an excuse because she’s wanted to get out of Phase One for the past year."

Reardon acolytes keep claiming that SAG’s so-called "Membership First" leadership clique is causing all the current trouble with AFTRA. Don’t misunderstand me: there’s plenty of petty nonsense going on inside both camps. But it’s painful to watch the actors guilds battle amongst themselves (or even the actors inside SAG) with that June deadline bearing down. I sense real concern that dual cardholders may not stay loyal in the event of a SAG strike. Which serves to explain why this latest Reardon move looks like an AFTRA ploy to further encroach on SAG’s jurisdiction by offering inferior terms on contracts. While SAG accounts for 100% of motion pictures and about 90+% of television, AFTRA has 3 shows under this primetime TV contract. Now it appears that AFTRA is going to negotiate those on its own, thus continuing the union’s shameful history of pay undercuts and residuals giveaways that have compromised actors for years. Lots of casts are still unhappy with AFTRA’s basic cable deals, so there will be more when AFTRA folds on primetime contract points. Why, it’s a Big Media mogul’s wet dream!

But here’s what Reardon said in a statement Saturday night:

"AFTRA’s primary goal is to improve and protect the working lives of performers. During the past year, AFTRA has fought hard and expended an enormous amount of time, energy and resources to maintain the integrity of our Phase One joint bargaining process with the Screen Actors Guild, so we could sit across the table from the industry with total and unequivocal unity. Unfortunately, SAG leadership has made this impossible. For the past year SAG leadership in Hollywood has engaged in a relentless campaign of disinformation and disparagement, culminating in a recent attempt to decertify a AFTRA daytime soap opera. As a result of this continued and ongoing behavior by SAG leadership, which at its core harms all working performers and the labor movement, we find ourselves unable to have any confidence in their ability to live up to the principles of partnership and union solidarity. AFTRA believes it must devote its full energies to working on behalf of performers, and not wasting time assessing whether our partner is being honest with us. With this in mind, the AFTRA National Board today voted overwhelmingly in favor of suspending Phase One, and negotiating the primetime television contract on our own. We are now prepared to move forward and negotiate a strong contract for our members as soon as possible. This action was taken in the hope that someday, the historic trust between these two organizations can be rebuilt – in the best interests of all performers."

SAG President Alan Rosenberg also released a statement, and sounded pissed:

"We remain focused on negotiating the best terms for actors covered by the TV Theatrical contract. We spent weeks working with our fellow actors in AFTRA on joint proposals to improve the lives of all working actors. AFTRA’s refusal now to bargain together and their last second abandonment of the joint process is calculated, cynical and serves the interests of their institution not its members."

Naturally, the AMPTP chimed in from the sidelines, since the Big Media companies have been watching with glee while AFTRA beats up on SAG:

"On February 14th, just after we concluded our agreement with the writers, we called for our negotiations with actors to begin promptly. Today we are pleased that to learn that AFTRA is also ready to begin talks immediately. We are determined, as we have always been, to work hard and bargain reasonably with the actors’ unions so that we can all avoid another harmful, unnecessary strike."

11:01 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

side observance.
Current mood: hungry
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Hmmmm

10:18 AM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Prestige
Current mood: awake
Category: Life

I saw a movie tonight called "The Prestige." In it, there is a magic trick that involves a person entering a box while tossing a ball and then stepping out of an identical box on the other side of the stage and catching the ball.

DON'T READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO BE SUPRISED BY THE MOVIE

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The trick is done by having a double. The magicians in the movie took their tricks to such extremes that the doubles lived their entire lives as one magician switching back and forth, both living as the magician and as the faithful and mysterious assistant as well. The movie took great pains to show how far these magicians were willing to go for their tricks including living as one magician to the outside world to the point where one eventually perished and one went on living.

What has this all got to do with me?

I feel as though I am living the corollary life to these magicians lives. I am one person who is deeply divided as though I were two persons. That is how I often feel and, no, I am not describing a psychotic break or schizophrenia. And, no, it isn't just that I change my mind often. What I am talking about is the inability to trust oneself beyond a particular moment. For example: at this moment I may be happily in love with someone or at least imagine that I am. But the person (myself) who is in love with that woman cannot be trusted. Not even by myself. In the next moment I may feel not only that I am no longer in love but that I cannot spend another moment with this person; that I cannot touch them or be touched by them. This isn't just a phase or a passing malaise. It is completely uncontrollable and it is an extremely deep and powerful feeling. I am powerless to stop it, to change it or even to understand it. It is manifested physically. I am physically unable to be with that person. The best I have ever been able to do is to confront it and then delay the inevitable break that must come between myself and this woman.

The opposite is also true. Right now I might feel vulnerable and believe that I need someone, that I want to reach out to someone. I have learned not to give in to that feeling either. Not because I don't believe it is good to need somone. I do. I desire that feeling, which may or may not be part of being in love and I have never stopped searching for a way to nurture that feeling in order to connect more deeply with people in a more lasting way. But I have come to not trust the feeling because it is entirely likely that tomorrow I will have no such need and furthermore I may feel great revulsion or disappointment toward the moments of vulnerability or perhaps weakness that led me to act in certain ways only the day or moment before. Yes, I understand how this sounds--as though a little therapy and an admission that "I need help" should be able to resolve the issue. I have tried. I continue to try. I never stop trying and I hope I never do. I have spent several years admitting that the answers might lie outside myself. As I get older, however, I increasingly find the answers within myself. The answer may be that I am not a co-habiting animal. I may not ever share the rest of my life wih somone. I may be happiest not doing so. The moments of reaching out or feeling that something is missing are far outweighed and outnumbered by a very happy, high-functioning, enjoyable life. Yes, I admit, there is always the suspicion that I am missing out on something very important. That is why I have not stopped trying to open myself in new and different ways to people, to life, to the world.

As I've gotten older and more accustomed to these swings, this tagging of hands that lets one of me in and the other out the trap door, I've learned not to be free with my actions when feeling one way or the other. It is one thing to feel the feelings and another to act on them. For example: I would avoid telling someone I love them when I felt as though I did because the person who stepped into my place the following moment might feel entirely differently. So, why promise a lover the world when you will only take it back in the next breath? Some might say that it is good to follow your heart. Often the very same people who say that are the ones that wish maybe I hadn't when I change places with myself. They see only the possible success or good things that they hope will result from our relationship. They don't see the downfall coming or deny that it is. They imagine that they are ready for anything and that they are dealing with the only one of me that there is. Only I know the truth. Only I can understand it, no matter how I try to convey the situation. I do try to do that but my explanations fall on temporarily deaf ears. Then am I not negligent if, knowing my divergent sides, that I hold any feelings or profession of those feelings in reserve until such time as perhaps I have reconciled my two halves and they are able to commune with each other and with our lover? Is there a healing that needs to take place? I have never stopped trying to achieve such a healing and I have never been afraid to take risks or to seek help or advice yet I still, after all these years, dread the exchange: the coming of the night or daylight when one side of me leaves and the other takes its place.

Perhaps I am destined to live as these two sides of myself, never truly bringing them around to a single point of view. Perhaps I am happiest when they have no need of reconciliation, these two contrary selves living their own lives. When I am alone, they are happy to steer in the same direction. It is only when I attempt to join with a third that their differences result in crisis for the three of us. At that point a fourth place is set at our table.

The fourth seat is taken by guilt: guilt that the woman who is seated at the table can only get hurt. She doesn't know the game that is afoot. She doesn't even know the players. They say that if you look around the table and you cannot tell who the pigeon is....then you are the pigeon. There really is only room for us three when all is said and done. She must leave us alone--again. There then comes the painful process of attempting to politely ask her to leave in order that we can enjoy our meal because maybe it is too painful, too disgusting to be seen by her as we squabble over which of us will hold sway for that moment and for the future. Like fallen angels, the very sight of us reflected in someone else's eyes at our most ugly can be humiliating: crushing. Even when the person looking looks with love, the quarrel is not with them. The quarrel is with myself and it causes me great shame to be seen that way, like an emotional leper. Until I can commit to one direction or another, whether I can come to that on my own or with the help of someone else, an advisor or a lover, I don't know what to do or how to act. I don't know how to give someone enough information for them to be able to protect themselves. Can you go into every relationship with a large disclaimer printed on your chest? I think I would if I thought it would help.

One half of me would like to think that I am the only one in the world who is so incredibly complex. It is salve for the ego. The other hopes that I am only one of the majority and that there are others who can help me find answers to this ridiculous problem. I'll just have to wait and see which one of my selves shows up. I know that sounds self-pitying--that I am subject to the whim of fate. Normally I reject that and I believe and am comforted in any situation to know that I have the power to influence the outcome in my favor or not. I am feeling at a loss over this one, though. I just can't seem to crack it. Or possibly to put it back together.

Currently listening : Burn the Maps By The Frames Release date: 08 February, 2005

7:30 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

What does it cost?
Current mood: Sarsparilla

What does it cost us to move on from a relationship?

I've lived most of my life looking forward to whatever might be next. Lately I'm becoming aware of a mounting sadness around the edges of my relationships. It's something that's been building I think, like plaque in your arteries, like Tylenol in the liver, like aspartaime in the blood vessels of your brain. Perhaps sadness is building up and the logical result is an emotional stroke.

It used to be that my sadness after a relationship was sadness for just me. Sad that I was left alone or sad that I had hurt someone. More and more it's an awareness that there is sadness in the world. As if I had tapped into a deeper more universal human sadness that lives beneath the surface of getting places on time, of taking a phone call, of getting a paycheck. Realizing that I am part of the world is both deeply terrible and cynically comforting. At least I'm not the only one on the sinking cruise ship.

They say that the human female is given the gift of forgetting the pain of giving birth in order for her to contemplate having another child. I like that. But there is something unqualifiedly right and good in giving birth and continuing the species. I'm having a little trouble giving the same pass to the ends of relationships. Though I almost never have had the "You bastard!! How could you?" break-up, still there seems to be something inherently guilt laden about turning your path away from that of someone about whom you care and who cares for you.

In basketball they call it, "No harm. No foul." Everybody just keeps on playing. But there are so many problems with basketball these days. Didn't it used to be beautiful? That's what I hear.

11:32 PM - 7 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Soliciting answers

What is it about travelling that makes one feel creative? I know it's not any new insight on my part but I am just curious as to what others think causes that increase in the creativity endorphins.

11:12 PM - 5 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Pie in the sky

It's my fault. You couldn't be the person I imagined. Maybe no one can.

12:50 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lexxis Nexxis

Two conversations recently came together for me.

One friend told me that the definitive moment, when he knew that his wife was the right woman for him, was the moment when he realized that he could be a child with her. Now, he didn't mean that he relished the idea of a lifetime of tantrums without limit. He meant that he had found a woman with whom he could be weak and that she was strong enough for him to feel supported even when he was vulnerable. He didn't feel that he always had to carry the load and be the main source of strength in the relationship. He knew that there would be times, as there always are in long-term relationships, when he would need to be able to lean on her.

This is something that I have been looking for for a long time. Mychoices have involved dynamics where I (and I understand my responsibility in having made the choices and that it is my issues that I have to clen up in order to change my choices) I end up taking on more and more of the power in the relationship. I need to find someone who can hold on to their share of the power and I need to find it in myself to let go enough for that to develop--a mutual sharing of the power. (I use the word power, not in the sense of power over someone else, but as in the combined power that the relationship creates and fosters between two people.)

The second conversation referenced a study that states that it is possible in 2 minutes, with a very high degree of certainty, to determine whether or not a couple will be together 15 years down the road. The tell is whether or not either member of the couple shows contempt for the other.

I know that in my relationships, as I have taken on more of the power I have developed, I am ashamed to realize, a sense of contempt for the other person. The more I feel that I must am assuming the strength role and that the balance is tilted toward me, the more I begin to loathe that thing in the other person that is allowing me to take that role. I don't want that role. But thus far I have been unable to not take it if it is there for the taking.

So where does this leave me?

Well, there is a lot more to this. There is always work to be done on oneself and I haven't stopped trying to do that work. I am aware of many of the issues that I would like to address and continue to address. I have recently begun to appreciate, however, that I need a partner of uncommon inner strength. So, until I'm perfect (tongue in cheek) and can modulate my own issues to perfectly complement someone else's, then I'll have to keep searching for someone who is far enough along in their own journey to be able to turn around every once in a while and offer a helping hand or know when not to as well.

Speaking of which, I think women's intuition has gone the way of the ERA. Is it the hormones in the food that is dulling this once extraordinary sense? I dunno. But that's an issue for another time.

10:24 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

How to spend 5 months

Sometimes one little thing can make all the hassle worthwhile.

Beginning in September, I agreed to sign on as an advisor to the Hollywood Youth and Government chapter. I had no idea what that entailed. I had never heard of that program before. For your information, it is a mock government program in which the children perform all the tasks and responsibilities of California’s real government. They write bills, hold elections, appoint officers and Supreme Court justices and a governor and then debate bills before the Assembly and the Senate and try to get them passed. That’s it in a nutshell.

But that nutshell doesn’t come close to encompassing all that really goes on. Children from all over California gather, twice in Paso Robles at Camp Roberts—the only location that makes sense for assembling, housing and feeding some 2500 kids—and then again in Sacramento. It’s the Sacramento portion where the magic really happens. A rumbling, bumbling, gabbing, flirting, shouting mass of teen energy is transformed into a professional government before your eyes. There are caucuses, debates, inquiries and growth: Growth on many levels; growth in understanding democracy; growth in accepting responsibility and growth in understanding and relating to peers from every stratum of California society. They even learn how to tie ties and that business attire does not include bare midriffs.

It was that growth that was worth the price of admission for me—the time I really couldn’t or sometimes didn’t want to spend, the travel, the den mothering all melted away. Getting to witness that growth is the reason I’ll be back for more next year—Back for more exhaustion, more bad food, more chasing after teenagers with the combined energy of a quasar. I’ll be back because of the privilege of seeing that growth first hand. So few things in life pay off so quickly and so rewardingly.

Finally, to illustrate what I’m referring to I’ll relate a story. It was in the final hours at the hotel in what is called the friendship ceremony that I was truly humbled. One of our delegates, a girl who had really taken the program to heart and had spent the three days in Sacramento breaking down personal barriers, going beyond expectations and blossoming before our eyes raised her hand to speak. Before the first words came she began to sob. And as the dozen of us passed around the tissues we unabashedly joined in. She finally was able to tell us that that weekend had been the first time in her life that people, her peers, had judged her not on her race or her appearance and not by where she was from but by what she had to say and by what she could contribute. Thank you Jasmine. Thank you to all the Y and G kids.

My mantra for next year? What hassle?

1:10 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

8 6 6 -- 66 faster
Current mood: repentant

Whiny. Needy. Pathetic.

Words that spring to mind when reading my last blog. A blog so embarassing that I didn't even give it a title.

Sometimes you need to be a man about things and admit when you've been unmanly.

And geez...Alone in a Crowd...wow that's pathetic. This whole blog reminds me of the early 80s when I was into unicorns and rainbows. At least then I was part of a group. A whiny, needy, pathetic group but a group nonetheless.

So, I'm single. So are a lot of people. 99% of the time that's just fine. I don't go spreading drivel over the internet. But I guess, it was probably late at night. I probably had had a drink. I was probably wearing women's underwear and sucking on a pacifier -- no, not Vin Diesel. And somehow, the filter must have been turned off. The one that keeps you from embarassing yourself in public. The one that stops you from urinating on the street or marching in the Gay Day parade in a thong and pasties or painting your face and chest and going to a football game.

I'd like to take this opportunity and send a shoutout to Andrea for properly castigating me with regard to this offensive blog which we discuss here. It was her keen insight and brutal honesty (read: insults) that allowed me to see beyond the needy me, beyond the little boy sucking on his ba ba, beyond Mommy's pathetic little baby in baby's diapers sucking on his soothing little thumb and in desperate need of some talcum. By seeing things for what they were, I am freed from the shackles of being a sad little pussy.

Therefore: I submit myself for public castigation and humiliation here on MySpace. It is up to you dear reader to either forgive me or else to doom me to further humiliation. I stand naked before you (ok I'm wearing that thong but aside from that....) awaiting your decision.

I humbly await your decision.

8:11 AM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

----

ALone in a crowd.

I feel like I'm doing some kind of penance. I, ANthony, must spend so much of my life alone due to my own shit. I will not meet someone I can spend my life with. I cannot let anyone close to me. I make myself sad. It's like I have to keep going back and re-doing my homework until I get it right. THe silly thing is, I am pretty ok with who I am. I think. I spend most of my time feeling happy. I think. There's just a missing piece. I would say that that was someone to love. But even though you think you've done all your homework, the answers keep coming up just a little bit wrong. So, the answers say that my math is wrong somewhere.

What do you think?

3:58 PM - 4 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment