July 25, 2023 • 29 mins
Robert sits down with old friend and WGA writer Soren Bowie to talk about what Hollywood writers want and where their struggle against the studios stands today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back to It could happen here a podcast about
things falling apart, and you know, when things fall apart,
one of the few things that can keep you on
an even keel, you know, keep you feeling like there's
something that makes sense in the world. It's good TV.
You know, I think we can all agree no job
more important than making television because it's really, for a
surprising amount of the population, the only thing keeping them
(00:27):
on the ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're
at all aware of the news, both the Writers Guilt
the WGA and the Actors Guild sag AFTRA have both
separately although they are now you know, on strike at
the same time, have both kind of independently announced strikes
after a breakdown in negotiations with the major studios. And
(00:49):
to talk with me today about what's going on. What's
it like being a writer on strike? Is my friend
and one of the people who makes a show that
helps keep me on the ragged edge of sanity. Soren Bowie, Soren,
how you doing, Woo?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
You're simply the.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Best money you bet of them all the risks. Stop it, Tina,
stop it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Very good, very good. Sew. You are my former colleague
at cracked dot com dot net backslash aol.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Don't send anyone there now, and.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You are also, at least before the strike hit where
a have been for the last several years a writer
on American Dad, one of the most consistently funny animated
shows of like twenty years now almost.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
It's been on the air, stop it stop. Thank you,
Robert Tina, You guys are the best. Uh, that's very
nice of you. Thank you very much for saying that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It did cost a lot of money to get her
in the studio today.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Oh, that's very kind of you to say. Yeah, I
we try very hard. But it also has like a
feel at the show of like the warden isn't watching,
Like we're kind of allowed to do what we want,
and it's.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, you love your job. It's very obvious that I
think probably everyone there loves writing for that show. Most
of the people I know who write for TV have
the same attitude of like, Wow, I can't believe I
get to do this. But that attitude is great and
it makes life livable. But what doesn't make life livable
and what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is
(02:26):
starving to death, which is an increasing reality for a
lot of writers over the last like ten years. So
a decade ago, about thirty three percent of TV writers
got what was paid like the minimum rate, which is
kind of the minimum rate you get paid to get
staffed on a union show. And the WGA says that
(02:47):
about half of TV writers are at that point. Now,
writer pay has declined about fourteen percent over the last
five years. And that's with inflation. That's like, if you
kind of take out inflation, right, everybody's making a Yeah,
with inflation, it's like twenty three percent writer producer pay
over the last decade with inflation factored in. So that
(03:07):
sucks because people aren't watching twenty three percent less TV.
In fact, I think we're watching more TV than we
ever have before. Like, so it and I like, if
you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming
platforms about how many people are watching, it sure doesn't
seem like TV writers have have been gotten twenty three
(03:29):
percent worse at their jobs. So anyway, there was The
WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to
kind of you know, shorten it, we're asking for more money,
more money and residuals, more money and upfront pay changes
to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid.
There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a
(03:51):
while now to kind of kill the concept of a
writer's room in a lot of shows, and they have
a couple of different sort of fucky ways to do that.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I gotta say, Robert, it is a dream to come
on a podcast with you, because you do your fucking homework.
I usually I'm the one who has to explain all
this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this
is going.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
You're right, Can you walk us through kind of what's
been happened, because that's a thing that I think is
sort of you miss that on kind of the big
level sort of like discussions of this is like what
like what a writer's room is and sort of what
streamers have been tiny to try to do to change
that because fundamentally, like one thing people who know what
they're talking about will point out is that like movies
are you know, not that scripts don't matter, but it's
(04:30):
like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of
like guiding you know, through the vision of like what
a film is going to be and TV is a
writer driven medium more often you'll at least hear that
a lot, and I kind of want to talk about,
like what is a writer's room and what has been
changing in terms of how studios have been trying to
edge that concept out?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Great, great question. So, so writer's room traditionally, like you
think back to broadcast television and it's heyday, the way
writer's room worked is you had probably first you're gonna
have like twenty to twenty two episodes a season, and
then within that you've got a block of anywhere from
like ten to almost sometimes twenty writers. And the reason
(05:10):
that you have so many writers on a show like
that is because while you're working on it, it's also
in production, so as stories are being broken, and that
means that there are rooms where people are creating a
story together. As that's going on, there's like six other
things going on, like you're gonna have they're probably filming
during that time, and if that's your particular written by episode,
like that's the episode with your name on it, you
(05:31):
might be on set for that because you're going to
be having to make changes on the fly. While that's
going on, there's table reads happening, there's joke punch ups happening, so.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
There's generally a separate room for that.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And so you need like a pretty big group of
people to just make a show, to just write a show.
And that's that's to keep the hours within like, to
keep them bearable. I mean, it doesn't even you wouldn't
even turn that into a nine to five. Generally, that's
still a lot of hours with a lot of people,
but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now, streaming has
(06:02):
tried to change that because they're tired of hiring so
many writers and they're tired of paying writers, and so
with streaming there's different loopholes that they can get into,
which is, if you start creating a show before it's
even technically green lit, you can start having writers write episodes,
but because it's not green lit, you're not beholden to
the same rules through the WGA. You can start hiring
(06:22):
people at their at a minimum even if they are
should be making more than that. And depending on what
your position is at as a writer, like you start
as a staff writer, then you move up to story editor,
then executive story editor, and you move up and up
and up, from there. Generally, what happens is if you
leave a show as a as an executive story editor,
you don't then go to another show and drop back
(06:42):
down to staff writer. You maintain the position that you
have because you've now learned the trade enough that usually
you have a skill set that's valuable enough that you
should be being paid for being an executive story editor.
So what they're doing is they're making sure that people
are not being paid for the roles that they generally
have because they can do that. Be four show has
been green lit, and then they will say we're gonna write, like,
(07:04):
let's just write twelve episodes, and that's a lot, Like
that's a whole season of television. But they're doing it
before it's green lit. And then what happens is you
will have these writers who are burning the midnight oil
trying to get this thing done and calling in a
lot of favors from friends because you have such a
small group of writers. You have maybe like in a
pre green lit room, you've got like three or four
(07:26):
people trying to write an entire season of a show. Yeah,
and as they're writing it, they're like they're calling in
favors from friends, and be like will you come edit
this and stuff?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Because you don't have.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Enough people for everything. You have to break all these
stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on in
each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth for
all of that. So you're calling in favors from other people,
like do we just come and like look at this?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Will you just take a look?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Like we need like eyes on this, and so you're
calling in favors from friends. Students have figured out that
they can. They can you can ask people to do this. Essentially,
it's like they.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Get a natural part of the process. Every writer in
every form of writing does a version of this, and
they're like, what if we did this to help to
make it easier to start?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and then and then what they would do.
There's different tactics beyond that, which is like once those
are app once those episodes are written, then maybe the
studio will will uh. They can kind of pick and
choose when they want to release that. They don't have
like a it's not like in broadcast television where everything
gets released in the fall. It's just like you can
(08:28):
choose when you want to release it, So maybe you
wait a year or whatever, you release it, and then
you can release it in two seasons. So if you
have twelve episodes, you can cut those into six.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Six six, which I fucking hate. This is a little
bit of a distraction, Like we miss by because we're
not doing seasons the way they used to. There's so
much good shit we miss thin. Like half the best
episodes are star Trek. We're just like, we have forty
dollars to shoot this episode on, Like what can we
do with like three guys in a room? You know?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I know? Like you, yeah, you're like you miss out
on those bottle episodes, those like little ones where you're
just like or like that. If you think back to
Breaking Bad, like there's the.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Fly episode episode.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, oh, it's like the best episode of the show
because you've got room to stop and breathe and like
build just characters.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Anyway, Yeah, it's like you lose out on all that.
Then you can also because you're breaking it up, you
don't have to pay people to like advance them to
the next the next season, and then that would also
be released over the course of like two years. And
so you have a writer who's written for maybe like
eleven weeks on something on a show, and then they
don't know that they have that job again for another
(09:32):
two and a half years, and so there's no consistency,
there's no and nothing is stable, and that makes it
very very difficult for writers to keep their jobs and
like maintain a writing job.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
It's this really fucked up situation in which I think
the streaming era in freeing sort of television from some
of like the way that sweeps used to work, the
way that a lot of like kind of the way
that you would have to like run shows, and the
way that they aired when you were you were doing
it on like fucking cable and they're that supported. Has
allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows
(10:07):
that you never could have had, right it was just
we're just watching the Bear. Probably the standout episode of
The Bear from season two is this like episode about
a family Christmas party that's just this absolute, like anxious
nightmare that's an hour long episode, twice the length of
a normal episode, And oftentimes that's kind of a mixed
thing with TVs, but it works in this one, and
the fact that it's so much longer actually like helps
(10:28):
with like trans you could you can only do that
with shows that work the way they do in streaming.
That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have
gotten to do in nineteen ninety three. Probably. But while
I think like there's a lot of cool stuff structurally
that's gotten to come out of that, it's also it's
it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the
job so much less reliable. Like it's it's like it's
(10:52):
really stark, how much more difficult it's become to make
a living in TV? Yeah, yeah, is more popular than ever.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah yeah, that's like it's making more money than it
ever possibly has in the past, and certainly through streaming.
Like they're not these these studios are not moving to
streaming because like they they're early adopters of technology. The
money is there, so they're going to streaming. It's like
they're making way more through streaming, but writers are getting
paid les and less because they're finding these, like well
West loopholes in streaming. Residuals is another one that's like
(11:25):
it The way that residuals work is it is if
you have a show that then gets played again through
syndication or through streaming, you should then get a residual
check for every time that the wrote episode that you
wrote shows up on television, and it was very easy
to track that as it would show up on like
our show on American Dad. Yeah, I know that it's
(11:47):
going to get played on Cartoon Network. I know that
it's going to get played at these other spots. The
TBS will rerun it at some point, and I can
I know when those are coming in. With streaming, it's
much more difficult to determine when somebody watched something, not
because those numbers don't exist, but because all these platforms
that are created by studios will not give out that information.
That information is like in a black box where you
(12:09):
have no idea how often a show gets streamed. There's
a couple of reasons, like people are speculating as to
why that might be. One is that either shows are
getting watched way more often and people are not getting
the proper residuals that they should be, or that the
whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah, it's all yeah, yeah,
And if you found out how little people were actually
(12:29):
watching television, this whole all investors, everything, the whole thing
would collapse. I don't know which is true.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I just want to know what the numbers are. So
like a big part of a big part of this
is is the WJA asking different streaming platforms. You got
to you got to be more transparent. You got to
tell us how well our show is doing, so that
we know if people are getting paid properly.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, and it's again, it would be one thing if
like writers were getting less than ever and TV was
just like dying as a as a thing, as a
as a create things that people want. But there is
the money. We know where the money is going. The
eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in twenty twenty one made
(13:10):
nearly three quarters of a billion dollars an annual salary,
which is more than the value of what the WGA
and sag AFTRA want to take out of them and
increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm
gonna guarantee you ari Emmannual, the highest compensated of these
CEOs over at Endeavor three hundred and eight million dollars.
(13:30):
And like, I don't think he made any of your
He's not responsible for any of your favorite shows whatever,
Like lying in the great you know made you made
you laugh? Or cry or like whatever joke from American
Dad keeps you you know, makes you suddenly start like
balling out laughing while you're driving down the highway. That
was not ari am manual. Yet neither the shows were
endeavor whatever. You know what you know what I'm trying
(13:52):
to do here?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, Ted Sorrando's whatever. Fucking you know, Bob Eiger, all
the guys like they're they're I mean fundamentally like Bob Eiger.
One of the big things he did was pushed the
Flash movie out into theaters, really put a lot of
money into that, thought it was gonna be important for
the brand going forward. Lost so much money lost, like
(14:17):
probably about as much money as like the Writer's Guild
is asking for it increased compensation this year, like if
they just hadn't made that movie. So let's talk. You
(14:39):
guys went on strike. What it's been like two months
now already.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, it's like day eighty four or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, so a little more than two months. How are
you feeling, Like, what does it mean like physically to
be on strike, like going out and picketing and stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Great questions, Robert, Uh, it's uh, it's actually really nice.
I don't want to say like it's I enjoy it
because I would rather be getting paid and not being
freaking out about the fact that.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I don't have a job.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
But going out it gives me gives me a sense
of purpose first of all, each day to like get
up and go out of this to the picket lines. Yeah,
and you're out there, you're marching around it. You choose
your studio, like from the majority of the time I
go to Sony or I go to Amazon, and I
know the people there. Now it's like going to the
gym every day where you get to know the people
there and then you build your community. And so I've
(15:27):
got this group of people that, like I go there.
These are just people that like I happen to talk
to because like we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh,
I hope that's not teams their truck or whatever. And
then and then you just like strike up a conversation
with somebody. You start talking, and then you find out
that this person like ran Malcolm in the Middle for
eight years and you're like, oh, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
You know, people talk a lot about how the last
writers strike, which was kind of like right when I
was getting out of fuck in high school. They're not
far from that point, like a year or two later. Uh,
how the last writers strike was kind of what gave
us the birth of like a lot of reality TV.
You can almost argue there was a degree to which
it like was part of Trump's rise to prominence, right,
because that's why The Apprentice gets on air, because that's
a way the studios can get around paying writers. But
(16:08):
I also wonder on the opposite and like, how many
shows do we get because of connections people make out
of the picket line, because like folks meet each other
and get talking, like I do. I do wonder if
that's like a thing.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, I guarantee it is. I mean it is shocking
how like how quickly you just chum up with people
and like, yeah, the the contact I shouldn't call. It's
like it's not supposed to be a networking experience, but
it just ends up being that. Like you can't help it,
Like you're just talking to people and then all of
a sudden, your jobs come up and you start talking
about your work, and then people are like after lit
while like well like send me something, like send me
(16:41):
some of your writing and then you just become buddies
and like you start working on stuff accidentally together. And
I guarantee that like by the end of this, there'll
be writing teams that didn't exist before, and there'll be
people who want to make stuff together. Plus the studio
pipeline will be empty, so like they're gonna want to
like fill it with They're gonna want to fill it. Yeah,
when the strike ends. And guarantee there's gonna be people
(17:03):
from the lines who came up with stuff on the lines,
So we're gonna be like we've got lots like there's
what about this and be like, yes that by it,
we'll take that.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And I like just kind of in general, the fact
that like that's sort of the the hope, right, Like
that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant industry colossuses,
not just like writing TV shows with other people, but
like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building connections
with people, the fact that you there's an understanding of
shared interest. You're seeing this especially like now that like
(17:34):
sag After has joined the strike. There's a lot of
a lot of people who are very famous and prominent
talking about issues that go well beyond Hollywood, right, the
the incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has increased
over the years, the fact that a lot of companies
that used to do things of value and employee people
and good jobs have been hollowed out for the short
(17:56):
term profits of you know, vulture capitalists who's job is
to you know, fucking suck money out and hand it
to shareholders and shit like this is not just a
you know, a lot of this started in the fucking nineties.
We've talked about like uh, Jack Welch and Ge and
kind of like how that company was turned from something
that made stuff to something that produced stock value and
(18:18):
fired people. And you're you're getting that all across entertainment
right now. And I think this is I think, and
this is something I think kind of everyone knows on
some level. This is an inflection point, right, you know,
AI is a part of it, the fact that we're
about to see them try to use this technology to
cut down the number of people they have to pay
(18:38):
even further. But it's like this is bigger than Hollywood.
Hollywood is just getting a lot of attention because actors
know how to get attention. Yeah, that is the job.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Writers are good at building the narrative and right, actors
are very good at getting attention.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Then you exactly, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
It's like it was a it's a worst case scenario,
want to say, for like for the studio is and
just because it's no coincidence the UPS is going on
strike that all these companies are going on strike right now,
because the same thing's happening across the board where it's
like this consolidation of power and then consolidation of money.
And then it's just like all that you are beholden
to when you are at the top of these companies
(19:15):
is the shareholders and like getting them money, and so
whatevery way you can do that, you do it. And
a lot of times the way you do that is
that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure
out how to carve out money from them and bring it.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Rise it to the top.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
And so yes, I think that it's what happened was
the WGA went on strike. The WGA is a very
strong good guild, good union that like does not blink,
and and everyone saw that, and immediately people were on
the side of the WGA in a way that I
think no one anticipated that all everybody else in unions
is like, no, this is wrong, Like we should We're
(19:50):
dealing with the exact same stuff, and universally everyone seems.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
To be on the side of unions right now.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Then that's like we should use that, like we should,
we should ride that wave a little bit, and absolutely
they should, because there's there's so many things that are
systemically broken right now, just happens to be the entertainment
industry is the only one that I have it.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, I have skin in the game on.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
We had this moment about a week or so ago where,
you know, a couple of weeks ago that it came
out that like some anonymous studio executive told a writer
at I think it was Deadline, that their plan was
to the wja's demands were un reasonable and we're just
going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes,
right until we're on the street, and then well then
we can get them to accept it. And you know,
(20:33):
this is right around when SAG was, you know, deciding
to strike and Ron Pearlman gets on and makes a
little video where he basically says, you know, we can
burn your houses down, Like there's more than one way
to lose a house. And I thought the important thing
about sharing that because one of the ways you know,
media works is that there's people. The things that people
are willing to listen to and that can like affect
(20:55):
them and change their minds is partly dependent on the
situational context that the time. This is why so many
of like the journalist, much of the journalism have done
the far right, like has been articles that I felt
like I had to get out within an hour or
two of a shooting because people will pay attention to
these these things that are problems that are important. They
won't lead if I do a deep dive on how
this specific kind of radicalization works normally, But if somebody
(21:17):
has just been shot, they'll listen, you know, And that's
like unfortunate, but that's the way people are. And there's
this I thought. What I thought was important about that
is that not that you know, Ron Peerlman threatened to
burn down a guy's house, that's just kind of funny,
but what he was doing there that's really valuable that
I think more people need to think about is accepting
(21:38):
that when you're saying something like, well, we just need
to wait for writers to lose their homes. That's a
violent threat. That is a threat to harm somebody for
your own personal gain, and we shouldn't view that as
like fundamentally morally different than saying I want to go
rob a guy with a thirty eight, right, Like I don't.
I don't feel like there's a big moral gap between them,
And you can get people to actually kind of who
(22:00):
maybe wouldn't think about that, to think about that this way.
And I think that's an important thing to transmit in
this time.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Oh man one hundred per Yeah, the fact that that
what it gives, it gives you real context for what
they're actually saying when they say we just got to
wait them out till they don't have any more money,
and like it really starts to h hurt their health
and well being, Like, yeah, you have somebody else being like,
oh I can hurt your health and well being and
be like, okay, I get how those are the same thing,
but but but that's not what the way I was
(22:28):
saying it was. It was more removed, you see, And
so you're absolutely right, Like having hell Boy come out
and be like there's lots of ways to lose a house,
it's like, oh.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Shit, Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's there's like
potential right now that I'm glad to see recognized. How
are you doing, like just in general with this because
it is you know, we've talked about all the good parts.
(22:56):
There's a lot that's good. This is like, this is
a stressful time, Like I'm wondering like when you wake
up and like you here for acknowledging that. Yeah, that's
it's like how you be.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It sucks.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
It sucks real bad. It sucks particularly badly because I
loved my job. When I talk about all these things,
a lot of this wasn't happening at my job. My
job was a I had working for an animated show
that ran twenty two episodes a season that was it
would get We knew when we were getting our pickups generally.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
And it was a system that worked.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
And I was really really enjoying it and very happy
at my job. I was getting paid well, like I
liked everything about it. I felt like it was financially
stable and I was getting what I deserved and I
was just happy. And that's not what's happening across like
eighty percent of other shows right now. And so like
we left we left our show in solidarity of other
(23:52):
writers because at some point, you know this, I maybe
won't have this job anymore and I'll have to go
get another job. And also for all the people who
are working those other jobs, and it is really really
struggling right now to even make ends meet. We know
they're watching what they're working on three different shows a year,
like they came and pay their rent, Like we're working
on behalf of them, but more importantly, like we're striking
on behalf of all of the other writers who are
(24:14):
going to come along after this. Like the fact that
the two thousand and eight strike happened was the reason
that my show is so good and has such good benefits,
and like why the show is is comfortable for writers
because they fucking went to work and like they got
what they needed from the studios, even though it was
hard and it was bitter, and a lot of them
lost their jobs over it. And so now it's just
like even though it sucks and I'm not happy about it,
(24:36):
it's it's our turn to do it. It's like our
turn to make sure that everything works.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Yeah, it's such an important detail that like a lot
of the people striking there's been this kind of like
bad faith theme I've seen. I've seen some people on
the left do it online where like they'll post some
video of like an actor, you know, talking about why
they're doing this striking, like this person's net worth is
this many millions of dollars. It's like, yeah, well they're
not striking for them, Like Ron per ol Man is
going to be okay. Ron Perlman is not going to
(25:03):
be forced out of his home. Like that's not why
they're doing this, because I mean, yeah that.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You can have a you can you can have a
good job but also have a sense of the bigger
picture and like a greater a greater good.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
You can just like care about the art form. You know,
we're watching journalism get fucking eatn Alive right now, and
AI is gonna has been a part of like people
have already lost their jobs because this shit, and like
the thing that keeps getting brought up to me when
I'll I'll talk about it to like family or whatever,
it's like, well, you know they're using it to replace
these low level jobs. You know, some up sports articles
(25:37):
or like you know this kind of coverage or that
kind of coverage like it's not the kind of stuff
you do. It's not like investigation. You can't have a
machine do that. And it's like we have, but how
do you think people learn to do what I do?
Like part of it is like doing the Like that's
the feed, right, It's part of what you're saying about
like TV writing. It's like they're trying to kill the
way in which people learn how to continue this art form.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Yeah, there's so many parallels between this and what's happening
with journalism in terms of like it's turning it essentially
into a gig economy, which is exactly what destroyed the news, yeah,
or is destroying the news, but like, yeah, it's it's
the same thing. And when you talk about AI, like
you if you were to write an episode of a
show and you ever written by credit on it, you
get a script fee for that, and ultimately, like what
(26:19):
the studios want is to just have a piece of
shit AI written script to begin with, and then they're
not paying a script fee to anybody, and then writers
just fix that and so like yeah, it's it's all
these different like cost saving measures then ensure that no
one will ever come up through this industry again.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
And learn all the things. Yeah, there will still be
people who become writers, but there'll be people whose parents
are rich and so they can afford to work for
free for forever and then and then you know what,
we don't get the Bear. Yeah, the bear in it's
curiously jacked leading man. Where's where's he get the time?
When's he putting down the protein? We're not saying him
(26:57):
jug a protein shake every twenty minutes. You can this
on Twitter, and I agree with you.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
The structure that requires the like to get a body
like that, the structure you need in your life and
like the regiments that you need to follow, need to
be like to a tee every single day. And there's
just he's too sponteus. There's too much going on in
his life.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
He doesn't have time.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
He doesn't have two hours to carve out to go
to the gym every day.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
No, this is my only issue, Like, this is what's
really threatening my support of the WGA. I just need
an episode of the Bear where all it is is
going through his workout routine. He's in the back room,
he's doing some pearls, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, he's got bags of rice back there and he's
doing squats with them on his shoulders. I even I
want to see him at three am in the morning
and I'll buy it. I'll be a five at three
am in the morning and he's like going to it anytime,
fitness or fucking whatever, and he's like work it out
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I can be like, Okay, there it is.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
That's when he's doing it. There, we got benefits of it.
Let me see him get his BCAAs you know, have
fucking ritchie be like you're taking your pre workout today. Yeah,
it give me a little bit, you know. All right, Soren,
you got it out here. Do you have anything you
want to plug before, like perhaps a podcast with our
with our other former colleague Dan O'Brien.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
No, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, I got a show called
a Quick Question with Dan and Soorn. No, Soren and
Dan oh got him a headliner. Uh yeah, Quick Question
with Soren and Daniel. You can check that out anywhere
you listen to podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I
catching up because we live on opposite coasts.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
And we're good buddies.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
And uh that's about it.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, excellent. Check out Quick Questions with Sorn and Dan.
Special show just a thank you. It's a wonderful time, Soren,
thank you so much, and you know, good luck out
there on the picket line. To you, to all of
the other writers, and to everybody at SAG after, thank you.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to It could happen here a podcast about
things falling apart, and you know, when things fall apart,
one of the few things that can keep you on
an even keel, you know, keep you feeling like there's
something that makes sense in the world. It's good TV.
You know, I think we can all agree no job
more important than making television because it's really, for a
surprising amount of the population, the only thing keeping them
(00:27):
on the ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're
at all aware of the news, both the Writers Guilt
the WGA and the Actors Guild sag AFTRA have both
separately although they are now you know, on strike at
the same time, have both kind of independently announced strikes
after a breakdown in negotiations with the major studios. And
(00:49):
to talk with me today about what's going on. What's
it like being a writer on strike? Is my friend
and one of the people who makes a show that
helps keep me on the ragged edge of sanity. Soren Bowie, Soren,
how you doing, Woo?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
You're simply the.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Best money you bet of them all the risks. Stop it, Tina,
stop it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Very good, very good. Sew. You are my former colleague
at cracked dot com dot net backslash aol.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Don't send anyone there now, and.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You are also, at least before the strike hit where
a have been for the last several years a writer
on American Dad, one of the most consistently funny animated
shows of like twenty years now almost.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
It's been on the air, stop it stop. Thank you,
Robert Tina, You guys are the best. Uh, that's very
nice of you. Thank you very much for saying that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It did cost a lot of money to get her
in the studio today.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Oh, that's very kind of you to say. Yeah, I
we try very hard. But it also has like a
feel at the show of like the warden isn't watching,
Like we're kind of allowed to do what we want,
and it's.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, you love your job. It's very obvious that I
think probably everyone there loves writing for that show. Most
of the people I know who write for TV have
the same attitude of like, Wow, I can't believe I
get to do this. But that attitude is great and
it makes life livable. But what doesn't make life livable
and what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is
(02:26):
starving to death, which is an increasing reality for a
lot of writers over the last like ten years. So
a decade ago, about thirty three percent of TV writers
got what was paid like the minimum rate, which is
kind of the minimum rate you get paid to get
staffed on a union show. And the WGA says that
(02:47):
about half of TV writers are at that point. Now,
writer pay has declined about fourteen percent over the last
five years. And that's with inflation. That's like, if you
kind of take out inflation, right, everybody's making a Yeah,
with inflation, it's like twenty three percent writer producer pay
over the last decade with inflation factored in. So that
(03:07):
sucks because people aren't watching twenty three percent less TV.
In fact, I think we're watching more TV than we
ever have before. Like, so it and I like, if
you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming
platforms about how many people are watching, it sure doesn't
seem like TV writers have have been gotten twenty three
(03:29):
percent worse at their jobs. So anyway, there was The
WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to
kind of you know, shorten it, we're asking for more money,
more money and residuals, more money and upfront pay changes
to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid.
There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a
(03:51):
while now to kind of kill the concept of a
writer's room in a lot of shows, and they have
a couple of different sort of fucky ways to do that.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I gotta say, Robert, it is a dream to come
on a podcast with you, because you do your fucking homework.
I usually I'm the one who has to explain all
this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this
is going.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
You're right, Can you walk us through kind of what's
been happened, because that's a thing that I think is
sort of you miss that on kind of the big
level sort of like discussions of this is like what
like what a writer's room is and sort of what
streamers have been tiny to try to do to change
that because fundamentally, like one thing people who know what
they're talking about will point out is that like movies
are you know, not that scripts don't matter, but it's
(04:30):
like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of
like guiding you know, through the vision of like what
a film is going to be and TV is a
writer driven medium more often you'll at least hear that
a lot, and I kind of want to talk about,
like what is a writer's room and what has been
changing in terms of how studios have been trying to
edge that concept out?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Great, great question. So, so writer's room traditionally, like you
think back to broadcast television and it's heyday, the way
writer's room worked is you had probably first you're gonna
have like twenty to twenty two episodes a season, and
then within that you've got a block of anywhere from
like ten to almost sometimes twenty writers. And the reason
(05:10):
that you have so many writers on a show like
that is because while you're working on it, it's also
in production, so as stories are being broken, and that
means that there are rooms where people are creating a
story together. As that's going on, there's like six other
things going on, like you're gonna have they're probably filming
during that time, and if that's your particular written by episode,
like that's the episode with your name on it, you
(05:31):
might be on set for that because you're going to
be having to make changes on the fly. While that's
going on, there's table reads happening, there's joke punch ups happening, so.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
There's generally a separate room for that.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And so you need like a pretty big group of
people to just make a show, to just write a show.
And that's that's to keep the hours within like, to
keep them bearable. I mean, it doesn't even you wouldn't
even turn that into a nine to five. Generally, that's
still a lot of hours with a lot of people,
but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now, streaming has
(06:02):
tried to change that because they're tired of hiring so
many writers and they're tired of paying writers, and so
with streaming there's different loopholes that they can get into,
which is, if you start creating a show before it's
even technically green lit, you can start having writers write episodes,
but because it's not green lit, you're not beholden to
the same rules through the WGA. You can start hiring
(06:22):
people at their at a minimum even if they are
should be making more than that. And depending on what
your position is at as a writer, like you start
as a staff writer, then you move up to story editor,
then executive story editor, and you move up and up
and up, from there. Generally, what happens is if you
leave a show as a as an executive story editor,
you don't then go to another show and drop back
(06:42):
down to staff writer. You maintain the position that you
have because you've now learned the trade enough that usually
you have a skill set that's valuable enough that you
should be being paid for being an executive story editor.
So what they're doing is they're making sure that people
are not being paid for the roles that they generally
have because they can do that. Be four show has
been green lit, and then they will say we're gonna write, like,
(07:04):
let's just write twelve episodes, and that's a lot, Like
that's a whole season of television. But they're doing it
before it's green lit. And then what happens is you
will have these writers who are burning the midnight oil
trying to get this thing done and calling in a
lot of favors from friends because you have such a
small group of writers. You have maybe like in a
pre green lit room, you've got like three or four
(07:26):
people trying to write an entire season of a show. Yeah,
and as they're writing it, they're like they're calling in
favors from friends, and be like will you come edit
this and stuff?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Because you don't have.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Enough people for everything. You have to break all these
stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on in
each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth for
all of that. So you're calling in favors from other people,
like do we just come and like look at this?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Will you just take a look?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Like we need like eyes on this, and so you're
calling in favors from friends. Students have figured out that
they can. They can you can ask people to do this. Essentially,
it's like they.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Get a natural part of the process. Every writer in
every form of writing does a version of this, and
they're like, what if we did this to help to
make it easier to start?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and then and then what they would do.
There's different tactics beyond that, which is like once those
are app once those episodes are written, then maybe the
studio will will uh. They can kind of pick and
choose when they want to release that. They don't have
like a it's not like in broadcast television where everything
gets released in the fall. It's just like you can
(08:28):
choose when you want to release it, So maybe you
wait a year or whatever, you release it, and then
you can release it in two seasons. So if you
have twelve episodes, you can cut those into six.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Six six, which I fucking hate. This is a little
bit of a distraction, Like we miss by because we're
not doing seasons the way they used to. There's so
much good shit we miss thin. Like half the best
episodes are star Trek. We're just like, we have forty
dollars to shoot this episode on, Like what can we
do with like three guys in a room? You know?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I know? Like you, yeah, you're like you miss out
on those bottle episodes, those like little ones where you're
just like or like that. If you think back to
Breaking Bad, like there's the.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Fly episode episode.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, oh, it's like the best episode of the show
because you've got room to stop and breathe and like
build just characters.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Anyway, Yeah, it's like you lose out on all that.
Then you can also because you're breaking it up, you
don't have to pay people to like advance them to
the next the next season, and then that would also
be released over the course of like two years. And
so you have a writer who's written for maybe like
eleven weeks on something on a show, and then they
don't know that they have that job again for another
(09:32):
two and a half years, and so there's no consistency,
there's no and nothing is stable, and that makes it
very very difficult for writers to keep their jobs and
like maintain a writing job.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
It's this really fucked up situation in which I think
the streaming era in freeing sort of television from some
of like the way that sweeps used to work, the
way that a lot of like kind of the way
that you would have to like run shows, and the
way that they aired when you were you were doing
it on like fucking cable and they're that supported. Has
allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows
(10:07):
that you never could have had, right it was just
we're just watching the Bear. Probably the standout episode of
The Bear from season two is this like episode about
a family Christmas party that's just this absolute, like anxious
nightmare that's an hour long episode, twice the length of
a normal episode, And oftentimes that's kind of a mixed
thing with TVs, but it works in this one, and
the fact that it's so much longer actually like helps
(10:28):
with like trans you could you can only do that
with shows that work the way they do in streaming.
That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have
gotten to do in nineteen ninety three. Probably. But while
I think like there's a lot of cool stuff structurally
that's gotten to come out of that, it's also it's
it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the
job so much less reliable. Like it's it's like it's
(10:52):
really stark, how much more difficult it's become to make
a living in TV? Yeah, yeah, is more popular than ever.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah yeah, that's like it's making more money than it
ever possibly has in the past, and certainly through streaming.
Like they're not these these studios are not moving to
streaming because like they they're early adopters of technology. The
money is there, so they're going to streaming. It's like
they're making way more through streaming, but writers are getting
paid les and less because they're finding these, like well
West loopholes in streaming. Residuals is another one that's like
(11:25):
it The way that residuals work is it is if
you have a show that then gets played again through
syndication or through streaming, you should then get a residual
check for every time that the wrote episode that you
wrote shows up on television, and it was very easy
to track that as it would show up on like
our show on American Dad. Yeah, I know that it's
(11:47):
going to get played on Cartoon Network. I know that
it's going to get played at these other spots. The
TBS will rerun it at some point, and I can
I know when those are coming in. With streaming, it's
much more difficult to determine when somebody watched something, not
because those numbers don't exist, but because all these platforms
that are created by studios will not give out that information.
That information is like in a black box where you
(12:09):
have no idea how often a show gets streamed. There's
a couple of reasons, like people are speculating as to
why that might be. One is that either shows are
getting watched way more often and people are not getting
the proper residuals that they should be, or that the
whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah, it's all yeah, yeah,
And if you found out how little people were actually
(12:29):
watching television, this whole all investors, everything, the whole thing
would collapse. I don't know which is true.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I just want to know what the numbers are. So
like a big part of a big part of this
is is the WJA asking different streaming platforms. You got
to you got to be more transparent. You got to
tell us how well our show is doing, so that
we know if people are getting paid properly.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, and it's again, it would be one thing if
like writers were getting less than ever and TV was
just like dying as a as a thing, as a
as a create things that people want. But there is
the money. We know where the money is going. The
eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in twenty twenty one made
(13:10):
nearly three quarters of a billion dollars an annual salary,
which is more than the value of what the WGA
and sag AFTRA want to take out of them and
increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm
gonna guarantee you ari Emmannual, the highest compensated of these
CEOs over at Endeavor three hundred and eight million dollars.
(13:30):
And like, I don't think he made any of your
He's not responsible for any of your favorite shows whatever,
Like lying in the great you know made you made
you laugh? Or cry or like whatever joke from American
Dad keeps you you know, makes you suddenly start like
balling out laughing while you're driving down the highway. That
was not ari am manual. Yet neither the shows were
endeavor whatever. You know what you know what I'm trying
(13:52):
to do here?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, Ted Sorrando's whatever. Fucking you know, Bob Eiger, all
the guys like they're they're I mean fundamentally like Bob Eiger.
One of the big things he did was pushed the
Flash movie out into theaters, really put a lot of
money into that, thought it was gonna be important for
the brand going forward. Lost so much money lost, like
(14:17):
probably about as much money as like the Writer's Guild
is asking for it increased compensation this year, like if
they just hadn't made that movie. So let's talk. You
(14:39):
guys went on strike. What it's been like two months
now already.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, it's like day eighty four or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, so a little more than two months. How are
you feeling, Like, what does it mean like physically to
be on strike, like going out and picketing and stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Great questions, Robert, Uh, it's uh, it's actually really nice.
I don't want to say like it's I enjoy it
because I would rather be getting paid and not being
freaking out about the fact that.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I don't have a job.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
But going out it gives me gives me a sense
of purpose first of all, each day to like get
up and go out of this to the picket lines. Yeah,
and you're out there, you're marching around it. You choose
your studio, like from the majority of the time I
go to Sony or I go to Amazon, and I
know the people there. Now it's like going to the
gym every day where you get to know the people
there and then you build your community. And so I've
(15:27):
got this group of people that, like I go there.
These are just people that like I happen to talk
to because like we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh,
I hope that's not teams their truck or whatever. And
then and then you just like strike up a conversation
with somebody. You start talking, and then you find out
that this person like ran Malcolm in the Middle for
eight years and you're like, oh, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
You know, people talk a lot about how the last
writers strike, which was kind of like right when I
was getting out of fuck in high school. They're not
far from that point, like a year or two later. Uh,
how the last writers strike was kind of what gave
us the birth of like a lot of reality TV.
You can almost argue there was a degree to which
it like was part of Trump's rise to prominence, right,
because that's why The Apprentice gets on air, because that's
a way the studios can get around paying writers. But
(16:08):
I also wonder on the opposite and like, how many
shows do we get because of connections people make out
of the picket line, because like folks meet each other
and get talking, like I do. I do wonder if
that's like a thing.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, I guarantee it is. I mean it is shocking
how like how quickly you just chum up with people
and like, yeah, the the contact I shouldn't call. It's
like it's not supposed to be a networking experience, but
it just ends up being that. Like you can't help it,
Like you're just talking to people and then all of
a sudden, your jobs come up and you start talking
about your work, and then people are like after lit
while like well like send me something, like send me
(16:41):
some of your writing and then you just become buddies
and like you start working on stuff accidentally together. And
I guarantee that like by the end of this, there'll
be writing teams that didn't exist before, and there'll be
people who want to make stuff together. Plus the studio
pipeline will be empty, so like they're gonna want to
like fill it with They're gonna want to fill it. Yeah,
when the strike ends. And guarantee there's gonna be people
(17:03):
from the lines who came up with stuff on the lines,
So we're gonna be like we've got lots like there's
what about this and be like, yes that by it,
we'll take that.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And I like just kind of in general, the fact
that like that's sort of the the hope, right, Like
that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant industry colossuses,
not just like writing TV shows with other people, but
like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building connections
with people, the fact that you there's an understanding of
shared interest. You're seeing this especially like now that like
(17:34):
sag After has joined the strike. There's a lot of
a lot of people who are very famous and prominent
talking about issues that go well beyond Hollywood, right, the
the incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has increased
over the years, the fact that a lot of companies
that used to do things of value and employee people
and good jobs have been hollowed out for the short
(17:56):
term profits of you know, vulture capitalists who's job is
to you know, fucking suck money out and hand it
to shareholders and shit like this is not just a
you know, a lot of this started in the fucking nineties.
We've talked about like uh, Jack Welch and Ge and
kind of like how that company was turned from something
that made stuff to something that produced stock value and
(18:18):
fired people. And you're you're getting that all across entertainment
right now. And I think this is I think, and
this is something I think kind of everyone knows on
some level. This is an inflection point, right, you know,
AI is a part of it, the fact that we're
about to see them try to use this technology to
cut down the number of people they have to pay
(18:38):
even further. But it's like this is bigger than Hollywood.
Hollywood is just getting a lot of attention because actors
know how to get attention. Yeah, that is the job.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Writers are good at building the narrative and right, actors
are very good at getting attention.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Then you exactly, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
It's like it was a it's a worst case scenario,
want to say, for like for the studio is and
just because it's no coincidence the UPS is going on
strike that all these companies are going on strike right now,
because the same thing's happening across the board where it's
like this consolidation of power and then consolidation of money.
And then it's just like all that you are beholden
to when you are at the top of these companies
(19:15):
is the shareholders and like getting them money, and so
whatevery way you can do that, you do it. And
a lot of times the way you do that is
that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure
out how to carve out money from them and bring it.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Rise it to the top.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
And so yes, I think that it's what happened was
the WGA went on strike. The WGA is a very
strong good guild, good union that like does not blink,
and and everyone saw that, and immediately people were on
the side of the WGA in a way that I
think no one anticipated that all everybody else in unions
is like, no, this is wrong, Like we should We're
(19:50):
dealing with the exact same stuff, and universally everyone seems.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
To be on the side of unions right now.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Then that's like we should use that, like we should,
we should ride that wave a little bit, and absolutely
they should, because there's there's so many things that are
systemically broken right now, just happens to be the entertainment
industry is the only one that I have it.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, I have skin in the game on.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
We had this moment about a week or so ago where,
you know, a couple of weeks ago that it came
out that like some anonymous studio executive told a writer
at I think it was Deadline, that their plan was
to the wja's demands were un reasonable and we're just
going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes,
right until we're on the street, and then well then
we can get them to accept it. And you know,
(20:33):
this is right around when SAG was, you know, deciding
to strike and Ron Pearlman gets on and makes a
little video where he basically says, you know, we can
burn your houses down, Like there's more than one way
to lose a house. And I thought the important thing
about sharing that because one of the ways you know,
media works is that there's people. The things that people
are willing to listen to and that can like affect
(20:55):
them and change their minds is partly dependent on the
situational context that the time. This is why so many
of like the journalist, much of the journalism have done
the far right, like has been articles that I felt
like I had to get out within an hour or
two of a shooting because people will pay attention to
these these things that are problems that are important. They
won't lead if I do a deep dive on how
this specific kind of radicalization works normally, But if somebody
(21:17):
has just been shot, they'll listen, you know, And that's
like unfortunate, but that's the way people are. And there's
this I thought. What I thought was important about that
is that not that you know, Ron Peerlman threatened to
burn down a guy's house, that's just kind of funny,
but what he was doing there that's really valuable that
I think more people need to think about is accepting
(21:38):
that when you're saying something like, well, we just need
to wait for writers to lose their homes. That's a
violent threat. That is a threat to harm somebody for
your own personal gain, and we shouldn't view that as
like fundamentally morally different than saying I want to go
rob a guy with a thirty eight, right, Like I don't.
I don't feel like there's a big moral gap between them,
And you can get people to actually kind of who
(22:00):
maybe wouldn't think about that, to think about that this way.
And I think that's an important thing to transmit in
this time.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Oh man one hundred per Yeah, the fact that that
what it gives, it gives you real context for what
they're actually saying when they say we just got to
wait them out till they don't have any more money,
and like it really starts to h hurt their health
and well being, Like, yeah, you have somebody else being like,
oh I can hurt your health and well being and
be like, okay, I get how those are the same thing,
but but but that's not what the way I was
(22:28):
saying it was. It was more removed, you see, And
so you're absolutely right, Like having hell Boy come out
and be like there's lots of ways to lose a house,
it's like, oh.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Shit, Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's there's like
potential right now that I'm glad to see recognized. How
are you doing, like just in general with this because
it is you know, we've talked about all the good parts.
(22:56):
There's a lot that's good. This is like, this is
a stressful time, Like I'm wondering like when you wake
up and like you here for acknowledging that. Yeah, that's
it's like how you be.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It sucks.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
It sucks real bad. It sucks particularly badly because I
loved my job. When I talk about all these things,
a lot of this wasn't happening at my job. My
job was a I had working for an animated show
that ran twenty two episodes a season that was it
would get We knew when we were getting our pickups generally.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
And it was a system that worked.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
And I was really really enjoying it and very happy
at my job. I was getting paid well, like I
liked everything about it. I felt like it was financially
stable and I was getting what I deserved and I
was just happy. And that's not what's happening across like
eighty percent of other shows right now. And so like
we left we left our show in solidarity of other
(23:52):
writers because at some point, you know this, I maybe
won't have this job anymore and I'll have to go
get another job. And also for all the people who
are working those other jobs, and it is really really
struggling right now to even make ends meet. We know
they're watching what they're working on three different shows a year,
like they came and pay their rent, Like we're working
on behalf of them, but more importantly, like we're striking
on behalf of all of the other writers who are
(24:14):
going to come along after this. Like the fact that
the two thousand and eight strike happened was the reason
that my show is so good and has such good benefits,
and like why the show is is comfortable for writers
because they fucking went to work and like they got
what they needed from the studios, even though it was
hard and it was bitter, and a lot of them
lost their jobs over it. And so now it's just
like even though it sucks and I'm not happy about it,
(24:36):
it's it's our turn to do it. It's like our
turn to make sure that everything works.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Yeah, it's such an important detail that like a lot
of the people striking there's been this kind of like
bad faith theme I've seen. I've seen some people on
the left do it online where like they'll post some
video of like an actor, you know, talking about why
they're doing this striking, like this person's net worth is
this many millions of dollars. It's like, yeah, well they're
not striking for them, Like Ron per ol Man is
going to be okay. Ron Perlman is not going to
(25:03):
be forced out of his home. Like that's not why
they're doing this, because I mean, yeah that.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You can have a you can you can have a
good job but also have a sense of the bigger
picture and like a greater a greater good.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
You can just like care about the art form. You know,
we're watching journalism get fucking eatn Alive right now, and
AI is gonna has been a part of like people
have already lost their jobs because this shit, and like
the thing that keeps getting brought up to me when
I'll I'll talk about it to like family or whatever,
it's like, well, you know they're using it to replace
these low level jobs. You know, some up sports articles
(25:37):
or like you know this kind of coverage or that
kind of coverage like it's not the kind of stuff
you do. It's not like investigation. You can't have a
machine do that. And it's like we have, but how
do you think people learn to do what I do?
Like part of it is like doing the Like that's
the feed, right, It's part of what you're saying about
like TV writing. It's like they're trying to kill the
way in which people learn how to continue this art form.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Yeah, there's so many parallels between this and what's happening
with journalism in terms of like it's turning it essentially
into a gig economy, which is exactly what destroyed the news, yeah,
or is destroying the news, but like, yeah, it's it's
the same thing. And when you talk about AI, like
you if you were to write an episode of a
show and you ever written by credit on it, you
get a script fee for that, and ultimately, like what
(26:19):
the studios want is to just have a piece of
shit AI written script to begin with, and then they're
not paying a script fee to anybody, and then writers
just fix that and so like yeah, it's it's all
these different like cost saving measures then ensure that no
one will ever come up through this industry again.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
And learn all the things. Yeah, there will still be
people who become writers, but there'll be people whose parents
are rich and so they can afford to work for
free for forever and then and then you know what,
we don't get the Bear. Yeah, the bear in it's
curiously jacked leading man. Where's where's he get the time?
When's he putting down the protein? We're not saying him
(26:57):
jug a protein shake every twenty minutes. You can this
on Twitter, and I agree with you.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
The structure that requires the like to get a body
like that, the structure you need in your life and
like the regiments that you need to follow, need to
be like to a tee every single day. And there's
just he's too sponteus. There's too much going on in
his life.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
He doesn't have time.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
He doesn't have two hours to carve out to go
to the gym every day.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
No, this is my only issue, Like, this is what's
really threatening my support of the WGA. I just need
an episode of the Bear where all it is is
going through his workout routine. He's in the back room,
he's doing some pearls, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, he's got bags of rice back there and he's
doing squats with them on his shoulders. I even I
want to see him at three am in the morning
and I'll buy it. I'll be a five at three
am in the morning and he's like going to it anytime,
fitness or fucking whatever, and he's like work it out
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I can be like, Okay, there it is.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
That's when he's doing it. There, we got benefits of it.
Let me see him get his BCAAs you know, have
fucking ritchie be like you're taking your pre workout today. Yeah,
it give me a little bit, you know. All right, Soren,
you got it out here. Do you have anything you
want to plug before, like perhaps a podcast with our
with our other former colleague Dan O'Brien.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
No, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, I got a show called
a Quick Question with Dan and Soorn. No, Soren and
Dan oh got him a headliner. Uh yeah, Quick Question
with Soren and Daniel. You can check that out anywhere
you listen to podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I
catching up because we live on opposite coasts.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
And we're good buddies.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
And uh that's about it.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, excellent. Check out Quick Questions with Sorn and Dan.
Special show just a thank you. It's a wonderful time, Soren,
thank you so much, and you know, good luck out
there on the picket line. To you, to all of
the other writers, and to everybody at SAG after, thank you.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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