Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I can't hear you.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
What do we want?
Speaker 3 (00:02):
Track?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
When we want it? That is the sound of striking
writers and actors. Our interns in New York City went
out to ask some of them why they're on strike,
what do they want? I'm a writer on strike. We
(00:23):
are fighting for better contracts and better residuals for the
writers and the actors. Now I'm here to fight for
our equal for our pay that we should be getting,
and so he may I out of writing rooms and
out of offscreen.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
I think a lot of people might be under the
impression that the television and movie writers are all millionaires
and living in mansions.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
But we're not.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
We're middle class.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
People trying to pay uh our kids' tuitions, and pay
our rent and pay our grocery bills, and it's been
increasingly more challenging and difficult to do that.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I want to see a fair deal as soon as possible.
It is absolutely appalling that they are not negotiating right now.
I understand they had the sad contract to go through,
the DJ contract to go through the fact the fact
that they are not around the table right now is
utterly disgusting.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
If that last voice sounds familiar, it's because it's comedian
John Oliver. He's the host of HBO's Last Week Tonight.
That's one of the many shows that's gone dark for
the strake. He was joining a picket line that has
shown no signs of backing down. I'm West Kasova today
(01:46):
on the Big Take. How long until Hollywood is back
on set? Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw is back on the show
to try to answer that question. Hey, Lucas, good to
talk to you again.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Great to be back.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So this writer strike has been going on for a
long time. Are you surprised how long it's been going No.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Back in April, when the negotiations were nearing the point
of breaking down, I predicted and just felt that it
would last until October. It was just evident from talking
to people on both sides as well as sort of
third parties you know, agents, lawyers, intermediaries, representatives, that neither
(02:32):
side was close. The negotiations were not particularly intense. It
didn't seem like either side was really trying to make
a deal. Though I don't think either sid wanted a strike.
It began to feel inevitable, and honestly, it was described
as inevitable even going back to last year. I think
what has surprised people a little bit is nobody was
sure what would happen that the actors would strike. And
(02:53):
then also I think the tone, the tone of the
strike has surprised some people, just because the guild has become,
you know, very much like a normal labor union, kind
of full of political activists, and so I think that's
caught some of the studios off guard.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
You've called the strike Hollywood's greatest labor dispute in six decades.
Has there been any movement in what the writers are demanding,
what the studios want, versus kind of like what they
first expected.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
There hasn't been huge movement. You know, when the writers
first went on strike, they posted on social media sort
of their proposals and what the studio said in response,
and something sort of similar happened with the actors. The
tricky part in this is there are some areas on
which I think both sides sort of agree with what
(03:42):
is on the table right, Like, one of the biggest
disputes is writers would like there to be a minimum
number of them who are in the writer's room working
on the scripts for the show, which is something that
studios are not going to agree to and they acknowledge
that the writers have asked for it, and acknowledge that
they've basically said no.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Can you explain why that's so important for the writers?
Like being in the room, it's.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
The minimum part that's actually most important to them, because
what has happened in streaming is that you have fewer
episodes per season. You tend to have shorter shows in general,
and that can be a reason to have fewer people
in the room. There have also been some high profile
(04:23):
examples of shows that are basically entirely written by one person.
Writing has historically been as as Hollywood is as a
lot of industries are sort of a job of apprenticeship
where you sort of rise through the ranks and there's
this gradual process whereby you get more and more senior,
you get paid more and more money, and also you
learn more skills. Streaming has upset this process a little
(04:46):
bit one because in some cases the rooms are smaller.
Also because of the way that they're shot. Oftentimes writers
are no longer on set and that's something that they
care about. And so a big aspect of this labor
dispute has been writers and talent sort of wanting to
go back to the way things were, and a lot
of these media companies being like, there's no going backwards,
where you know, this is the new reality. That's a
(05:08):
big reason why it's been so hard to find common
ground is because they're sort of fighting over really fundamental
parts of the business. Money is obviously the most important
thing in this dispute, but there are all these other
factors that are kind of more systemic.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So why has money become such a big problem. Is
it that shows just aren't as profitable as they once were.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Well, the film and television industry, and in particular the
television industry, is going through sort of a massive generational
shift where for the past many decades, TV meant channels
delivered via cable and satellite providers that were live and
that all had ads, and it was a system that
(05:51):
grew over time. Obviously, we went from having a couple
of broadcast networks having this full cable system, but it
was still TV and streaming as upset that business model.
You know, Cable TV was hugely profitable for all these
media companies, and it was very lucrative as a result
for many writers because you had a show that started
on CBS or NBC, and then if you had the
(06:13):
right show, it got syndicated, and there were all sorts
of protections in place, and just streaming has upset many
of those conventions. Now there's more shows being made than
ever before. You know, there are more jobs, more people working.
The paydays for people at the top can still be
incredibly lucrative, and so that seems like a very good thing.
It seems like people wouldn't be upset. But because cable
TV is collapsing, you have a lot of pressure on
(06:35):
costs in some of these places where folks are getting
paid a little bit less because the conventions of streaming
are different. There's more inequality, more haves and have nots to.
People at the top are still getting paid quite a bit,
but the protections for the people in the middle and
lower classes are not the same. And also we're just
we're sort of in the middle of this transition, and
so there are folks who are upset and feel that
(06:55):
they're not getting paid enough and they want certain protections.
But it really boils down to like streaming has changed
the economics of the business, and so the unions are
just trying to make sure that they capture enough of
that upside.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And one of the results of these cost pressures that
you write about is something kind of unexpected, and that's
this concern among the writers that artificial intelligence is more
and more coming for their jobs.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah. I mean, that was not a subject that I
think either studios or writers or actors anticipated would be
a major part of this labor dispute six months ago.
But much as we as a society have started talking
about artificial intelligence a lot more, many industries have started
talking about it, it has come to Hollywood as well, and
it's really an existential question for a lot of these folks.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I think it's easy for some of us to say, oh, well,
of course you're going to like automate a manufacturing job
in a factory. But when it's like, oh, you're going
to replace a writer or an actor with a computer
algorithm or a large language model, and all of a sudden,
feels different. It's like a high skilled job, and so
lawyers and journalists and everybody freaks out. But you know,
I think some of the concerns over artificial intelligence are
(08:04):
probably a little overblown or at least premature. You know,
nobody thinks that you're going to have a chat shept
write a script right now, right Like, no studio chief
or executive that I talk to says that they're even
contemplating that. But we are already starting to see parts
of the production ecosystem where AI is being used, and
that's very scary for people and they want protections against it,
(08:25):
which I think is totally rational.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So what do the writers tell you about what their
concerns are. If no one really thinks that, like you say,
chat GBT is going to write a script, what do
they fear?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Well, I think there are some writers who fear that,
or at least think you know, we were talking about
the minimum number of writers in a writer's room. There's
a concern that if you can have chat shept come
up with an idea or work on certain things, maybe
the number of writers in the room goes from six
to four. There is concern that if studios use chat
GPT to come up with an idea, maybe not write
the thing, but like come up with basically a crappy
(08:57):
first draft. Writers often get paid less when something is
adapted as opposed to original, and so they would get
paid less if you use chat GPT to do that
there are ways in which it is something of a threat.
I just don't think that it's going to fully replace them.
And the other one to keep in mind, of course,
is you know, these models learn how to write or
(09:20):
spit out images because they get trained on things, and
so they can get trained on a bunch of scripts.
If they don't get trained on scripts, they don't know
how to write a script. And so writers want to
make sure. We're asking studios to sort of protect this IP.
Now that's tricky because in most cases writers don't own
the script. The studio owns the script, and so one
of the things that they have to negotiate, and I
think they should be aligned on this is the studios
(09:42):
want to be sure that these companies are paying them
or licensing them so that models don't get trained on
all these scripts for free and know one benefits from it.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Even though these models aren't being used right now to
write scripts, you do write that Hollywood does use AI
in a whole bunch of different ways.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
The primary ways that AI is being used right now,
I would say relate to kind of post production, which
is what happens after you're on set and shoot the project,
so you can use AI to you know, affect someone
the way someone's mouth moves or speech. So for example,
you know, I interviewed a director who also co founded
(10:22):
an AI company, and they made a movie where they
needed to do reshoots, and one of the things that
they wanted to do was they wanted the movie to
get a PG thirteen rating instead of an R rating,
and they used the F word too much in it,
so they went back in and using AI changed a
bunch of the F word into a different, more polite
F word. I'm not sure I'm allowed to curse on
this podcast, so I'm not going to use the difference,
(10:43):
and that made them go from an ART rating to
a PG thirteen rating, and the reshoots in general, using
AI to do it save them a bunch of money
because maybe you don't have to go back to set
if you have captured someone's performance in one place and
can move them or change what they're saying. There's I
think some optimism, but also some concern in terms of
job replacement, that it could be used to replace a
(11:03):
lot of dubbing. For example, when you have voice actors
come in and perform a project or perform an actor's
dialogue in another language. That's something where the AI is
maybe not quite good enough to do it yet, but
they're definitely testing it out and seeing if we can
get there.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
But you also write just about that that they're now
able to make it look like the lips of the
actors are actually speaking that language. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Well, one of the problems with dubbing is that the
movement of the lips do not tend to match the words,
and so at least these AI companies say they can
make the lips more accurately match the words. I haven't
seen it happen in a bunch of cases, and my
guess is that it's still imperfect, but I could see
a world in which they can make those match and
(11:48):
sync up better.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
After the break? Why actors are so afraid of AI? So, Lucas,
we've most have been talking about the writers, but as
you said, at the beginning, people didn't expect the actors
to join in. How has that changed the nature of
(12:10):
the strike.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Pu's made it a lot louder, that's for sure. The actors'
union is much larger than the writers' union. They are
all performers, and so they are you know, there were
the writers were already on the picket lines outside of
studios every day, protesting, marching, chanting, and now you've got
hundreds thousands of actors who've joined them in Los Angeles
and New York. Also, actors obviously have a very big following,
(12:34):
and so they can bring more public attention to it
as far as the business, as far as what people see.
I mean, it means actors who are striking cannot promote projects,
and so you have movies come out that actors cannot.
You're not going to go on the morning show, they're
not going to be on social media. It's led studios
to delay some movies in part because they're at stars
can't promote it, or in some cases because some of
(12:55):
the work on it wasn't done. You know, the writer's work,
especially on movies is frontloaded the beginning, but the actors
are there in the middle of production and then also
often in post production doing something called adr different things
to kind of clean up some of the speech in
it in other aspects of the project. And so the
actors strike has had i'd say i will have a
more immediate impact on what gets released.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
And the actors too have voiced their own concerns about
AI and how their own likenesses could be used without
them participating.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, because studios want to and many already do this
thing where they like, they kind of scan an actor,
so they essentially have a digital replica of them that
they can use. You know, Let's say the actor dies
during the production of a movie, as Paul Walker did
during one of the Fast and Furious movies, they can,
you know, find a way to replicate them. When that
happened with Paul Walker, Universal had to use Paul Walker's
(13:46):
brother as like a virtual stand in for him. Studios
already use some of this technology to sort of adjust ages.
You know, in the new Indiana Jones movie Harrison Ford,
they make him look younger.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Methodology use footage me from forty years ago that was
in the vaults of Lucasfilm.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
It's very very effective.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
There's a movie coming out next year with Tom Hanks
where they make them look both older and younger. Now
that all happens with the actors consent, and that's one
of the big things that the actors are concerned about
is they're not opposed to the use of artificial intelligence.
They just want to make sure that studios ask for
their consent and compensate them when they are used, and
there are some concerns about how the studios might sort
(14:29):
of alter their performance or alter what they say, or
use generative AI, in which case maybe they'd use a
bunch of actress performances to create like a synthetic character,
like someone who's purely virtual but based on someone else's being.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I got to pose you for a second and ask
about this scanning of actors. So if you're in a
movie now, they actually take a scan of your body
to recreate it.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
My understanding is that a lot of studios with certain
projects will basically take a digital scan of an actor
so that they sort of have that in the bank
that they can use because you you know, think about
how much CGI is already used. You might want to
slightly adjust someone's body in that frame.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I guess another aspect too, is that now the actors
are trying to have these clauses in their contracts about
how their likenesses can be used in the future.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah. I mean, look, a lot of people believe that
there's an existing right to publicity in certain use of name,
image and likeness, which is a term that we talk
about a lot and say college sports and those athletes
right now is that it pertains to video games. But yeah,
actors are, especially with the proliferation of AI models and tools,
are very concerned with ensuring that they have the right
(15:45):
over what they say and what they do in movies.
You know, there are examples now going back many years.
I think I heard about one that was like twenty
years ago where they created a tear an actor's face
that they where they didn't actually cry during the production,
and this was like a huge scandal. I mean, these
are actors. They're very sensitive to how they're portrayed. And obviously,
in the case of any movie, the directors or the
ultimate arbiter, but the actor doesn't want them to be
(16:07):
able to kind of really change their performance in a
significant way without their approval.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, so I guess, like you say, it's all about permissions.
I think I read recently that James Earl Jones has
given permission for him to be Darth Vader long after
he's no longer on the earth.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yes, James Earl Jones will forever be Darth Vader.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
You do not get the aligned or in polties. You
have only begun to discover your power join me and
I will compete.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's an example to me of the upside in AI. Now,
maybe it's kind of bad because you know, going forward,
that means that you're not gonna it will limit a
job for someone else, because you're essentially gonna have a
dead person in this job forever. But he's known for
that role. I think people would feel weird if there
were a different voice in Darth Vader, and you know,
and that's a lot of money, presumably for him and
(16:57):
for his family. I will I would be curious how
it is, because I was actually recently watching as a
documentary about the basketball player Wilt Chamberlain on Showtime and
they recreate his voice and have him talk throughout the
documentary using his voice. And weirdly enough, I know Wilt
Chamberlain because my dad wrote a book about him, and
that voice is not what Wilt sounded like.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
My guess is, you have certain preconceptions about me.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
My guess is too.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
That you're wrong, and so I assume that's something that
they need to keep working on and improve.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You mentioned this new movie coming out with Tom Hanks
called Here, and you had written that this is going
to be a test case for the merits of AI
technology and movies. Can you tell us more about this movie?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, it's directed by Robert Simchis, one of the most
famous directors in modern Hollywood. He and Tom Hanks worked
together on the movie Castaway, among others. And it's a
movie that all takes place in one location over many generations,
and so you're going to see sort of the same
performers at a bunch of different ages. And Robert Semechis
and the company that produced the movie worked with this
(18:06):
company called Metaphysic to essentially dage and age up Tom
Hanks in it. And Metaphysic is a pretty interesting company
that sort of started in a lot of ways with
this deep fake of the actor Tom Cruise. You know,
there's this actor named Miles Fisher who looks a lot
like Tom Cruise, and he worked with a technologist to
(18:27):
create a deep fake whereby their sort of rendered Tom
Cruise's face onto him, and he performed as Tom Cruise
doing all sorts of things, you know, licking a lollipop,
just living day to day life. And many of these
clips went viral on social media and that led them
to partner with a few other people and build a
whole company within the world of AI. I think most
(18:48):
people agree that AI is sort of a tool, you know,
not a great replacement. But there are some people who
think that it's going to make adjustments to film and
television and society sort of on the margins or in
ways that eventually we will deem sort of imperceptible. You know,
we don't like think necessarily about how much CGI is
in every movie. There are other people who think that
(19:10):
AI is going to change absolutely everything, and I would
say metaphysic. At least one of the CEO of it,
Tom Graham, falls into that camp. He told me that
in ten years, all photo and video will be AI generated.
Now I'm personally quite skeptical of that, but you know,
you got to give him credit for being a true believer.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
When we come back, if this strike keeps going, will
there be anything new to watch? Our interns went out
and asked people in New York City how they'd feel
if an AI bot was writing the script to their
(19:48):
favorite show. I would be open to that.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I think it would make it more creative, It would
put a spin that most people Publab would just naturally
think of.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
No, I'm real scared about that really scared about that.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
No, no way, no way.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Humans are so creative and diverse.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
I would still need to know what they think or
how they see something, you know, how they see other
humans interact with each other on screen.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That will be a game changer for just like the
industry in general.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I think everybody would just look at it differently.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I guess I think.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
That it could be a good thing, it could be
a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
So we're now months into this strike. We've got writers,
we've got actors. You said earlier that no one was
showing any signs of wanting to compromise. How long do
you think this goes before we start to see some
kind of progress.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
I'm sticking with there will be progress in the fall. Normally,
when you have a labor dispute, you think the side
sort of want to resolve it as quickly as possible.
Hollywood fits in this weird bucket where you hear things like, well,
nobody's going to want to work in August, so they're
not going to resolve it then, or if they don't
resolve it in September and October, nobody's gonna want to
work over the holiday, so it'll kick into next year,
which is just absurd, but it speaks to the fact
(20:57):
that one a lot of the members of these unions.
You either have a very slim number of the people
at the top who make so much money they don't
care that much, or you have the large, massive people
who for the most part have other jobs. Because Hollywood
has a lot of sort of gig workers, right like,
you're on set or you have a gig, but then
you're not for a while, and so you need another
way to pay the bills. And then these studios, which
certainly feel the pressure, but a lot of them have
(21:19):
a bunch of programming stored up. A lot of them
have contracts with PayTV distributors that mean that they'll get
paid whether there's new programming or reruns. They have deep libraries.
So I'm hoping for progress in the fall, just because
if there's not some progress in the fall, there's not
going to be a lot to watch next year. You know,
we're already starting to see the summer movie season for
(21:39):
next year impacted. There's no shortage of new shows on
streaming services. But if they can't get back into production
by the fall, there will be next year. And there
already isn't going to be you know, a traditional fall
TV season, so instead you're going to see international shows
and reruns and longer versions of reality and sports.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Of course, since the studios are under so many costs
pressures because they're not as profitable anymore, will they be
able to meet the demands that the writers want more money?
Like where would that money come from?
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I think they can definitely meet some of the demands,
right We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars across
many companies that generate billions of dollars in revenue a year.
It's just a question of how much, right, So, if
the studios are willing to give a five percent increase
on something and the writers want an eleven percent increase,
they're going to have to meet somewhere in the middle.
(22:28):
But is the middle six? Is it eight? Is it nine?
Don't know. There are other subjects where I think the
unions have asked for things that most people I talk
to an entertainment agree just aren't going to happen right,
Like this, the actors have asked for a two percent
share of all streaming revenue because they want to be
paid in success. That's just not going to happen that
(22:49):
like that. That's never happened in Hollywood, and it doesn't
really make a lot of sense. But is there some
way that the studios can agree to give the talent,
you know, more profit, a larger share of quote unquote success.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You mentioned that actors aren't able to promote their projects.
We have two huge projects out now, you know, the
Barbie movie and the Oppenheimer movie. Have they been affected
in the publicity? Obviously the box office numbers for those
movies are off the charts.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I mean the good news for those projects is that
the actors strike only started like a week before those
movies came out. So in the case of Barbie in particular,
that was a month's long marketing assault on everyone that
was very effective. And so did it hurt a little
bit maybe at the end that you couldn't have Margot
Robbiat there, or that with Oppenheimer all of a sudden,
(23:38):
all the stars and it had to go away. Sure,
But I don't think it impacted them because they had
done most of the marketing already and there was just
sort of this ground fell of support where it would
impact it. For example, there's a you know, a movie
coming out later this year, The Dune to the sequel
to the movie from a couple of years ago. You know,
that's got Timothy Shallomey, it's got Zendeya. You'd really want
them on the red carpet. You'd want clips of them
(24:00):
charming going viral on social media. That's not going to happen,
and so Warner Brothers has to decide how much does
that matter? Do we still want to release this project
or not.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
When we last talked about TV in the fall, you
had said that one of the great things about streaming
is that it showcases so many foreign shows that people
weren't able to watch before, and you were really excited
about so many South Korean shows. Do you think that
this is going to be an opportunity for people to
be introduced to all kinds of shows they otherwise wouldn't
have watched because there's nothing else to see.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It's a subject of frequent conversation, I would say, at
least in our newsroom, it's definitely possible. You've even seen
some broadcast networks that have shows based on projects from
other countries that in the fall are bringing those shows
to the US because they figure, well, if you like this,
you can see this other thing that's based on I
don't know how much of that you'll see. I think
(24:51):
it's one of the reasons why Netflix is in a
slightly better position than most because they've invested so much.
They have a pipeline. But getting projects up and running
and then filming them and then releasing them take time.
So it's not like Disney can just go, Okay, we're
not going to have movies and TV shows for a
little bit, so like, let's go to Europe and make
a bunch of shows. By the time those projects are ready,
the strike will be over. Maybe it helps tide them
(25:12):
over a little bit, but it's only so effective.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Some actors, notably Mark Ruffalo, have been coming out and
saying we should use this as an opportunity to kind
of bust the studio system and go independent. Is that
a realistic thing.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Artists have tried to take the power back many times before.
It's never really worked. Part of it is because artists
want to be artists, they don't often want to run companies.
And part of it is also these studios are sitting
on massive libraries and amounts of capital, and that just
gives them a lot of advantages.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
So ultimately, Lucas, when all this is over and everyone
gets back to work, does it make things better? Like
for viewers, are we going to have a better viewing
experience having gone through this.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I don't know that it impacts the average person all
that much, which is why it can sometimes be hard
to get them to care. I would say that if
it produces a system where there is more incentive to
be sensitive to cost and quality, that would benefit viewers.
I think one of the problems in streaming is that
(26:16):
we don't have as consistent and reliable judgments of what
is and isn't working. And there's been so much produced
that I think a lot of what gets made is
like ten to twenty percent worse than it should be
if there were there was just a little more care.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Going into everything.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But I think that would be good.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Lucas, thanks for coming on the show, Thanks for having me,
Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take.
It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more
shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
dot Net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
(26:58):
Vicky Bergolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink, and they
also produced this episode with additional production support from Naielli
Haramio Plata and Isabelle Carey. Philde Garcia is our engineer.
Our original music was composed by Leosidrin. I'm west Kasova.
We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take