![]() We’ve Lost One of the Best Young Actors of His Generation I don’t even know the amount of money that’s been sent to actors who work in movies that get played on television, based on that 1960 strike. … Now it’s got to be well over $10 billion, probably. And so that’s how the pension and welfare started for SAG. It was seed money benefits for your workers. This is the first health fund for actors, which is where I get my health insurance and pension. And so thinking, In the age of television, what do we do for all of these movies that were made between 19? They decide, All right, instead of residuals for any of those movies made between 19, we’re going to give you a few million dollars to start. So, there are more A pictures making their way onto television. … It’s not one of these B Westerns that Republic Pictures made, or something like that. TV really starts kicking in 1948 by 1956, they’re playing The Wizard of Oz on television. ![]() What about residuals for films made before the strike in 1960? Again, the residuals were so small at the time, but this was a paradigm shift in Hollywood. And you’re also taking work away from actors who could be using that time slot, who could be hired to do an episode of Gunsmoke or The Fugitive, or something like that. And then one after another, until, I think, the 20 th Century guy was the last guy, who was like, All right, I’ll give it, I’ll pay you again for something I’ve already paid you for, through clenched teeth.Īnd, essentially, even though it’s prerecorded and just put on a different medium, it’s technically multiple performances. I think Lew Wasserman thought it was inevitable anyway: If it wasn’t going to happen in 1960, it might happen in ’65. ![]() Ultimately, one studio, Universal Pictures-believe it or not, the head of Universal, a guy named Lew Wasserman, used to be Ronald Reagan’s agent-was the first domino that dropped. It was so foreign to these guys that they would have to share their revenues with actors after they’d already paid the actors. And Reagan said, We’re “trying to negotiate for the right to negotiate.” That’s how far apart they were. At the beginning of the strike, they were like, We’re not even going to talk about residuals. And that was basically the position of all of these studio owners. On the other side, the head of 20 th Century Fox, his argument was very simple: Why should I pay you twice for the same job? I’ve already paid you for this job. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. I called Federman to discuss the significance of the 1960 strike and its relation to the state of Hollywood today. Writer, actor, and comedian Wayne Federman wrote a piece for the Atlantic in 2011 titled “ What Reagan Did for Hollywood,” in which he details the unprecedented advancements that Reagan helped secure for workers in Hollywood before going on the path to become one of the most emphatically conservative presidents in contemporary American history. The last time both unions went on strike, SAG in particular was led by an unlikely familiar figure: Ronald Reagan. This news, which is the result of weeks of attempted bargaining with streaming services for better residual payments and protections against prospects like outsourcing work to artificial intelligence, marks the first time both unions have struck simultaneously since 1960. ![]() ![]() On Thursday, the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG-AFTRA, announced that it would join its sister union, the Writers Guild of America-who have already been on the picket line for more than 10 weeks-in a full-out strike. ![]()
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