Media & Entertainment Law

SAG-AFTRA Non-Disparagement?

Posted on December 08, 2008
A month and a half ago, SAG and AFTRA signed an agreement not to disparage each other, with significant fines apparently being the consequence for violation. Although the terms of the agreement are confidential, Variety quoted an AFTRA officer at the time explaining that AFTRA was advised to ?scrub? all critical material on the Internet about SAG...

SAG & The Studios: What Are They Fighting Over?

Posted on December 07, 2008
Several days ago, I analyzed the studios? offer, which has sat on the table for over five months pummeled by SAG?s rejection and which the studios recently made public. Today, let?s drill down on the key issues that separate the two parties and ask, what are they fighting about, and which issues truly matter today and in the next few years? This is a long post, but I think you?ll find it useful if you want to understand the issues, rather than just listen to slogans and each side?s self-interested positioning...

Video Games with Gay Content

Posted on December 05, 2008
If you?re a gay gamer (a gaymer), you might have wished from time to time to find a game or two with some gay/lesbian content. Lucky for you, someone has prepared a list of such games. That someone is a conservative, and evidently homophobic, investment advisory firm, but no matter?we appreciate the list...

Studios Release Final Offer to SAG

Posted on December 04, 2008
In their ad in the trades Monday, the AMPTP (studios) included an intriguing line ?We hope that every concerned member of our industry will study carefully the terms of our offer [to SAG].? I noted this, and asked the AMPTP to release the offer so we could do just that...

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SAG and the Studios: Post-Prandial Posturing

Posted on December 02, 2008
Open the fridge after Thanksgiving, and leftovers come tumbling out. Open your In box after Thanksgiving, and SAG-related emails come tumbling out (these in addition to a pre-Thanksgiving email as well). Most are just the same old starchy stuffing we?ve been fed for months, albeit dressed up with a salty quote or two...

Movie Review: Milk

Posted on November 28, 2008
Philosopher George Santanya famously wrote that ?those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.? Unfortunately, even those who do remember the past may also be condemned to repeat it. So I was reminded while watching Milk, the new Gus Van Sant biopic about pioneering gay politician Harvey Milk, who became a San Francisco Supervisor (essentially, a City Council member) in January 1978, only to be assassinated less than 11 months later...

SAG Strike Authorization Vote Shifts Into Gear

Posted on November 27, 2008
SAG sent a long email to its members yesterday urging its members to vote yes on strike authorization ballots to be sent out in December. The email was largely in the form of a Q&A explaining the union leadership?s argument that a strike authorization is a necessary negotiating tool...

SAG Stalks Towards Strike

Posted on November 24, 2008
Mediation between the studio alliance (the AMPTP) and the Screen Actors Guild failed late Friday night, and SAG announced plans to seek a strike authorization vote from its members. Unfortunately, that puts us one giant step closer to a strike. What?s next? SAG will send out ?educational materials,? which will say that a strike authorization vote is not the same as an actual strike vote, and that authorization is needed as a negotiating tool, since negotiation and mediation have failed...

SAG, AMPTP to Meet

Posted on November 17, 2008
SAG and the AMPTP will meet Thursday, their first official meeting in over four months, reports Back Stage magazine's BlogStage. This comes after three weeks of one-on-one meetings with the mediator, and four weeks after SAG first called for mediation.

Hollywood Under Siege

Posted on November 12, 2008
California?s economy is at war with itself. Like the Civil War almost 150 years ago, the factions are split geographically, but this time, the two sides are Northern California and Southern California?more particularly, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles...

SAG: The Mediation Express

Posted on November 11, 2008
SAG met with the federal mediator last Wednesday, and now the AMPTP is meeting with him this Thursday, reports Variety. Meetings between the mediator and either one side or the other have been coming at a rate of one meeting per week over the last month...

AMPTP, IA to Talk Monday

Posted on November 10, 2008
Negotiations between SAG and the AMPTP (studios) are stalled, and the mediation process seems glacial, so the AMPTP is taking advantage of its free time to negotiate with IATSE, it seems. The two parties are sitting down for talks tomorrow (Monday) and have scheduled three days' worth of sessions, reports Variety...

New Book on Music Litigation

Posted on November 07, 2008
In-house announcement: My law firm colleague Ron Rosen has a new book out from Oxford University Press: Music and Copyright. It?s perhaps the only book to deal specifically with music litigation. The book provides a roadmap to the entire music litigation process, including an analysis of the structure and grammar of music ? essential to analyzing infringement issues...

SAG Update: More Mediator Meetings

Posted on October 31, 2008
SAG met last week with the federal mediator, as I previously blogged. The AMPTP, representing the studios, met with the mediator yesterday. SAG will be meeting with him again next Wednesday. That's a pace of one meeting a week. No word on whether the meetings will become more frequent.

SAG Update: Union Meets with Mediator

Posted on October 27, 2008
SAG leaders met Friday with the federal mediator, and in a statement said that they discussed with him the union's request for mediation and "the possibilities regarding the resumption of negotiations." The AMPTP is set to meet with the mediator Thursday...

Wardrobe Malfunction

Posted on October 27, 2008
Yesterday, Sarah Palin inexplicably returned to the topic of her $150,000 makeover, asserting that ?Those clothes, they are not my property. ?  I'm not taking them with me.?  This set me thinking, and I realized that Palin hasn?t gotten a fair shake on this affair ? not from the over-educated blue state media, nor even from the thoughtful conservatives deserting her in droves like glaciers cracking under the stress of global warming...

AMPTP Agrees to Mediate

Posted on October 23, 2008
Not surprisingly, the AMPTP has agreed to attend sessions to be conducted by a federal mediator, as requested several days ago by the Screen Actors Guild.  However, in today's statement announcing their position, the studios also reiterate that they won't budge from their position that the new media template agreed to this year by three other unions -- writers (WGA), directors (DGA) and rival actors union AFTRA (in two separate deals) -- should be good enough for SAG as well...

Movie Review - Saving Marriage

Posted on October 21, 2008
(Off-topic)?Saving Marriage? sounds like another name for the No on Prop 8 campaign ? the effort to save gay marriage in California from the reactionary forces across the country that are trying to snatch back this right, granted just months ago by the state Supreme Court...

SAG Steps Toward Strike

Posted on October 20, 2008
The SAG national board passed a resolution yesterday on what to do regarding contract negotiations with the studios.  My take:  Membership First outmaneuvered the newly-elected Unite for Strength faction and its NY and regional allies and is taking the union down a path that may well lead to a strike...

Cal Prop 2 (farm animal confinement) interview

Posted on October 16, 2008
Learn more about California Proposition 2, regarding cruel confinement of farm animals.  Check out my interview below with a representative from the Yes on 2 campaign:Can't see the video window?  Click on this link instead:http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/791198...

Torture in the Henhouse

Posted on October 15, 2008
(Note ? off-topic.) Online streaming video interview at LookAtLA.net ? Yes on Prop 2 ? tomorrow, Thu., 10/16, 2:00 pm Pacific / 5:00 pm Eastern. I like my eggs scrambled.  That?s real comfort food:  hot, tasty, and hard to screw up.  An added bonus is the association with brunch...

SAG Stalemate Update

Posted on October 09, 2008
Here's the latest with the actors:Variety reports that the major studios are prepping "40 or more" films to go into production starting this coming spring, so that they'll have product for 2010 and 2011.  Although there's the risk of a strike starting this year and continuing through the spring, there's also the certainty that if they don't start production, they'll have no product in the pipeline come 2010...

Phase One Reanimator

Posted on October 05, 2008
Aieee, it?s alive!  Remember Phase One?  That?s the 27 year old joint bargaining arrangement between SAG and AFTRA that collapsed this spring, leading to AFTRA making a separate primetime TV deal with the studios and networks and SAG sliding into a stalemate, leaving it with no deal after unsuccessfully trying to defeat AFTRA?s...

Report: SAG Strike Would Have No Immediate Credit Impact on Entertainment Conglomerates

Posted on October 03, 2008
Fitch Ratings, a leading global rating agency that rates the credit of large businesses, municipal governments, and entire industry sectors (they must be very busy these days), has produced a short analysis of the effect of a possible SAG strike on the credit ratings of media conglomerates...

SAG: A Half Step Closer to a Strike

Posted on October 02, 2008
SAG moved closer to a strike today, but not quite as far as some predicted. The guild?s negotiating committee, which has the power to send a strike authorization referendum to the membership at large, instead elected to recommend to the national board that it send out such a referendum...

SAG: Toss that Hot Potato Back (UPDATED)

Posted on October 02, 2008
As I blogged yesterday, SAG?s negotiating committee has the power to send a strike authorization referendum to the membership at large, but it instead punted to the national board. In other words, the negotiating committee recommended that the national board send out such a referendum...

SAG Apparently Seeking Strike Authorization

Posted on October 01, 2008
Lewis Carroll was a master of bizarre fantasy, willful illogic, and headstrong characters. Not surprisingly, that often makes his shape-shifting prose relevant to present-day concerns. Consider Alice?s fall down the rabbit hole: The rabbit-hole ? dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well...

SAG Nudges the Studios

Posted on September 29, 2008
SAG sent the studios a somewhat-gentle nudge today, firing off a letter to the head of the studio alliance and two key studio heads that identified three key issues (force majeure and two new media issues) and concluded with the almost-friendly "What do you say; when can our committees meet face-to-face?"Not all of the letter was hale fellow well-met...

SAG: The Calm before the Storm

Posted on September 22, 2008
The SAG elections are over, and the Unite for Strength challenger slate now has a razor-thin majority on the national SAG Board.  Indeed, one of MF?s three key leaders, David Jolliffe, was bounced off the Board (and the alternate pool) altogether.  This result, achieved by UFS (aka U4S) even in light of a somewhat lackluster campaign, suggests that SAG members are tired of MF?s inability or refusal to achieve a deal with the studios...

A Push-Poll with No Oomph

Posted on September 18, 2008
Sarah Palin may not know what the Bush Doctrine is, but SAG?s leadership seems to have forgotten what we might call the (Teddy) Roosevelt Doctrine:  speak softly and carry a big stick.  (It?s actually part of a West African proverb, apparently.)  Perhaps the Guild and its governing hard-line faction, Membership First, made a transcription error, because the union?s standard operating procedure over the last several months seems to have involved shouting loudly while carrying a small stick...

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