Striking on May the 4th: ‘May the Force Be With the WGA’
Two baby Yodas and a Darth Vader walk onto a picket line...
Two baby Yodas, two Princess Leias, plus a Darth Vader who could not have been more than 5’4” were on the WGA picket lines on Thursday, marching up and down a very damp Lankershim Blvd. past the gates of Universal Studios.
“Rebellions are built on hope,” read a sign that belonged to one of the baby Yodas. Vader, aka TV writer and literal card-carrying WGA member Montserrat Luna-Ballantyne, toted a rainproof, plastic-covered picket sign that declared “Even Darth Vader thinks the AMPTP is too evil.” Supplying the soundtrack was WGA strike captain Andrea Thornton Bolden, who slung over her shoulder a portable JBL speaker blasting the Imperial March.
The theme of a very wet Day Three of the writers’ strike was in keeping with the Star Wars-associated date, May the 4th, prompting a fair amount of “May the Force be with the WGA” signage.
But on the forefront of many picketers’ minds was last night’s barnburner of a WGA meeting at The Shrine auditorium, one that brought together leaders and representatives from the DGA, Teamsters and other labor unions who work on Hollywood sets. (Teamsters Local 399’s Lindsay Dougherty ascended to a new level of labor celebrity after telling the crowd, “If you put up a line, the trucks will fucking stop... The only way we’re gonna beat these motherfuckers is if we do it together.”)
The energy was “insane, incredible, inspiring,” said Lucifer showrunner Joe Henderson. “I went there wondering why I was going there, because I already knew what the deal terms were and I knew where we were standing. And I left there energized, inspired by what was said and by the solidarity shown by all of the unions coming together.”
To hear writers tell it, the sense of cross-union solidarity seems an order of magnitude greater this time around than during the 2007-08 strike, no doubt a simmering build of angst brought on by the changing economics wrought by the streaming era and the ravenous appetites of Wall Street for shareholder returns.
Of the crews and writers who work on TV and film, “everybody who contributes to that understands the depth and the level and the commitment of that contribution,” said Bridget Carpenter, the showrunner of Hulu’s 2016 miniseries 11.22.63 and whose long career of credits includes Friday Night Lights and Parenthood.
“Everybody recognizes there's a real disconnect, when companies whose earnings are public — and they earn billions of dollars — say, ‘We cannot afford to give you a residual. We cannot afford to raise your pay by a percentage,’” she told The Ankler. “It's very simple. It's a gut-level fairness. And that is why there's unity. And that's why so many people are showing up, because they are experiencing it, have experienced it, or will experience it.”
"a Darth Vader who could not have been more than 5’4”"
Perhaps it was Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet....