The Screen Actors Guild is next in line to strike against producers, but wait, there’s more…

By Jeffrey Jolson

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 12/18/2007 – What if they gave an awards show and no one came? No stars, no one of note parading gowns down the red carpet, no one except strike-breakers willing to put their careers at stake for a photo opp.

That’s what is in store for Awards Season 2008.

The striking Writers Guild refused waivers Monday night for the upcoming Academy Awards and the Golden Globes, saying it would help put pressure on producers to come back to the negotiating table in earnest and bring a timely end to the six-week-old strike.

More importantly, there Will Be Picket Lines when movies like “There Will Be Blood” are honored. Which means the shows will likely go on, but as with the 1980 Emmys, without nominated actors as well as writers and allied groups.

Actors are unlikely to cross the picket lines, no matter where they physically are in relation to the red carpet, for several reasons. First and foremost is their own union, the Screen Actors Guild, is about to begin negotiations and planning for a strike action against producers in June when their contract expires — and therefore is allied with the Writers Guild. Both face the identical issues of payment for new media, the Internet and DVD sales, and are hoping a WGA contract provides the blueprint for fair payment to their members as well. Plus they had jointly gone on strike before, such as in ‘80.

Next, Hollywood is nothing if not a union town. Though IATSE has denounced the writer’s strike, AFTRA given it mixed support and the Directors Guild starting negotiations of their own, everyone wants the template set to share in new media income. Even the Teamsters have been refusing to cross the WGA picket lines, which members they are permitted to do as individuals, though officially they have a no-strike clause as a whole. Their leadership has said about the WGA action, “Teamsters do not cross picket lines.” And believe it, the Oscars need a lot of trucks to deliver all that glam and staging, though it is unclear as yet whether they would refuse to supply the shows.

Furthermore, top actors have already expressed solidarity with the writers and marched with them, but beyond that, no one wants the chastisement and PR problems awaiting those who cross the picket lines. Actors feeling that the honor of being onstage to get an Oscar (winners still get their statuette) may think twice or face the fate of Powers Boothe, the only actor of 52 nominees who attended the Guild-picketed 1980 Emmys. He has been paying dearly for that choice ever since. (See related HT story “Oscars, Golden Globes Left Speechless”)

And if Hollywood is a union town, America is a union country, with tens of millions of union members and their families among the constituents of the actor’s movie and TV fare. Like campaigning politicians, they need the union members’ vote, so to speak.

They live or die by the tiniest shifts in public opinion and its hard enough getting a hit without overcoming a slight sour taste in the mouths of 30 percent of the public. Just to regain lost ground, and for each subsequent project, they’d need a platoon of publicists explaining they did it for this-or-that noble reason rather than ego.

Another question that arises is where the picketing would physically be. Hollywood closes down Hollywood Blvd. and the blocks around the Kodak Theatre for the Oscars. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pretty much controls the neighborhood, except for traffic-heavy Highland Ave.

Yet even local government and the Academy can’t override the Constitution and the First Amendment right to assemble. As with political events, they will have to give some ground near the entrance to allow opinion to be heard, though they can – and will – stop anyone from blocking the red carpet or marching on it with picket signs.

As for the shows themselves, if you groaned in past years at the bad jokes, awkward skits and speeches, imagine them being delivered without writers. Egads.

This year’s Oscar host, comedian Jon Stewart, has the best chance of keeping this Oscarcast together as anyone else the Academy might have chosen. He’s brilliant, fast and can write his own gags on the hoof. Yet he can’t do it alone. Even on “The Daily Show,” he has a cadre of full-time top writers coming up with jokes and bits.

If you’re thinking that writers will do it on the sly, that’s not likely. It would definitely be discovered, severe chastisement would await and besides, they want this strike over as soon as possible and skullduggery only extends it. Most all adhere to the WGA strike tagline “Pencils down means pencils down.”

And that’s the Oscars, where they would get at least some viewers just to see who actually wins, even if every envelope opened with the line “Accepting for so-and-so will be….” The Golden Globes on the other hand are more a star-driven party, populist TV fare whose ratings and reputation are dependent on the wattage of its celebrity attendees.

How the Globes fare on their Jan. 13 awardcast will be a test of who will cross a picket line and the public’s interest in what the Hollywood Foreign Press Association thinks are the best movies and TV shows. Not a test producer Dick Clark is anxious to take. His company has applied for another waiver as an independent production company.

SAG members have as much or more to lose if producers fail to share Internet income fairly. Their income from re-runs is going down because networks are airing TV shows the day on the Internet starting the day after initial broadcasts. They get little or no residuals from the Internet. Plus the syndication value of a show, the Golden Goose that everyone hopes will make them rich if they can stay on the air for about five seasons, is being lessened by the network sales of DVDs of complete seasons. There may be no more billion-dollar-plus syndication deals like a “Cosby” or “Seinfeld” could get because many fans have the episodes already or can order individually them as download.

The world of video distribution is changing and the current contracts would leave actors as well as writers panhandling along the information superhighway. We love the Oscars and sincerely hope some for an agreement that will see the shows go on with their star-power in place. And while anything can and will happen, it looks now like lonely nights for those golden boys.

Photos: AMPAS