Gawker: defamer, martin sheen

Stars Choose Sides as SAG Strike Apocalypse Descends

STV — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:25:00 EDT

Everywhere we've been around the LA Film Festival this week, the chatter du jour is either oversexed studio minions or how folks plan to spend their off-days during the increasingly inevitable-looking SAG strike. The latter conflict came into even sharper relief today in Variety, which published a SAG-AFTRA Bullshit Scorecard (hardly an improvement over our SAG Strike Mad Libs™, but whatever) breaking down the lies, celebrity endorsees and various other spin the unions are wielding in their steel-cage labor war:

As SAG begins its 38th day of negotiations with the majors today, the pro-AFTRA forces have added Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey to their list of several hundred endorsers, led by Tom Hanks and Sally Field. ...

SAG announced Tuesday it had added high-profile supporters including Jack Nicholson, Ben Stiller, Josh Brolin, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Viggo Mortensen, Nick Nolte and Martin Sheen. It's also amped up its PR campaign via print ads.
The SAG-AFTRA brawling also raises the key question of clout. SAG has blasted the notion of the AFTRA deal serving as a template, because AFTRA's last primetime contract generated $40 million for members while SAG's last three-year feature-primetime pact generated $4 billion over the same period. Observers say the argument makes little sense, because SAG has so many more members working in the primetime and film arena.

Elsewhere in the paper, the AMPTP gets the backhanded benefit of the doubt: "Studios could stop haggling over pennies, but that's sort of like telling an insurance company to quit low-balling you. That's just what they do — relying on any sane person to give up first." Which suggests to us there's only one solution — a fun, unscripted, winner-take-all slugfest that would conveniently circumvent any potential work stoppage following AFTRA's ratification vote next month: Ladies and gentlemen, let's play the Feud!

SAG, AFTRA in Spin Cycle [Variety]
SAG Misses its 'Norma Rae' Moment [Variety]

Trade Round-Up: Emmy Postmortem

Mark — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:24:46 EDT

· Variety reminds you about the Emmy moments you may have slept through: Lost takes best drama, Raymond best comedy, Felicity Huffman beats out her fellow Housewives, HBO nabs the most awards overall, and as best comedy writing award winner Mitch Hurwitz would like to remind you, Arrested Development plunges headlong into a third straight season of teetering on the brink of cancellation. [Variety]
· THR analyzes various Emmy wins, including Raymond's statue-hogging last gasp: "How did 'Raymond' pull the comedy series upset? My theory is that voters looked at 'Housewives,' thought to themselves, 'I like this show, but it isn't particularly funny,' and then went with their heart rather than their head..." In other words, ABC's scheme to submit DH as a comedy exploded in its face. [THR]
· More Emmys? Yeah, we got that: Celebs wear ugly flowers to honor the victims of Katrina, but largely avoid going all Kanye West during the show. However, the Bush administration is expected to give serious consideration to Blythe Danner's call to bring our soldiers back from Iraq, but ultimately will double over in laughter and light their cigars with money earmarked for hurricane relief. [Variety]
· Martin Sheen will leave the White House to executive produce a sitcom for NBC through Warner Bros. TV. Brace yourself for the ensuing hilarity: "The show is described as loosely based on a situation that occurred in Sheen's extended family whereby a heterosexual man found himself living with his gay older brother and his brother's lover, all three of which are tasked with taking care of the straight man's ailing mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, however, is a fundamentalist Christian and thus is kept in the dark about the true relationship between the gay couple." [THR]
· Project Greenlight update! First season winner Pete "Stolen Summer" Jones sells his comedy script, Hall Pass, to 20th Century Fox as a possible directing vehicle for the Farrelly brothers. [Variety]