In case you missed it, SAG-AFTRA just finished up a press conference where they talked to union members and the press about what’s up.
Here are the big things (that I remember):
The deadline extension from June 30 to July 12 was made in good faith on SAG-AFTRA’s part. They thought the AMPTP would utilize the extra time to come to the table with a fair deal. They did not. It is suspected that they wanted the extension to have more time to promote their summer blockbusters.
The studios wanted to be able to have AI scans of background actors. These actors would be paid once, and then the studios would be able to keep the actors’ likeness, use the data for eternity without the actors’ consent, and never pay them again. Keep in mind that only two percent of SAG-AFTRA members are big names. This proposal would’ve affected the other ninety-eight percent of members, many of whom are living paycheck to paycheck at the moment.
The AMPTP tried to turn union membership against Fran Drescher (current union president) by circulating a picture of her “living it up” in Italy with Kim Kardashian. This was a work obligation on Drescher’s part. She’s a brand ambassador for a fashion line, and whenever she wasn’t on set, she was working with the negotiation committee via Zoom and text.
The video that was sent out to union members on June 28, in which they were told that the negotiations were going well, was filmed before the negotiations got to the core issues – AI, residuals, etc.
The AMPTP’s deal was “disrespectful and egregious.”
The other labor unions in the industry stand in solidarity with each other.
Fran Drescher called the AMPTP’s plan to wait out the WGA until they were homeless “unnecessary evil.”
While SAG-AFTRA is open to returning to the negotiating table at any time, leadership was signaled that the AMPTP was not interested; they believe the strike could last for a while.
Like, I want to be made into a beautiful glass thing. I want to be something treasured for a long time and rarely talked about. I want to live in the home of someone who loved me, and touched now and then in silent memory.
I want people to forget that I’m in there, I want the memory of what I am to pass out of the family’s knowledge. I want to be given away, and put out in a thriftstore somewhere.
I want someone to buy my ashes for $4.99 and put me in a window and love the colors. I want to cast beautiful, fractious and curving sunlight across the wall, sparkling and glowing and shimmering, depending on the time of day. I want someone to take a picture of me with the moon behind me, luminous and mysterious.
I want a witch to buy me and put me in her work room. I want an artist to leave me on their worktable. I want to inspire people and make them smile. I want to be warm from sunlight or chilly from the cool air. I want to be packed in newspaper carefully when they move. I want to be given as a holiday or graduation present to someone’s kid, I want to be given as a housewarming gift as a reminder of home.
And god, then, hopefully some day, I want to roll off the table, I want that globe to crack.
And then I want to haunt the living shit out of the future.
Holy shit, the comment made this sixty times more awesome and now I want this to be done to me too.
entrap my soul in the swirl orb
Trap my ashes into the glass void
Elodie Under Glass: Literal Version
The father of a high school friend of mine did this with her ashes when she died. He commissioned, oh, maybe a dozen or so of these soul orbs and distributed them to friends of hers around the world, who took them traveling to places she’d never been, to see people she loved, to visit places she wanted to go. They took pictures for him, and sometimes those orbs were left to rest somewhere beautifully… or to be passed along around the world to other people.
A year or so ago, he got a message from someone who found one of her orbs under a tree, and did he want it back? No, he said, just leave it there or take it to somewhere new, if they didn’t mind. And then he posted about it, because none of her friends had put it there, it’s not clear where that orb originated, but other people had picked it up somewhere in the world, seen the cursory description on the underside, and taken it with them to the next place on that ongoing journey.
