A Dolphin In A Deep Blue Sea of Hollywood Sharks

The other day
I got a call from a woman who was following up after sending a submission (photo/resume) seeking talent manager representation for her 9-year-old daughter.
(Note to actors: I highly recommend following up. We’re busy with a lot of other things so even if we’ve expressed interest in you, via your submission, chances are we haven’t actually had the occasion to call you and set-up a meeting ~ even though we’ve meant to do so.)

At any rate, a reminder never hurts. Unfortunately for this woman, we don’t represent children.

However, since I know how hard this business is, I like to be ONE of the few genuinely nice people that they encounter on the creative, yet difficult path they’ve chosen to take. I like to think of myself as one of the few dolphins in an ocean full of Hollywood sharks. And believe me, there are many.

I’m especially nice to screenwriters that call to pitch their writing. Heck, I work for a talent manager… and I hesitate to admit that I’ve made the occasional phone call from our offices in which I’ve resorted to pitching one of our clients’ (aka one of my…) screenplays. I know that I'm not the only one who has done this, by the way... With this approach, I might get a little further along on the telephone trail…like the time that I pitched my (client’s) screenplay to Goldie Hawn’s assistant. However, the reality is that, from one assistant to another, we’ve all got our own goals… so I can tell you, that it doesn’t get any easier no matter where you're at on the ladder of success. The difficulties just change form. What you've got to do is just keep on climbing.

My advice for today? Stick with it-- as long as you can hold out. Miracles and oddities of every sort do happen… and they happen most often, here in Hollywood.

Copyright © 2008 KLiedle
*Photo credit: fotolen/flickr

Alas, There May Be Hope...

As We Look To The DGA~

(Announced January 17, 2008 By The Directors Guild Of America)

The DGA and the AMPTP announced that they have reached a tentative agreement on the terms of a new contract.

In addition to solid wage increases, the DGA has come up with preliminary guidelines over new-media and residuals rates-- some of the main issues in the current lockdown between the WGA and AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.)

The AMPTP released the following statement:

"We hope that this agreement with DGA will signal the beginning of the end of this extremely difficult period for our industry. Today, we invite the Writers Guild of America to engage with us in a series of informal discussions similar to the productive process that led us to a deal with the DGA to determine whether there is a reasonable basis for returning to formal bargaining."

Bargainers will submit the tentative deal with a recommendation for approval on Jan. 26. If approved, a member vote would follow.

*****

In reaction to the DGA/AMPTP tentative agreement, the WGA released this statement:

"Now that the DGA has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP, the terms of the deal will be carefully analyzed and evaluated by the WGA, the WGA's Negotiating Committee, the WGAW Board of Directors, and the WGAE Council. We will work with the full membership of both Guilds to discuss our strategies for our own negotiations and contract goals and how they may be affected by such a deal...We hope that the DGA's tentative agreement will be a step forward in our effort to negotiate an agreement that is in the best interests of all writers."

*Please see official guild websites for full statements and breaking news about industry contract negotiations*

A Hairy Hollywood Situation

This whole writer’s strike business is getting hairy…really, really hairy. Now that Warner Brothers is rumored to be cutting up to 1,000 jobs and the Golden Globes have been reduced to a press conference, I don’t know what to think.

Will the Oscars be next? What’s a fashion designer to do? Some days I wonder if it will ever end. For awhile (back in November,) I was thankful for my freedom, sans WGA membership. As an unaffiliated writer, I could write to my little heart’s content while supporting the WGA union writers and their cause.

“Hey, I’ve got no guild to tie me down,
To make me fret and make me frown…”

But, like Pinocchio, I was just lying-- fooling myself that this strike would eventually go away. And now, it’s only getting hairier…literally. This month’s New Yorker has an article entitled, “Strike Beards,” in which they propose, among other things, that this business of Conan O’Brien and David Letterman’s beard-growing is some symbol of solidarity for striking writers.

So yesterday, I had a hair-brained idea. Why don’t we all just grow our hair out?

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers can do their best to ignore the writers on the picket lines, the little guys losing their jobs, the awards show telecasts that are falling away like dominoes, and the strength of writers' words in all of this, but they cannot possibly ignore our hair. It’ll just keep growing and growing, like the list of casualties from this strike, now a war of pure stubbornness.

The dealmaker in my fantasy world of ending this god-awful strike? Writers and supporters alike would continually grow out their hair, chop it off, send it to the studios gates and picket locations, and start all over again.

So that’s it. That’s my hair-brained idea that's so simple and so crazy, it just might work. Send the studios hair-- Bushels and barrels and mountains of hair. Let's get all Grimm's Fairytales on them.

The Strikers could even wrangle those Teamsters into making hairy, daily shipments. (I’m sure they’d also donate some protein-rich locks for the ever-growing pile, too.)

Sure, beards are a good start, but me? I’m a girl, but I come from hearty German and Russian stock and my hair grows faster than weeds after a rain. So, beware.

At this point, and I don’t think I’m alone here, I’m willing to go to all "lengths" to get the entertainment industry back on its feet. Let the AMPTP finally give in and give the writers something workable and something fair so we can all leave this abysmal reality world and get back to the fantasy world we all love creating.

As a Writers Guild spokesman said in the above-referenced The New Yorker article:

"As long as it calls attention to the issues at stake and gets the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers back to the bargaining table...we're all for it."

Thanks to Peter in Chicago (author of the esteemed, filmmaker101 blog) for directing me toward the New Yorker article, “Strike Beards," and inspiring this post.

Copyright © 2007 Kendra Liedle
Illustration By: Panshipanshi/Flickr. Go to flickr.com to visit artist profile.
This article was published as an op-ed at: associatedcontent.com