The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
Instagram’s Influential Crew Whisperer Opens Up
The co-founder of the account that acted as a tip line and lit a match to reignite labor fervor reflects on IATSE Stories — and leaving the on-set grind behind
In 2021, an Instagram account emerged that harnessed the frustration of crewmembers. Debuting Aug. 1 of that year, IATSE Stories (@ia_stories) shared anonymous tales of workplace conditions from self-described crewmembers in stark black-andwhite. The often-shocking stories shared on the page — ranging from people nodding off at the wheel after long workdays, to one crewmember allegedly laboring for 39 days straight — touched a nerve at a time when crew union IATSE was negotiating rest periods with studios in a new labor contract. The page — which would quickly attract more than 100,000 followers — channeled a fresh brand of Hollywood labor fervor, one that would erupt that year as IATSE members authorized a strike (less than two years before the industry’s actors and writers made history with their work stoppages).
The co-founder of the account was then-27-year-old Brooklynbased lighting technician Emma Gottlieb (Only Murders in the Building, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie). Her role for the page was brief and intense: She curated and moderated the posts and gave interviews about it for a few months, then quietly ceased her work in November 2021. As IATSE gears up for its next round of contract negotiations, set for March 4, Gottlieb opens up to
THR about her time helping to oversee the page.
Crewmembers were reaching a breaking point when IATSE Stories first surfaced in their Instagram feeds in summer 2021. After a production shutdown during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a halting return to work for months after, by the spring and summer, L.A.-area productions alone had rushed back in earnest to fulfill the demand for entertainment that arose when consumers were stuck at home. On July 14, IATSE communicated that “reasonable rest” was a major issue in its ongoing contract talks with studios and streamers.
As IATSE went public with this part of its campaign, Gottlieb wrote about her own experience with long workdays in a July 29 post to her personal Instagram. “An 8-10 hour work day for the film industry isn’t a fantasy, it can be done, it has been done so many times before. It’s time to put our foot down as an industry and demand better,” she wrote. The post blew up, racking up more than 21,000 likes. “It felt very draconian that for five years I worked 60-hour workweeks when it was the 2020s,” Gottlieb says now. “I had a rosier picture of the film industry when I was coming into it.” Soon, other crewmembers with similar experiences began sharing their horror stories with Gottlieb. And on Aug. 1, Gottlieb and a fellow IATSE member co-founded and launched IATSE Stories with a post about a production assistant who allegedly worked a 24-hour shift and nearly fell asleep on the highway home.
The stories focused attention on crewmembers’ experiences. There was the crew that allegedly shot in a subway tunnel up until 10 minutes before the subway went “live,” and the poster who said they had tinnitus and permanent hearing loss from listening to their walkie-talkie so frequently. The tales caught the attention of boldfaced names —
Neil Gaiman, Bradley Whitford and
Adam Conover — who directed social media followers to IATSE Stories’ posts; Samuel L. Jackson once mentioned the account in an Instagram photo.
Behind the scenes, work on the account itself was taking a toll. Gottlieb said she was spending 10 to 12 hours a day on Instagram, and her co-moderators were putting in significant time, too. The easy camaraderie between the account and its commenters changed, too, once IATSE reached a controversial deal over its new contract on Oct. 16, averting a strike that had been authorized by more than 98 percent of voting members. As the page sounded cautiously optimistic about the deal, many commenters advocated voting “no” to the pact and striking, feeling that the gains needed to be greater.
Then, the tone online took a turn for the worse: An IATSE Stories moderator turned off the comments on a post in what the page said was an accident, and the team behind the page appeared to change its tune slightly on the union’s deal and said it agreed “with the consensus of the community” and disliked the tentative agreement. The moderators, essentially, lost the room as some commenters expressed that the account didn’t do right by them by initially applauding the deal then backtracking. Commenters alternately supported and attacked the page; Gottlieb says that around this time she got death threats. Working on the page “was starting to destroy my mental health and sanity,” she says, and she walked away, even as her peers posted until April 2022.
Gottlieb, who never took a job as a full-time shooting crewmember again, works at a lighting manufacturer. With some distance now from the on-set grind of Hollywood, Gottlieb is grateful for the legacy of the page. “I’m super, super happy it happened,” she says. “The actual people who run the cable, hang the lights, turn on the camera really need safe, fair working hours. They need to earn enough money to live. And I think the page did spark something in that regard.” Currently, Gottlieb says she’s enjoying being more associated in the industry with her current employer than a social media account. “We actually had a lunch six months after I got hired and somebody brought up, ‘Oh, Emma, you did that IATSE Stories thing, right?’ And my boss, the person who hired me, was like, ‘What? That was you?’ ”