Strike moves into S.F.
Writers Guild of America members set up picket line outside studio on St. Michael’s Drive
The picketers came from an array of unions — and one of them brought along a dragon. Members of the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild joined picketers with the Writers Guild of America on Friday to stage a strike line at the midtown campus on St. Michael’s Drive, where the Greer Garson Studios are located.
Earlier this week, WGA picketers set up lines at various production sites in Albuquerque, slowing or stopping production work for at least a day.
With New Mexico continuing to blossom as a production hub for the industry, guild members want the producers they are striking against to know they will set up their lines wherever movies are being made.
“It’s important for the studios to know they can’t move their product out of L.A. [to escape the strike],” said screenwriter Josh Gordon, a Los Angeles resident who came to New Mexico to take part in some of the pickets this week. “We’re going to make it as hard as possible for them to do business.”
Many on the line were New Mexico residents. One was novelist and screenwriter George R.R. Martin, the Game of Thrones creator who brought a children’s book character called Pablito the Dragon — actually a person in a costume — with him.
Martin said in an interview a “lot of important issues” are at play.
“Obviously money, better residuals in streaming,” he said, referring to pay for reuse of a writer’s work.
Other local literary and performing artists who joined the strike were director Chris Eyre, actress Ali MacGraw and novelist Doug Preston.
Eyre, known for the 1990s cult film Smoke Signals, said his participation was a “show of solidarity” with the screenwriters.
Noting a number of younger people on the line — including a 10-year-old who was blowing bubbles — Eyre said “a whole new gener
ation is getting educated in workers’ rights.”
He said most of them probably were too young to take part in the last guild strike in 2007.
The strike is pushing the one-month mark. Nearly 98% of guild members voted in April to approve a strike over a compensation dispute, particularly as streaming services grow in popularity. Writers contend they do not get residual compensation for those programs, as they do with TV reruns.
Writers also want higher minimum salaries for jobs, arguing the industry has not kept up with rising inflation rates.
While negotiations between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents many of the production companies, have stalled, the writers’ union may get some more allies in their fight soon.
That’s because the National Board of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists unanimously agreed to call for a vote on a strike if needed as it negotiates with AMPTP over wages, concerns about the use of artificial intelligence to replace performers and other protections. The current SAG-AFTRA contract runs out June 30.
Actress Bronwen Murray, a Santa Fe native, joined Friday’s picket line. She said it’s important to show union solidarity “because we can’t do this [perform] without the writers.”
Preston, author of a number of books, including The Lost City of the Monkey God, said, “Hollywood has taken advantage of writers for too long … and authors who write books made into films have the same issues.”
It’s unclear if Friday’s action disrupted any activity at the Greer Garson Studios. Some strikers said one of the projects filming at the venue — the television series Outer Range — was actually filming somewhere on location Friday.
Attempts to reach Claudio Ruben, who manages the studio, were unsuccessful Friday.