The Strike
So there's good news regarding the Writers Guild strike. As has now been reported broadly (but I heard it first from Nikki Finke), United Artists struck its own deal with the WGA, reportedly agreeing to all the proposals the WGA was about to make when the producers walked out of the last negotiation.
And why is that good news? Neil Gaiman tells us why in his blog, reporting Monday that he had just gotten "a phone call from my agent letting me know that United Artists was the first studio to sign a deal with the Writer's Guild, and that if I wanted to write a film for them, or sell them the rights to a book, I could." UA has now become, essentially, the only game in town for feature writers, thus giving the studio first access to every screenwriter on earth, basically. (Or at least those not locked into first-look deals with other companies, who are truly screwed.) It makes a world of sense: since taking over UA, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner (she too started out as an actor) have had only one major release, Lions for Lambs, which, to put it politely, didn't do well. And since they only just took over, that's a lousy track record--with investors breathing down their necks. So anything that gets them back in the producing game, particularly with exclusive access to primo material, had to be like a deal from heaven. (It also honors the original imprimatur of United Artists, which was created by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford precisely to honor the work of artists rather than businessmen.)
It sounds fantastic. The optimist in me is thrilled.
But there's also the cynic in me. And he got busy fast. What if? I wondered. What if this is just a cynical ploy by the big conglomerates who run the studios? Sure, we heard rumors that the other moguls were royally pissed at MGM's Harry Sloan (a major investor in UA) for "allowing" the deal to happen, but what if that was actually the plan all along? Because the studios are clearly unified under the banner of the AMPTP, and that smacks a little too much of collusion, which is of course illegal under federal labor laws. What if the studios are allowing their smallest fish to make this one deal, so that they can then claim there can't possibly be collusion because, come on, look at UA!
Rumors abound that other companies, most notably Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company and Lucasfilm, are now also considering side deals. If one or all of those happen, fantastic. But if nothing further happens, if there are no more side deals, I'm afraid the cynic in me will start exulting in victory.
UPDATE: The Weinstein Company just announced their own side deal. So hey, maybe there is a little domino thing happening here after all. Reason to be cautiously optimistic.
The Primaries
So Hillary won New Hampshire. Good for her. That tearful moment certainly answered the craving for authenticity that people feel--particularly when she has seemed so lamentably inauthentic all along. It's almost as if people have been waiting for her to give them some reason, any reason, to vote for her, and all along she's been doing exactly the opposite--but finally succumbed, just in time, with spectacular results. Bravo Hillary.
But here's the thing. As much as I love Bill Clinton, I can't help remembering that infamous moment when he was attending the funeral of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, his good friend who had died in a plane crash. He was laughing with someone, then spotted a camera and immediately turned to tears. Politicians are politicians, and, as I said, though I am overall a big supporter of Big Bill and would love to see him back in the White House, still, it cannot be denied that he understands the PR value of emotion and might have advised Hillary at some point that a few tears couldn't hurt.
HD DVD vs. Blu Ray
Several months back, despite knowing the dangers, I bought an HD DVD player. The price had dropped dramatically, into the under-$300 range, which turned out to be my trigger point, while Blu Ray players were all still well above that price. And it seemed to me, optimistically, that if the under-$300 range was my trigger, that would probably be true for a lot of other people, too.
Then Universal went exclusively with the HD DVD camp, and that seemed a justification of my decision. Now Warner Bros.--the big fish in home video--has announced an exclusive deal with the Blu Ray people, and news reports trumpet the end of the format war in favor of Blu Ray. They may be right.
But there have also been plenty of sales reports that sales of HD DVD players have been exploding lately--and it can't be such a stretch to imagine that sales of the discs themselves will soon follow suit sales-wise. So why does Warner Bros. pick this moment, this particularly unsettled moment, to make its major announcement? They swear that no money changed hands, that they weren't paid off by any Blu Ray backers, but I mean come on.
Insult to injury: my HD DVD player is currently broken, and today I'm going to have to ship it off for repairs.
The cynic in me dances its happy-joy dance.
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