Rushfield: The Very Bad Choices That Led Us Here
Inflicting pain on the other side is not enough to fix an industry that's fundamentally broken
A week in, the strike has settled into a pattern already. Days of more picketing, name-calling, finger-pointing and fruitless speculation and nothing resembling progress in actual negotiations.
If you want to track how the scales are tipping, the only relevant barometer is the Pain-o-Meter — charting which side is feeling more of it at any moment. By that standard, Week 1 win goes to the writers. The linked arms with the other unions, scattered stories of IA and Teamsters members staying off sets and the announcements of shoots shutting down feels, from one perspective, like the early days of Covid — a couple shows here and there getting put on ice until the trickle became a flood and general shutdown.
Whether it gets there or not, we'll see, but as far as it goes, along with the Paramount stock collapse, we can mark this week Writers: 1; Studios: 0.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a general paralysis that cuts to the bone, we're a ways from that and the question is, are we trickling in that direction?
I've been thinking about how the 2007-08 strike came to an end, and I'm fairly nervous