Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Morgan Fairchild

Did you know that Alan Rosenberg, president of the Screen Actor's Guild, was elected into office by only 8% of the registered SAG members (Morgan Fairchild, the runner-up, got 7%)? And now this guy is threatening to shut down the town with an actors' strike. In the middle of a recession. Is this guy nuts or what? I'm worried that he's going the route of Ronald Reagan who, during his time in office, became convinced that he had actually been a navy fighter pilot and a cowboy. Alan played the role of a cut-throat attorney on L.A. Law, and when he was elected to run SAG back in 2005 he said, ominously,"I am looking forward to ... ensuring Screen Actors Guild is the great and powerful organization it has been and always will be." Alan has certainly been playing power politics of late.

Upset that his sister union caved-in to the studios, the L.A. Times reported on Friday that Alan pushed through a "plan to persuade 44,000 joint [SAG/AFTRA] card holders to vote down the [AFTRA] agreement". He essentially wants to send these joint members a message, that if they know what's good for them they'll scuttle the AFTRA deal. I think he was going to send each member a dead fish wrapped in the L.A. Times, which oddly enough, is something the Times tried a few years back to increase subscription rates. Anyway, the New York branch of his union has had enough. They came out Thursday with a statement that said the action was not authorized by SAG's full board and would waste as much as $150,000 in guild funds. They said it represented an "unconscionable attempt to interfere with the internal business of a sister union" that would "forever tarnish our image as a union."

Maybe this guy is nuts. The directors settled, the writers settled, and AFTRA is about to settle on a contract with the studios. But Alan keeps beating the war drum. He even thinks he can unwind the AFTRA deal. He may get his strike after all. This weekend's Wall Street Journal dedicated a whole bunch of front page real-estate to Hollywood bracing for a new strike. But the article mentions that Alan hasn't even taken a strike vote, a process that takes about three weeks. Which means that there is literally no way for Alan to have a legitimate strike by June 30th, the SAG contract expiration date.

Now why would a guy that seems to be in love with idea of being out of work not take a strike vote? Could it be that the 10,748 actors that voted him into office now have a rent payment to make? Or could it have something to do with the other 109,252 actors that did not vote for him? I think Alan is aware of how tenuous his hold on power is. And if Alan is aware, you can bet your unsold script that the studios are aware as well. So give us all a break Alan. Your demand that all new media productions (regardless of budget) be covered by SAG is ludicrous. My four year old son, who I regularly put into my YouTube videos, is not going SAG, I am sorry to say.

In the old days, if a production wasn't SAG they'd get a few Hell's Angels to ride down to the set and drive around with their noisy choppers for a few hours. That pretty much kept the independents in line. But now that the means of production are no longer in the hands of the few those hardball tactics are not going to work. I guess he could do a reverse IP look-up on each video that is submitted to YouTube, but I don't think there is an adequate supply of Hell's Angels for that to work out.

Alan must have seen the studios dragging MP3 downloaders into court and thought to himself,"Hey, I could just sue FLV uploaders that don't sign on with SAG!" But you were only an attorney on TV, Alan. Your evil plan for net domination will have to wait until you actually finish law school. It's true, "Point of Seduction: Body Chemistry III" is no "L.A. Law", but if Morgan had won at least we'd have a deal by now.