Striking Outside of Netflix Can Be Hazardous To One’s Health. Just Ask Joe Syracuse
09.08.2023 - 18:35
/ deadline.com
Editor’s note: One in a series of stories marking the 100th day of the WGA strike.
Since the start of the WGA strike in early May, screenwriter Joe Syracuse (Parental Guidance, Amateur Night) has walked the picket line outside the corporate offices of Netflix. Traversing Sunset Boulevard on an almost daily basis has given Syracuse a feeling of both joy and resolve, as it helped him to forge new friendships and to appreciate the youthful energy of his fellow union members.
Little did he know it would end up sending him to the hospital.
On one of his many days picketing in late June, Syracuse made the mistake of eating the last cellophane-wrapped turkey sandwich from the food table. Though a strike captain and his wife/writing partner Lisa Addario told him not to eat it — the sandwich had been sitting in the sun for at least two hours, they warned — Syracuse devoured it, anyway.
“As a writer, I’ve been trained to charge ahead when I hear people say ‘that’s a stupid idea. Don’t do it,'” Syracuse tells Deadline. “If you didn’t have that mentality of charging forward when you’re told it’s stupid, then you know you shouldn’t write. So that’s probably what it was. I have lived my life like that. So anytime someone says don’t do it, I’m fully gonna try it.”
By that night, Syracuse complained of an upset stomach. Two days later, he was in an emergency room in Glendale, where the doctors suspected gallstones, a ruptured appendix or even worse, cancer.
“The pain was so extreme,” recalls Syracuse.
After Syracuse was rushed into surgery, doctors cut through his stomach muscles and pulled out his entire intestine. The good news was that they found no cancer; the bad news was that Syracuse contracted salmonella so a portion of his