With just the CW left tomorrow, the near-talent-free upfronts are winding down, and shows are still being shuttered in New York City, while on the picket lines in LA there was Mariachism, tacos, tunes and some Mandalorians to galvanize the troops.
11.05.2023 - 00:43 / deadline.com
On the West Coast, the chief negotiator for the striking Writers Guild of America, Ellen Stutzman, is more than a week into an existential battle between the 20,000 union members she represents and the movie and television studios that are, for now, not at the bargaining table.
On Wednesday in New York, her parents, Fred and Anne Stutzman, were marching in support of their daughter and her union cohorts. The Stutzmans, and an aunt, Mary Stutzman, walked a picket line outside Amazon’s offices in Manhattan in the middle of a throng of chanting, cowbell-banging fellow marchers.
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“Somebody has to represent the East Coast in her family,” Mary Stutzman said. “These guys traveled from Albany; I just came from uptown.”
Ellen Stutzman grew up in upstate New York and quickly found her future calling as a student at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations in Ithaca, Fred Stutzman said. After graduation, she moved to Southern California and was hired by a health care workers’ union as a research analyst. She stepped into a similar job with the WGA in 2006 and has been there with the writers union in different roles ever since.
Stutzman is credited, among other things, with helping to bring Hollywood’s powerful talent agencies to heel in a battle over business practices that saw thousands of WGA members fire their agents en masse.
RELATED: WGA Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser On The Breakdown Of Negotiations With “Divided” AMPTP
In February, she was named the union’s chief negotiator, succeeding David Young, who stepped down for health reasons. Young led the WGA through the last
With just the CW left tomorrow, the near-talent-free upfronts are winding down, and shows are still being shuttered in New York City, while on the picket lines in LA there was Mariachism, tacos, tunes and some Mandalorians to galvanize the troops.
It was a tale of two coasts today, as WGA picketers and their allies targeted Disney’s upfront presentation in New York and also the company’s Burbank lot in Los Angeles. And the two scenes were very different.
scathing message on Facebook, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star Wil Wheaton blasted “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings for crossing the picket line during the Writer’s Guild of America strike, giving him a stark warning.“This is a VERY small town, Ken Jennings, and we will all remember this,” Wheaton typed on the social media platform. “Your privilege may protect you right now, but we will *never* forget.”He also included the hashtag “#WGAStrong” in the post.The actor continued his thoughts in the comments section of the post, calling out those who were speaking negatively about unions.“Hey y’all, if you’re here to s–t on unions, you can f–k right off.
Nick Mohammed aka “Nathan ‘Nate’ Shelley” is for a show at New York City’s Town Hall on Friday, June 2.Mohammed, 42, will perform as his character Mr. Swallow, a high-pitched motivational speaker who brings math and magic to the stage — nothing like his shy assistant turned (spoiler!) West Ham F.C.
Refresh for updates Amid all the noise here at the Cannes Film Festivals about festival sexual predators, Johnny Depp’s return in Jeanne du Barry tonight and the admitted assaulting history of that movie’s director Maiwen; the WGA Strike is not forgotten.
The NBCUniversal Upfront presentation was the center of Day 14 of the writers strike on the east coast.
Rep. Katie Porter joined writers on the picket line at the Culver Studios in Los Angeles on Friday in solidarity with the ongoing WGA strike.
It’s a hosting switcheroo on “Jeopardy!”
Mandy Patinkin is feeling the rage.
For the second time in a week, the Writers Guild of America has shuttered Billions.
After yesterday’s Imagine Dragons party outside Netflix, it was Paramount’s turn to pop.
Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Let the gig economy debate begin. One of the most contentious issues in the writers strike that erupted May 2 is the assertion by the Writers Guild of America that screenwriting is in danger of becoming part of the “gig economy.” The WGA’s proposed solutions — mandatory staffing minimums and guaranteed weeks of employment — are equally dividing labor and management. Now that contract talks between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have cratered, complex issues are being chewed over by writers who are fired up, walking in circles (literally) and wound up about the long-term employment picture for Hollywood scribes.
Striking writers marching Wednesday in New York City were joined by SAG-AFTRA members Bob Odenkirk and Mandy Patinkin.
Imagine Dragons, in solidarity with the writers strike, showed up at the Netflix picket line to support writers.
EXCLUSIVE: As Hollywood moves into a second week of the writers strike, texts are flying all over town confused about an A-lister event Tuesday night on a studio lot, the blowback that could come from attending it, and crossing potential picket lines.
A trio of SNL greats joined the WGA picket line Tuesday at Silvercup Studios in Queens.
Actors’ Equity Association, the union representing theater actors and stage managers, is inviting its members and allies to join the WGA picket line outside HBO and Amazon offices tomorrow.
Angelique Jackson SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher had a sobering message for Hollywood’s major studios as she joined a WGA picket line outside Paramount Pictures on Monday afternoon. “They feel like this strike is a strike for everybody in the industry,” Drescher said of SAG-AFTRA members and the WGA’s labor action. Drescher, who was elected SAG-AFTRA president in September 2021, marched arm in arm with Writers Guild of America West president Meredith Stiehm in a show of solidarity, joining a coalition of a few hundred members from each guild who were picketing outside Paramount starting at 9 a.m. PT as week two of the WGA strike began.
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher joined members of her guild marching in solidarity with Writers Guild of America members Monday on the picket lines in front of the entrance to Paramount Pictures’ backlot.Amid this display of solidarity, Drescher is preparing with SAG-AFTRA to begin talks on their own new contract, and she is signaling that actors need major change in Hollywood just as much as writers.“We can’t keep building on a contract that was developed in the 1980s,” Drescher told TheWrap. “I’m hoping that we go in with a new perspective, a different portal to enter the conversation just as we did with other talks that we were successful in resolving.
On the seventh day of the Writers Guild of America’s strike against Hollywood studios, guild leaders from both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, including actors union president Fran Drescher, hit the picket lines at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles.