Striking actors re-elect Fran Drescher as SAG-AFTRA president
Drescher handily beat opponent Maya Gilbert-Dunbar, who'd been calling for a swift resolution to the strike
Aux News SAG-AFTRA
She has style; she has flair; she has what can only be seen as an electoral mandate from the people: SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher has just been re-elected as president of the actors union, THR reports, maintaining her position as one of the most prominent voices supporting and pushing for the ongoing Hollywood strike.
Normally we don’t report on Hollywood union politics unless they get nasty in a particularly interesting way—which, it’s worth noting, Drescher’s first election, back in 2021, absolutely did, with opponent Matthew Modine threatening to sue her at one point as they battled out longstanding tensions in the guild. (Mostly over unhappiness over its last few contracts with the studios, which Drescher’s “party” was responsible for negotiating.) But normally there isn’t massive national attention on union leadership, either, with the fates of billion dollar companies hanging in the balance, so…
Not that there was any real drama to the election itself: In what can only be seen as a vote of clear confidence for their handling of the strike, Drescher has been re-elected president, while national secretary-treasurer Joely Fisher (who ran in opposition to Drescher last time) held on to her post, as well. Both wins were landslides, too: While Drescher beat Modine by less than 2,000 votes in 2021, this time she more than quadrupled the vote count of opponent Maya Gilbert-Dunbar—who argued in public statements that the strike should be “short and sweet,” and called for the union to bring in mediators to hammer out an early compromise with the studios. If nothing else, Drescher’s win can be seen as a pretty clear signal that the striking actors are willing to take the ongoing conflicts to the long and bitter end.
Drescher released a statement this weekend after her win, writing that,
I am honored to serve my union as president for another term. Much has been accomplished in the past two years but I feel great optimism that the next two will be our greatest ever! As we let go of tribalism and gain more empathy for one another, as we realize that with each experience comes opportunity to better ourselves on our journey of self-refinement, we will also enter a golden age for SAG-AFTRA.
29 Comments
From what I’ve seen, she’s been doing a great job. Also, pretty hilarious that Modine was going to sue her. What a fucking loser.
She’s only supporting the strikes after so much pressure; Modine was trying to unseat her because he disagreed with the contracts her leadership had negotiated, the same contracts that are now being attacked in the strike!
UFS’ platform has always favored big-name actors over the rank-and-file, and that has the knock-on effect of their policies also benefitting studios over regular working actors. Drescher, like Carteris before her, is doing what UFS has always done.Drescher’s statements early on in the WGA strike made it pretty clear that she didn’t want to strike; the rank-and-file stood to gain the most but that’s not who she’s there to serve. All a strike does for big-name actors who have the clout to negotiate their own deals is make it so they can’t work.Modine and MF should’ve won in 2021.
No, Modine and Drescher were running against each other for the seat in 2021. Gabrielle Carteris was the president 2016-2021 and Ken Howard before that 2012-2016.I will concede that whatever faction Drescher may have been part of may not have wanted to strike. I’m also not blaming you because they article is a word salad and I had to look up who was president of SAG-AFTRA and when myself.
Wasn’t she against vaccine mandates and Covid protocols? There might be “shades of grey” there but I’m wary.
I honestly don’t know about any of that.
This sums it up pretty well. Big “just asking questions” energy throughout.https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-09-15/sag-aftra-board-battles-over-future-of-covid-19-safety-measures-vaccine-mandates
…Maya Gilbert-Dunbar—who argued in public statements that the strike should be “short and sweet,” and called for the union to bring in mediators to hammer out an early compromise with the studios.
“We should just give in to the multi-billion dollar studios. Who’s with me?”
Don’t know much about Fran Drescher but from what I can tell she is definitely the person for the job. No offense to anyone who says a strike should be “short and sweet” but that is just handing management the reins. A strike should last until an actual resolution is reached.[I was in a union – a weak one – which pretty much announced “we’re going to walk out for THREE days!” And did that, and came back, and got nothing from management. Big surprise. I’ve also been in stronger unions, and there’s a giant difference obviously.]
“we’re going to walk out for THREE days!” And did that, and came back, and got nothing from management
Oh hello fellow Redditor
So what would it take to open another studio, union supported, that wasn’t under the thumb of the current executive 1% crop? Could several such studios be opened so that some of the union could get work while this strike is going on, and also to increase pressure on the current top crop of studio execs, by showing them that their power can evaporate as a result of their greed?
What it takes is tens of millions of dollars at a minimum, to get this nascent studio basically operational (hiring a bunch of people, setting up offices, negotiating contracts with all the unions, though that last would presumably be fairly cheap and easy if the whole point of this studio is to be supported by the unions). After that you have to start getting funding for actual filmmaking, which means finding investors (funds, banks, rich assholes) who are willing to risk millions on movies.
Assuming you do manage to work through all that and get to the point where you actually start producing movies, then you’re actually starting to put some pressure on the majors, who are no longer producing much of anything new; however you likely aren’t going to be able to get the funding to make the $200 million CGI tentpoles that they rely on, at least not yet (keep in mind that the revenue from those tentpoles involves lots of different revenue sources, e.g. foreign distribution deals, streaming licensing, box office, merchandise; you need to hire and pay people to do all of those things, and it takes a while to spin up all those divisions). So you’re probably limited to smaller films, at least at first.It’s doable, it’s just a really tall order. A24 is an example of an independent studio that can continue production during the WGA/SAG-AGTRA strikes because they’re willing to work with the unions, but they’ve been around for over a decade. As a point of comparison, A24 was founded by three film industry veterans who got their initial funding from Guggenheim Partners, a multibillion-dollar investment firm. So do that.
So not hopeless, but don’t expect it to take off next week!
All the major studios now have the backing of billion-dollar multinationals- MGM was the last holdout before Amazon bought them and they were clinging to life anyway. As late as the 80s there was some room but they’ve got the hooks in too deep in the global age. You’d need the backing of VERY rich folks and that just leaves you in the same position.
It almost sounds as though some industry monopolization might need investigating.
It’s not a monopoly problem, it’s a vertical integration problem. There are many Hollywood studios competing with each other. The issue is that they have all been absorbed by huge conglomerates who make money doing lots of things that have little to do with movie or TV production. When the studios were all standalone entities that solely existed to produce movies and TV shows, a strike was a death blow. The widget factory found itself unable to make widgets overnight. Now that everything is all “content” and “IP” to the parent company, who has money coming in from business lines as varied as theme parks and cruise lines and online stores and smartphones and web services, they don’t actually need to sell any widgets.And this is the real barrier to entry for a new standalone studio. You’d need billions of dollars in financing to even produce movies that can compete with the major studios, and you’d need to come up with original content (since a startup would lack any existing IP) at a time when that’s riskier than event. But even immediate box office success wouldn’t be enough to upend the industry, because even if the new studio were wildly successful, it would just become a ripe target for one of the bigger fish to swallow up.
You’d need billions of dollars in financing to even produce movies that can compete with the major studiosThis would be a time then to dust off screenplays that haven’t been considered because they aren’t what major studios want, i.e. blockbuster tentpoles.you’d need to come up with original contentThere’s a lot of writers and actors with time on their hands, as well as other behind the camera workers.The biggest problem is funding and distribution. Funding might be feasible by giving everyone involved shares in the final product so that would work for pennies. Distribution is a tougher nut to crack. TV and theatres would probably be worries about pissing off the producers, and losing access to future content. Maybe YouTube could be the outlet?
In my (lay) opinion, the AMPTP is a gigantic walking, talking antitrust violation: It’s effectively a collusion to try to fix the price of labor. Rather than the individual studios competing for talent by competing with each other to offer better deals to workers, they all get together and negotiate as one. Surely if the market is so important, powerful market actors who collectively own 99% of it shouldn’t be allowed to collude.
They could do this pretty easily, in fact, a number of smaller studios are producing content with the union’s blessing because they’ve already agreed to the contract proposals the union is holding out for.
The problem is that the companies who aren’t cooperating are the major streaming players – Amazon, Netflix, Disney, etc…. Starting a company to rival that would be nigh-upon impossible without a few billion dollars of capital to create a streaming service and position it as an actual competitor to the others, which would be hampered initially by a complete lack of content.
Some sort of united artists?
Strike 4EVA! No one outside the industry is affected, and no one cares but pop culture obsessed internet dwellers.
Congratulations for not just reprinting another outlet’s article, but in the telling you missed some critical details, namely, the election results themselves. It’s not as bad as just glossing over the 2000 Presidential by simply stating that Bush won, but the results here do add a lot of context to what you’re calling a landslide
Drescher beat Gilbert-Dunbar 23,080 votes to 5,276 in an election with 22.84% turnout. That’s worse than an off-year primary.
A win is a win, but it’s pretty clear that despite massive support for the strike among the union membership, there was not exactly massive concern about deciding who was going to lead them.
How many members voted in 2020?
If you’re referring to Drescher’s win in 2021, the turnout was 26.49%.
That’s it, thanks.
farewell sweet Nanny…
Un-seating her in the middle of all this also probably would have been a bad look.
“Un-seating her” . . . you mean like . . . in the butt?