Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit
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Mmm. Well, I wish I'd been at the Spada conference, just to get as full a picture as I could. From the clip posted above, it would seem that there is still a lot of blaming going on. And it seems obvious too, that the full picture is still not out in the open. I do wonder about Phillipa Boyens mentioning SAG rates vs NZ actors' rates. I don't think any actor would expect to get a lead actor's rate unless they're leads themselves, so that seemed gratuitous, but then, I wasn't there so don't know if anyone (producers or actors) pointed that out.
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I think the whole thing finished up in a pretty good place by the end of the conference, and I'm happy to have been a part of getting there.
There needed to be some venting in the course of the Spada session but I think I kept it within appropriate bounds. The Media7 panel we recorded the following day will be worth watching on Thursday -- Peter Elliott was eloquent, Richard Fletcher was constructive, Peter Cox was bloody witty, and Kevin the lawyer was articulate. Also, subjecting Jose to the cruel and unusual punishment of having to make a fair and balanced timeline of the whole affair was worth the pain -- his video track is excellent.
I'll write about this at more length, but I think everyone concerned realises that this sort of family bloodletting can't happen again.
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And maybe it had repercussions beyond the film industry
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Hmmm.
I suspected at the time, and said so, that Warners had manipulated the timing of the announcement of the lifting of the “don’t work” order to the disadvantage of the actors and their unions: and thus played hardball with the union that had sought to play hardball with them.
That would seem to be the case, or worse. It was hard to tell from Brent Edwards’ paraphrasing of the material lat night, but Derek Cheng has the actual quote from Jackson’s email to Gerry Brownlee:
"There is no connection between the blacklist (and it’s eventual retraction) and the choice of production base for The Hobbit,” he wrote.
“What Warners requires for The Hobbit is the certainty of a stable employment environment and the ability to conduct its business in such as way that it feels its $500 million investment is as secure as possible."
It seems clear enough in context that they – Warners and Wingnut – had known for several days that the order was to be lifted and chose not to acknowledge it. It does not mean, as Trevor Mallard claimed, preposterously, on Morning Report today that “there was never a boycott”.
There was. It was there in writing for the world to see, and it halted pre-production and casting. And the MEAA engaged in its own bad faith conduct by setting the “don’t work” order in motion before even requesting talks. The local actors’ declaration that a collective agreement wasn’t being sought when the text of order said that it was (more specifically, it called for a halt until such time as as MEAA agreement was in place), was symbolic of the chaotic nature of the action. As Lew Stoddart observed online last night, they turned up to a knife fight with a spoon.
The government did not, as Edwards implied last night, fail to mention the Bryson case and what Warners saw as uncertainty in the law around contracting. Those issues were the lead in the TV3 report the day after Jackson made his Close Up appearance. And Jackson himself said on Close Up that “Unfortunately, lifting the blacklist doesn’t have anything to do with it."
When NZ Actors Equity members did vote, their resolution never dealt with the actual text of the global “don’t work” order. When they declared “all we wanted was a meeting with Peter”, they hadn’t actually asked for one. The MEAA, by Whipp’s own account, was targeting The Hobbit as part of a wider strategy. You can’t simply magic all that away.
Had MEAA never sought to target The Hobbit in this way, what would have happened? Would, at some point, Warners have still made its case for greater certainty in the law around contracting – or simply pressed on? We can’t know. But no one made Simon Whipp authorise the boycott, least of all Warners. He, MEAA and SAG chose to play hardball in the name of the New Zealand actors.
I think we’re left with a situation where the production did know that week that the boycott was to be lifted – after the union essentially caved on all its demands – and deliberately delayed an announcement so as to exploit the situation.
It was deceitful and cynical – and the techies who marched should be asking questions about what they were told with respect to the boycott.
Oddly, the documents released under OIA actually seem to undermine the common contention (by Mallard and others) that industrial relations were irrelevant to the choice of local and that it was all about the value of the dollar and production incentives. Rightly or wrongly, Warners really were concerned about industrial stability above mere baseline cost.
I remain, as I said in the original post above these comments, queasy about New Zealand’s law being changed in such circumstances. But as someone pointed out to me last week, a great many people in the industry were delighted to have the perfect proof to IRD that they really were contractors, not employees, and should enjoy the tax advantages of the former. It was a fitting irony.
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That seems charitable in the context of your initial (I'm paraphrasing, from memory) 'I'm being told the production is as good as gone as things stand' precisely on account of the don't work order. Turns out it wasn't, Jackson was just manipulating perceptions in order to get his business partners what they wanted. Or am I missing something?
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Fair enough, although I do think the people who told me that believed it to be true, and that the prospect of industrial instability was raised in the first instance by the extraordinary manner in which the global boycott was instigated. Jackson didn’t invent the boycott, but I think the evidence is that he was subsequently party to a manipulation of perceptions, as you say.
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but I think the evidence is that he was subsequently party to a manipulation of perceptions, as you say
Also known in standard English as being a fucking liar, yes.
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I think there's a timeline issue. At first the central issue was the boycott. Clearly the movie could not of been made here with the boycott in place. Once that was resolved then the studios focused on the contractor issue. Given the unions were all of the place it's not surprising they were concerned about future difficulties.
With people, even now, still saying there was no boycott and with Helen Kelly yet again going on about how a collective agreement was the solution Jackson and the studios were faced with people capable of enormous disruption who could not get their story straight.
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I also think it’s worrying that Brownlee’s Office (or was it Findlayson’s) was happy to give the Crown Law opinion to Warners, but still insist on withholding it from the NZ public.
That may be businesslike, but again it shows how business people make bad ministers.
They really won’t accept any concept of duty to the state, will they?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Also known in standard English as being a fucking liar, yes.
Yes, just as Robyn Malcom and Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Helen Kelly either lied about the stop-work order in the first place, or are remarkably stupid. (With Mallard, it just saves time to operate under the presumption of feral truthiness until proven otherwise.) Myself, I'd go with "liar" because anyone that idiotic and feckless should be kept away from industrial negotiations with a cattle prod.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I think there’s a timeline issue. At first the central issue was the boycott. Clearly the movie could not of been made here with the boycott in place. Once that was resolved then the studios focused on the contractor issue. Given the unions were all of the place it’s not surprising they were concerned about future difficulties.
I agree with that. But there has also been deception.
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My respect for Jackson, Walsh and Boyens has diminished considerably. All three were over the media (Walsh & Boyens on 9 to Noon) saying the union boycott was the reason Warners were pulling the plug, in fact Walsh was asked by Katherine Ryan about the employment law issue and as I remember she said it was nothing to do with that and it was the union boycott causing the problem.
No-one comes out of this looking great, the union boycott was badly misjudged but Wingnut, Key and Brownlee (from the content of the email) deliberately mislead all and sundry over the issue (lied?). To be fair to Warners although I think their aims were to just do the best for themselves they didn't have a part in the spin that the boycott was the problem.
Thanks Peter, John and Gerry for making us look like a banana republic that will do what the corporates want - do you feel the slightest bit dirty?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Also known in standard English as being a fucking liar, yes.
Well, it wasn't a lie that other locations were being canvassed and inspected, rival bids were coming in, etc.
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All of which activities could well have been completely perfunctory, however. How serious were they about shifting the production? My guess at this point (as it was back then) is not at all. People were bandying Ireland and a studio in the UK around, but do we know if the talk had any substance, and whether anybody was doing any actual "canvassing"? How detailed and serious were these rival bids?
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stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz, in reply to
Looking back at reports from the time, those suggestions came from Boyens and Jackson.
Given today's news, those suggestions of rival bids are looking truthy.
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A look at the Spada response to claims in the MEAA newsletter is useful, if only as a reminder that a good deal of what MEAA said was misleading too.
Even after talks with Spada finally began, this was a straight-up lie:
The contracts now being offered by the producers of The Hobbit include conditions such as residual payments for performers. This is a great result considering how reluctant the producers were to improve performers’ terms and conditions.
The residuals were in the original contracts. Indeed, the contracts before and after the action appear to be identical.
So, without excusing Warner/Jackson's egregious claims at all, it's pretty clear they weren't the only people acting in bad faith.
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I guess there are many more words to be said on this on this matter. It does make the explanations offered by Phillipa Boyens at the SPADA conference rather disingenuous.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
So, without excusing Warner/Jackson's egregious claims at all, it's pretty clear they weren't the only people acting in bad faith.
They seem qualitatively different lies to me - one to save face and claim victory after the fact, the other to push through a law under duress. (A law that incidentally spares Jackson from the ignominy of being taken to court as he was - successfully - by the likes of Mr. Bryson. Result!)
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Okay, then, this: claiming “there was no boycott”, and that action was only taken because no one would talk, when way back in June, Whipp got this though FIA:
“Resolved, that the International Federation of Actors urges each of its affiliates to adopt instructions to their members that no member of any FIA affiliate will agree to act in the theatrical film The Hobbit until such time as the producer has entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance for production in New Zealand providing for satisfactory terms and conditions for all performers employed on the productions.”
This was months before contracts were even done, and before they’d requested talks with Warners, let alone Jackson -- it wasn't ever about actual terms and conditions on offer. And then NZAE spokespeople and Helen Kelly said they’d never sought a collective bargaining agreement.
I agree, it is a different flavour of lie, a hapless one, even, but the union was not a blameless victim in this, as people are now trying to say.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I guess there are many more words to be said on this on this matter. It does make the explanations offered by Phillipa Boyens at the SPADA conference rather disingenuous.
Yes. I made a point of quizzing her on exactly what she told the techies at the meeting of Weta, so it's there in some detail.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I agree, it is a different flavour of lie, a hapless one, even, but the union was not a blameless victim in this, as people are now trying to say.
The most frustrating aspect of this whole thing for me was reading the union's own press releases in a sequence and finding that they contradicted each other - I'd have thought that the job of misrepresenting your views was best left to your opponent. But then it also struck me as a conspiracy of incompetence more than anything else. Don't think we can blame the employers' side of that in this circumstance. The govt's role in this ought to be looked into as well. A Labour MP on Facebook was just asking the question - didn't Brownlee call Kelly a liar when she said what we now know to be true? If that is indeed the case (I don't recall the incident nor can find a reference for it) it would be good to be able to date it in relation to the email he received from Sir Lie-a-lot.
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So the extreme case here is that Jackson/Warners ginned up the whole thing in order to relieve the film industry of one part of the Employment Relations Act, which (although Bryson wasn't a general precedent) did introduce an element of uncertainty in its provision for the courts to be able to reconsider contracts based on what they deemed to be the "real" nature of the relationship.
But this ignores the fact of the boycott and the manner of its application -- and the fact of MEAA's established form in these disputes. (Example: The producers of This Is Not My Life were told that their cast had asked to be represented by MEAA in a collective agreement negotiation. This was something of surprise to the producers, because they had not actually cast anyone at that point.)
But mostly, if Warners cared nothing about a global "don't work" order (which would be odd) and only wanted to be sure of avoiding another Bryson, why not simply ask for that? It's hard to imagine that the current government would be reluctant to make a minor amendment to Labour's employment law.
In short: this did start with the boycott. And the situation was subsequently exploited by the producers.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
But mostly, if Warners cared nothing about a global "don't work" order (which would be odd) and only wanted to be sure of avoiding another Bryson, why not simply ask for that?
Because anybody who looked at the Bryson case would be inclined to side with the worker, perhaps?
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But mostly, if Warners cared nothing about a global "don't work" order (which would be odd)
Even if Warners didn't care, Ian McKellen (active member of Actor's Equity UK for over 40 years) and Cate Blanchett (who is on both sides of the talent/management equation as co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company) most certainly do. They'd professionally be unemployable if they even took a meeting in defiance of a stop-work order from their union, and anyone who says otherwise is (in Gio's elegant turn of phrase) a fucking liar. Or thick as a crusty bucket of pigshit, and nowhere near as useful.
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nzlemming, in reply to
[deleted - craig got there first]
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