Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Do Warner Bros, an American entertainment mega-conglomerate, have a moral obligation to tell the NZ public about their dealings? I don't know.
Do NZ Equity / MEAA / CTU have a moral obligation to be telling the NZ public the truth? Somehow, and maybe it's unfair, I feel that they do have more of one.
I'm not talking about whether they had an obligation to tell us. Warners could have shut up if they wanted.
But both did, and both have been caught telling untruths, which makes neither of them look good.
(And I'd guess, at least a couple more to be added to the union side as documents come out)
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Just as big as John Stewart, and significantly bigger in the departments of sexism and anti-vaccine crankery.
In terms of influence, Jon Stewart has it all over him. Barack Obama is appearing on Comedy Central - a cable channel I believe - this week, and he's not doing it because there's a big hole in his schedule and nothing better came along. Pulling power.
I've only seen Bill Maher a few times, but he seems to mix it up between "wow that's incredibly funny", and "do you have to be an arsehole?" That's never going as far.
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Now would also seem to be an appropriate time for Key to call on all the low cunning, intuition and willingness to exploit inside knowledge that served him well as a currency trader.
Finally his background does us some good!
For people not familar with the US situation, there are union movies and non-union movies. In order to get onto a union movie you have to have a union card, to get a union card you have to have worked on a moive. What movies can you work on to get the card - non-union movies.
To require that all movies in NZ be union movies would kill any opportunity for people to learn the craft. Which is exactly what the Australians and Americans want.
I'm not aware of anyone saying that actors have to be union members to work in a movie. Just that they want the production/s to offer union approved contracts or unionised workers won't work on them.
I'm keeping track of the "who's been telling fibs". Warners got caught lying about when they were told that the boycott was lifted. NZAE seems to have been caught lying about "talking to the production for months". 1-1, several still to come?
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I realise that specifics will be impossible to talk about for the moment, but do we have any idea as to why the SFO went down the heavy handed route if they thought NBR had vital information, instead of trying for an informal chat instead?
Some news agencies have a policy of only releasing such things upon receipt of a formal request - search warrant, court order etc.
Keeps things clean and means that they can't be accused of passing things onto the police.
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SAG's 13.8% provides healthcare and pension cover -- two things that are hard for Americans to get if they're not in steady employment. Its actual commission on residuals is said to be 1-3%.
Good point. I guess you'd need to see the potential income and costs associated with collecting it and passing it on to see how it's justified.
Certainly less work than an agent would do for an actor, so a single figure cut would seem better.
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"But The Daily Show will probably be a real slam dunk on FOUR, now that it's a broader, wider entertainment channel."
How bizarre. I think it's prefect for TV3 - right after nightline. It's some of the best news media analysis currently being made, the best I think for a popular audience, why would you hide it on your 'kids and mindless entertainment' channel?
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Will we look back and say that whatever changes come out of AE's discussions with SPADA, or the government's proposed law changes, or whatever, were a net positive for individuals and for the industry as a whole?
Likely to be a mixed bag. The government's changes are possibly going to be worse for people working, better for the industry, but may be neutral or they may do not much at all. I think the union will end up with some positive changes out of this, though obviously they've been very damaged.
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True but irrelevant. That is nothing to do with the residuals.
The claim was made that MEAA were completely different from the SAG because they were looking at a 15% cut.
Given that the SAG takes almost the same amount of salaries, which are the majority of the actor's income, and they're a much larger operation so have economies of scale advantages, 15% doesn't seem too bad, particularly given that residuals would have a pretty high overhead tracking down actors for years, rather than just clipping the salary during a shoot.
Personally I think that mixing up the role of union as representative and union as business clipping further incomes is a bad idea, but 15% isn't exactly out of line with SAG.
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No, sorry, much as that is very dumb, "I would not have supported Len Brown if I had known about the blacklisting of the Hobbit" is actually dumber. Amazing, I know.
Particularly given that the blacklisting came out in September, and the local body election finished on 9 October. Plenty of time to go "woah" and stop pushing Brown to his friends.
An Otago University employment law specialist has criticised the Government's suggestion that law changes could be made to suit the producers of The Hobbit movies.
Got some particularly nasty emails as a result too.
However, the fact that MEAA clip the residual ticket at 15%, as opposed to SAG at 2-3% I'm told, should give anyone pause.
"Under the SAG Basic Agreement, producers must contribute 13.8% of actors' salaries to the Pension and Health Fund." ['Global Rule One: SAG's Answer to Runaway Production', Kathryn Pietrolungo, Brian Tinkham]
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If I was a full member of this union I'd be calling a Special General Meeting for a vote of "No Confidence" in Simon Whipp.
Given that I presume he's an employee, that would have no meaning. No confidence effects members of the executive, not employees who are protected by employment law.
This is probably a case where there needs to be one union for all workers in the film industry
Indeed. My union is a sector based one. There are minor problems with relative power and concerns, but it helps prevent one type of worker going off without at least other sorts of workers being aware of what they're on about.
I'd like to see that opinion, if you have access to it. As far as I am aware, it's not been made available online anywhere.
I believe 3'7 and Wingnut had a legal opinion from an equally prestigious firm that said the opposite. Certainly that was the view of the Attorney General and Crown Law. (Neither of those are available online either, sadly).
The union one and the government's one were both available online - scoop I think? I've certainly read both.
(Also, while I'm pleased that mandatory access for unions to employees is part of the legal landscape in New Zealand, I am most displeased by the notion AE are pushing that you have to join a union to be allowed to get a job.
Where have they said that? My understanding isn't that you have to be part ofthe union to get a job, just that film makers have to provide union approved contracts to get the union to back their film.
Helen Kelly posts a timeline of her involvement.
That's interesting. I still think there's going to be some blowback towards Warners after this is all over as the CTU in particular have said some things which conflict with what Warners have been saying. The CTU seems likely to have the evidence that they're the ones telling the truth in several of these instances.