Posts by Neil Morrison
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Clint Fern,
The NatRad interview was on Oct 21 - NZ time, SAG lifted the boycott on 21 Oct - LA time ie 22nd NZ time.
At the time of the interview the boycott had not been lifted. Walsh and Boyens were telling the truth.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Clint Fern,
Boyens and co were completely correct to say at that point in time the boycott had placed the production in danger. That the boycott had been lifted made no difference to the consequnces of the boycott which was to have the studios reassessing their options.
Remember, at the time the Kelly and co were denying there ever was a boycott. It did have to be reinforced that there indeed had been and that it had been very damaging.
Mallard, complete lack of leadership from Labour. If there was ever an issue where someone in Labour should have been able to make sense - Art and Industrial Relations - this was it but it didn't happen. And with Mallard continuing to talk crap no one seems to have learnt anything.
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A bit of a timeline:
October 1
Jackson says “The Hobbit is being punished with a boycott which is endangering thousands of New Zealand jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign income, for no good reason.”
At that point in time the boycott was in place, the unions had made no moves to lift it
October 16/17
The unions agree to lift the boycott
October 18
Jackson says: “There is no connection between the blacklist (and it’s eventual retraction) and the choice of production base for The Hobbit,”
October 20
Actors Equity recommends to SAG the boycott be lifted
October 21
SAG lifts boycott
An important even took place in between Jackson’s comments on Oct 1 and Oct 18 – namely the unions decide to lift the boycott. Yes Jackson said different things, because the situation had changed dramatically.
October 22
Studios announce Martin Freeman signed for Hobbit
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It’s hardly a moot point. The way SAG works is if you sign up to a boycotted movie they can take away your union card and hence stop you from working on any other movie for as long as the want – apart from low budget non-union ones.
It is worth noting that the very day after SAG lifted the boycott – that’s officially lifted the boycott not just say they will (which appears to be the issue at the base of Jackson's claim the boycott had not been lifted) – the studios signed contracts with the lead actors. The very next day. These issues are taken very seriously in Hollywood. The studios would not dare to sign actors with a boycott in place and no actor would be self-destructive enough to do so.
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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 don't know where the antagonism comes from, it was clearly a joke.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
the second verse is clever, working in digital conversion which ties into information theory. not sure if it means anything though.
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I thought there might be some takers here on a discusion on knowledge, truth, Thomas Pynchon and the laws of theromdymics. Apparently not. The level of personal insult has been particularly unimaginative.
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Reading through Clinton's embassy briefing for her visit I thought it was accurate, measured and detailed. But sort of long and probably just one of the many briefings she has to read each day.
Imagine what her boss Obama has to wade through. How on earth does one come to any understanding of what is really going on. Or maybe people with good judgement can cut through and make good decisions.
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The point of all that stupid talk was about whether or not Obama was going to step back and leave the threat to attack Iran a bit more implicit than the other candidates.
That's a fair assesment of what was going on at the time between Hillary and Obama. I think Obama was sincere with the extending the open hand to the clenched fist bit although they both had to stake out different positions. That's the nature of the primaries. Although I never thought that in reality they would have very different foreign policy positions. With them working together you get the best of whatever small differences in views they had.