Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Sunday June 29, 2008
guardian.co.uk

Welcome to Strike 2008 - the sequel. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the negotiating room, the Hollywood unions and their studio paymasters have devised a new dispute to threaten an already precarious industry.

Back at the turn of the year, it was the story of the downtrodden writers and their attempts to secure recognition and fair pay for their labours. Film production schedules were revised, behind-the-scenes staff were laid off, TV talk shows went silent and the networks turned to reality shows of dubious provenance to fill airtime, before a compromise was reached.

This time it is the actors' turn to be angry and the dispute has all the features of the best Hollywood blockbusters: there is intrigue, deception, betrayal, an improbably convoluted plot, a cliffhanger ending and a cast list to die for. Among the actors already signed on to the project are Tom Hanks, Kevin Spacey, Sally Field, Alec Baldwin, Jack Nicholson, Ben Stiller, Martin Sheen and Viggo Mortensen.

The latest recruit is George Clooney, who proclaimed his devotion to the actors' cause with the release of a two-page letter on Thursday.

"I've been very lucky in my career, which has put me in the place that I don't need a union to check on my residuals, or my pension, or protect my 12-hour turnaround," the actor-director wrote. "I used to need that, and may again, but right now I don't.

"That means it's my responsibility to look out for actors who are trying to stay afloat from year-to-year. Anything less is irresponsible of me."

At the heart of the dispute is the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the bigger and better-known of the two unions representing actors. The contract between its 120,000 members and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), representing the studios, expires tomorrow and could lead to a recommendation to strike.

The screen actors are seeking higher pay for "middle-tier" actors, artists earning less than $100,000 (£50,000) a year, and a greater cut of profits from DVD and new media sales.

The subtext to Clooney's plea, and the strike, is a split among the actors. While SAG wants to renegotiate the existing contract, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) - which represents about 80,000 members, many of whom are also members of SAG, reached an agreement with the studios at the end of May, resolving the key issues of royalties from new media and DVD sales.

Since then, the SAG has focused much of its fire on AFTRA, launching a campaign urging the 44,000 actors who are members of both unions to reject the AFTRA agreement, thus strengthening SAG's hand in its negotiations with the studios.

Hanks, Spacey, Field and Baldwin are all members of both unions who support AFTRA and urge that union's membership to ratify the agreement by its July 8 deadline. Nicholson, Stiller, Sheen and Mortensen want AFTRA-SAG members to vote against the new contract. Clooney, playing the role of peacemaker, is in the middle.

One of his proposals is for the creation of a union panel made up of actors who would sit down with the studios once a year to discuss issues of interest. Rather than being ordinary working - or more typically, resting - actors, Clooney suggests the panel would include Hanks and Nicholson, "people that the studio heads don't often say 'no' to." Whether Clooney consulted with his famous peers before throwing forward their names is unknown.

But as Clooney notes in his letter, the current spectacle of actors feuding with actors is unseemly.

"What we can't do is pit artist against artist," he wrote, "because the one thing you can be sure of is that stories about Jack Nicholson vs. Tom Hanks only strengthens the negotiating power of the AMPTP."

Most industry observers believe that it is very unlikely SAG will be able to muster the 75% approval among its members necessary to authorise a strike. But if it does, 17 major projects could be delayed or postponed, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Of the 17, four are sequels, including the latest in the Da Vinci Code and Terminator franchises, four are action thrillers, including one based on a video game, four are comedies, and five are versions of books or TV programmes, most notably the "eagerly awaited" Hannah Montana movie.