One faces the future with one's past. Pearl S. Buck
A friend recently lent me his copy of the IATSE convention minutes from the beginning in 1893 to 1926 and I've found them to be great reading. It started when he was telling me about the Clearers Local #390 and Calcium and Electro-Calcium Light Local #35 in NYC. I had never heard of them so I decided to do a little research. The things you find out!
It seems that there were Property Men and assistants but the rest of the work of setting props and decorating were done by "clearers'. This was a separate Local and the men were not considered to be as skilled as mechanics, flymen, carpenters or electricians. It wasn't until 1920 that these separate Locals were "amalgamated" into
Local One.
I knew that the Alliance was originally called the National Alliance (NATSE) but had heard the name was changed because it rhymed with Nazi. Turns out that this little item was planted by some Hollywood press agent in the 1940's. Actually it was changed because, among other reasons, Canadian locals were included in the Alliance. That was done at the convention meeting at Emerald Hall in Norfolk, Va in July of 1902.
Items from various minutes.
July, 1895 Resolution passed that offers support to Eugene V. Debs and his brothers in Woodstock jail.
Resolution offered by Local 5 Cincinnatti to do away with counterweights and sandbags. Rejected as interfering with local laws to much.
July 1896 Rates for Traveling Men
Master Machinist $35
Asst Machinist and Flymen $25
Extra Men $20
Property Men $25
Asst Propertymen $20
Electrician $25
In 1903, Local 4 in Brooklyn requested that the rates charged in Brooklyn were to be as follows:
Master Machinist $30 week
Asst. Machinist $20 week
Traveling Company $20 Week
Property Man and assistant $35 Week
Stage and Fly Hands (extra hours and broken time) .65 hour
Electrician or Gas-man $21 Week
Stage Carpenters Per Day $3.50
Stagehands Per Day $2.50
Stagehands and Flymen per performance $1.50
Sunday, Nights, Holidays Double Time
1905, IATSE locals collect $1695 for San Francisco earthquake relief.
In 1914 Quebec outlawed sandbags and counterweights being used over "the heads of actors, machinists or other persons on the stage." What we call "arbors" were required.
May 1917 Road Scale Rates:(Pink Contract)
Master Machinist $45 week
Asst. Machinist $40 week
Flyman $35
Extramen $35
Propertymen $40
Asst. Propertymen $35
January, 1919, Local 4 requests amalgamation with Local One.
May, 1919 IATSE Executive Board rejects the Local 4 request for amalgamation.
May 1920, President Shay reports that during the Actors Equity Association strike, IATSE supported the union with an assessment of $1 per member. It was the support of all members of the Alliance that helped AEA win the strike.
Electrician $40 Week
Assst Electrician $35 Week
Moving Picture Machine Operator $45
1917 $45
2008 Adjusted for inflation $759.73
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying
I came across this while watching an AFTRA video about the Employee Free Choice Act and the Chicago NBC/Telemundo organizing effort. I'm sure that when NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT, Chicago Tribune, NY Post and all the rest report Rod Blagojevich's indictment they've have forgotten about his support for organizing within the entertainment industry.
Oh wait, here's another one.
I'm sure messing with the Bank of America didn't have anything to do with it either.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Talkin' 'bout My Generation
Got into a conversation with another stagehand about personal influences (as opposed to being under the influence which is another frequent topic of conversation) and went online to reference some book titles I vaguely recalled. This lead me back to times and places when I was growing up and the speeches I’ve heard. Obama is such an inspiring speaker and, as such, a terrific actor. I hear echoes of other speeches that were electrifing calls to action. Henry V Act III Once more unto the breach. John Kennedy's 1961 Inaugural Address still has the power to move. Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath”, “where ever there’s a guy getting beat up by a cop, I’ll be there” was a quieter, low-key speech but still stirring. I got to thinking about some of the speeches that formed my generation and me. Not to sound like a Billy Joel song but there were some moving calls to action during our terrible times of turmoil.
I can vaguely recall John Kennedy’s inauguration and a little better the muted Requiem Mass. Everyone’s seen the stirring cadences of Dr. King and the I Have A Dream speech in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. A few years later was an angry Mario Savio calling for resistance instead of pacifism on Sproul Hall steps in Berkeley.
Nobody has tried to levitate the Pentagon lately though it thoroughly deserves it. As chronicled in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, the speeches from the 1967 March on the Pentagon were filled with anger, impudence and denouncement.
In my opinion the finest speeches I ever heard is Mario Cuomo's 1984 Convention Speech. Watch it again because it could almost be used intact, today.
Good oration is good theatre. It can stir a soul to do amazing things, move people in profound ways. I look forward to the next four years.
I can vaguely recall John Kennedy’s inauguration and a little better the muted Requiem Mass. Everyone’s seen the stirring cadences of Dr. King and the I Have A Dream speech in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. A few years later was an angry Mario Savio calling for resistance instead of pacifism on Sproul Hall steps in Berkeley.
Nobody has tried to levitate the Pentagon lately though it thoroughly deserves it. As chronicled in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, the speeches from the 1967 March on the Pentagon were filled with anger, impudence and denouncement.
In my opinion the finest speeches I ever heard is Mario Cuomo's 1984 Convention Speech. Watch it again because it could almost be used intact, today.
Good oration is good theatre. It can stir a soul to do amazing things, move people in profound ways. I look forward to the next four years.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
On The Bounce
The business is slow right now and there is a lot of fear out there. As workers we’ve been inculcated with fear about our jobs, our future and our status in life since the Reagan administration. The middle class life we knew has moved further and further out of our reach. Rightly or wrongly we measure our self worth by the kind of work we do and when there isn’t any work, we’re diminished.
One of the odd things about this business is working on the bounce. There is a sizable population of our business who work as per-diems or daily hires. Technicians who by design or circumstance live a life determined by the ebb and flow of work calls, holidays, special events, swinging into a show track, one-offs or hotel jobs. Split shifts, back to back to back calls, clockers and short notice calls are all part of the career. Depending on what is going on in you home life will determine how quickly you take any call that comes along. A stagehand with kids and a mortgage isn’t going to get much sleep.
How one copes with financial insecurity often determines the part of this business one goes into. Stagehands sometimes get a basic, full-time job and never venture out of the venue into the rest of the jurisdiction. Others don’t have the skills or the contacts that allow them to get these jobs offered to them in the first place. Still others seem to have the job skills but lack the social skills to stay in one place for very long. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The hardest part is managing cash flow. After enough time in the business you learn that a steady job often means you can keep a smaller cushion since money is coming in on a steady basis. When your bouncing around, however, you keep a larger cushion because the checks arrive when they arrive. When doing a hotel job you know not to count on the check at the end of the call, the end of the week or even at the end of the month. Corporate jobs often tend to be slow since the payroll has to get invoiced, passed through the production company that hired you, then sent to the client, processed through their invoicing system and checks are then cut. Weeks can pass and sometimes enough time passes that a check comes in the mail that you had forgotten about. Sometimes you end up being fly-by-night operations creditors but the Local is pretty good about that sort of stuff. I’ve gotten ripped off a lot more often without a contract than with one.
It’s a balancing act keeping the bills paid, the calls filled and having a real life. Most of the time when things get out of balance it’s the real life that goes first. There’s no time for family issues or relationships or relaxation. You can’t really relax because every show closes, every job comes to an end and you have to find the next one. More work, a little sleep, another call across town and a quick meal. You get home to change clothes and grab some shuteye. And repeat.
I see fear in people’s eyes now. The cushion is getting smaller or perhaps has disappeared. The calls are fewer and after watching the news or reading their annuity statements, the prospects look grim. However fear is an emotion and not a fact. There is an ebb and flow to show business and to life and we need to keep that in mind. Watch out for people that are trying to play on your emotions, be they politicians, financers or commentators. The wealthy lose a bunch of paper money and it's a depression. Working folks lose their homes and it's a housing bubble. The multinationals that control the levers of power are jockeying for position with these bailouts and playing chicken with the financial system.
I have no idea where it will end up. I do know that we have more survival skills, street smarts. We had to have them in order to get by in the New World Order. Don’t buy what they’re selling. We’ll be alright if we stick together.
One of the odd things about this business is working on the bounce. There is a sizable population of our business who work as per-diems or daily hires. Technicians who by design or circumstance live a life determined by the ebb and flow of work calls, holidays, special events, swinging into a show track, one-offs or hotel jobs. Split shifts, back to back to back calls, clockers and short notice calls are all part of the career. Depending on what is going on in you home life will determine how quickly you take any call that comes along. A stagehand with kids and a mortgage isn’t going to get much sleep.
How one copes with financial insecurity often determines the part of this business one goes into. Stagehands sometimes get a basic, full-time job and never venture out of the venue into the rest of the jurisdiction. Others don’t have the skills or the contacts that allow them to get these jobs offered to them in the first place. Still others seem to have the job skills but lack the social skills to stay in one place for very long. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The hardest part is managing cash flow. After enough time in the business you learn that a steady job often means you can keep a smaller cushion since money is coming in on a steady basis. When your bouncing around, however, you keep a larger cushion because the checks arrive when they arrive. When doing a hotel job you know not to count on the check at the end of the call, the end of the week or even at the end of the month. Corporate jobs often tend to be slow since the payroll has to get invoiced, passed through the production company that hired you, then sent to the client, processed through their invoicing system and checks are then cut. Weeks can pass and sometimes enough time passes that a check comes in the mail that you had forgotten about. Sometimes you end up being fly-by-night operations creditors but the Local is pretty good about that sort of stuff. I’ve gotten ripped off a lot more often without a contract than with one.
It’s a balancing act keeping the bills paid, the calls filled and having a real life. Most of the time when things get out of balance it’s the real life that goes first. There’s no time for family issues or relationships or relaxation. You can’t really relax because every show closes, every job comes to an end and you have to find the next one. More work, a little sleep, another call across town and a quick meal. You get home to change clothes and grab some shuteye. And repeat.
I see fear in people’s eyes now. The cushion is getting smaller or perhaps has disappeared. The calls are fewer and after watching the news or reading their annuity statements, the prospects look grim. However fear is an emotion and not a fact. There is an ebb and flow to show business and to life and we need to keep that in mind. Watch out for people that are trying to play on your emotions, be they politicians, financers or commentators. The wealthy lose a bunch of paper money and it's a depression. Working folks lose their homes and it's a housing bubble. The multinationals that control the levers of power are jockeying for position with these bailouts and playing chicken with the financial system.
I have no idea where it will end up. I do know that we have more survival skills, street smarts. We had to have them in order to get by in the New World Order. Don’t buy what they’re selling. We’ll be alright if we stick together.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Ratings
I’ve been home ill the last few days and have too much time to think about the current financial crisis and my business as our little drama plays out. Not if the television networks will fail but rather the financial crisis as drama, how it’s presented.
Suppose your boss said to you if you want to keep your job you need to give up your pension and healthcare. What would your reaction be? You can choose to sustain the future or the present, not both. Presented with this Hobson’s choice, mine would be fear. And fear makes for good television.
What if this happens to a neighbor or close friend and confidant? You would be witness to and identify with a basic, existential conflict that you hope never happens to you. Put it on a stage and it’s called drama. Put it on television and it’s called news. You become a witness to an accident in HD.
Over the weekend a reporter corrected an anchor who had repeated the “fact” that the Saudi tanker captured by the Somali pirates was “three times longer than an the largest air craft carrier.” Someone had done some checking and found they were close to the same size. It sounded great, just amazing, but it only bore some semblance to reality. I have not heard this reference since.
“Legacy costs” are this week’s fact. We’re told over and over the damned unions are ruining the American economy with their greedy demands for creature comforts. “$2000 of the price of every Detroit car goes to legacy costs.” “The American economy will collapse if the automakers are allowed to fail.”
Like the story about the size of the tanker, these bromides are passed along with little or no examination by anchors and reporters. They ignore the multinational scope of GM and Ford or the bias of the speakers. One interviewee on CNBC (GE) went unchallenged when he said that this emergency will not pass until a chainsaw is taken to these union contracts (his metaphor, not mine).
I guess you need to be in a television studio or control room to understand just how mechanical the interview process is. A producer is whispering in the earpiece of the anchor who is watching a prompter and trying to ask the questions as a floor manager is pointing to cameras, the director is calling shots and rolling tape, and everybody is listening to the content with a third ear, as it were, for a sound bite they will use later. Which makes the accusation of a bias on network television news so laughable. They are putting on a show, filling hours with talk and there’s little or no time to filter or slant except towards the numbers of eyeballs. “If it bleeds, it leads.” Meltdown or Britney or Iraq or Anna Nicole, the song is sung over and over with only slightly different lyrics. Except for sweeps week when lurid sex is thrown in.
Here’s an interesting article about the Secrets of Talk Radio on how the process works in talk radio land. The medium is different but the end result is the same. Eyeballs, ears and asses in seats.
Television news is entertainment to fill up the space between commercials. And the more you watch, the less you know.
Suppose your boss said to you if you want to keep your job you need to give up your pension and healthcare. What would your reaction be? You can choose to sustain the future or the present, not both. Presented with this Hobson’s choice, mine would be fear. And fear makes for good television.
What if this happens to a neighbor or close friend and confidant? You would be witness to and identify with a basic, existential conflict that you hope never happens to you. Put it on a stage and it’s called drama. Put it on television and it’s called news. You become a witness to an accident in HD.
Over the weekend a reporter corrected an anchor who had repeated the “fact” that the Saudi tanker captured by the Somali pirates was “three times longer than an the largest air craft carrier.” Someone had done some checking and found they were close to the same size. It sounded great, just amazing, but it only bore some semblance to reality. I have not heard this reference since.
“Legacy costs” are this week’s fact. We’re told over and over the damned unions are ruining the American economy with their greedy demands for creature comforts. “$2000 of the price of every Detroit car goes to legacy costs.” “The American economy will collapse if the automakers are allowed to fail.”
Like the story about the size of the tanker, these bromides are passed along with little or no examination by anchors and reporters. They ignore the multinational scope of GM and Ford or the bias of the speakers. One interviewee on CNBC (GE) went unchallenged when he said that this emergency will not pass until a chainsaw is taken to these union contracts (his metaphor, not mine).
I guess you need to be in a television studio or control room to understand just how mechanical the interview process is. A producer is whispering in the earpiece of the anchor who is watching a prompter and trying to ask the questions as a floor manager is pointing to cameras, the director is calling shots and rolling tape, and everybody is listening to the content with a third ear, as it were, for a sound bite they will use later. Which makes the accusation of a bias on network television news so laughable. They are putting on a show, filling hours with talk and there’s little or no time to filter or slant except towards the numbers of eyeballs. “If it bleeds, it leads.” Meltdown or Britney or Iraq or Anna Nicole, the song is sung over and over with only slightly different lyrics. Except for sweeps week when lurid sex is thrown in.
Here’s an interesting article about the Secrets of Talk Radio on how the process works in talk radio land. The medium is different but the end result is the same. Eyeballs, ears and asses in seats.
Television news is entertainment to fill up the space between commercials. And the more you watch, the less you know.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Opposing Viewpoints
Want to know what it's like to be in a television studio for a major news event? Imagine a whirlpool of corporate and political forces. Or black hole, that image will work also. For years and then months, weeks, days and hours, centrifugal forces built from a wide, gentle rotation to an intense tightening of spin. You reach the event horizon where there is not enough energy to reverse course. You're trapped. The spin builds to a point where either gravity tears you apart or you get sucked down and out the other side. You’re on the air.
One of the major drawbacks of being in this business is the distancing I feel from the audience and the illusion I help create. I know what goes into the making the images the public sees and doesn’t really see. I know what’s in the background and how it got there. Yet there are few viewers who really want to talk about camera angles, lighting and scenery. It’s like seeing the brushstrokes and not the painting. Knowing to much.
The election of Barack Obama may be a seminal point in US politics, a change I've wanted to see since the death of Robert Kennedy. However as the election campaign wound down to it's final days and there was electricity in the streets of NYC, I just wanted the damned thing over. There is a tremendous amount of effort that goes into the run up to these major media events that the public doesn't see, work that should go unaccredited, invisible and perfect. As someone who has been fortunate enough earn his living in a fascinating business, I've gotten accustomed to the long, intense hours leading up to going on the air or first curtain and the anticlimax of the applause. But like lawmaking and sausage making, to witness news making close up is to lose one's appetite for it.
The evening of the election, as I was getting teary eyed as the speeches were being made and the celebrations started, I also felt a little cheated. Exhausted to the point of apathy wasn’t where I really wanted to be at this moment in time.
And load out started in the morning.
One of the major drawbacks of being in this business is the distancing I feel from the audience and the illusion I help create. I know what goes into the making the images the public sees and doesn’t really see. I know what’s in the background and how it got there. Yet there are few viewers who really want to talk about camera angles, lighting and scenery. It’s like seeing the brushstrokes and not the painting. Knowing to much.
The election of Barack Obama may be a seminal point in US politics, a change I've wanted to see since the death of Robert Kennedy. However as the election campaign wound down to it's final days and there was electricity in the streets of NYC, I just wanted the damned thing over. There is a tremendous amount of effort that goes into the run up to these major media events that the public doesn't see, work that should go unaccredited, invisible and perfect. As someone who has been fortunate enough earn his living in a fascinating business, I've gotten accustomed to the long, intense hours leading up to going on the air or first curtain and the anticlimax of the applause. But like lawmaking and sausage making, to witness news making close up is to lose one's appetite for it.
The evening of the election, as I was getting teary eyed as the speeches were being made and the celebrations started, I also felt a little cheated. Exhausted to the point of apathy wasn’t where I really wanted to be at this moment in time.
And load out started in the morning.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Thank A Socialist
Great post from Lostcheerio.
If you enjoy having weekends off, thank a socialist.
If you appreciate the eight-hour work day, thank a socialist.
If you approve of minimum wage, thank a socialist.
If you like living in a country where it's illegal to sell your child to a sweatshop for a dollar a week, you can be thankful that socialists, yes those are anti-capitalist, anti-free-market socialists, worked hard in the face of big business and government opposition to make that happen.
Do you like the fact that you don't have to step over sick homeless people on the way to your car? Do you feel thankful that hoards of starving orphans aren't begging you to carry your bag at the airport? Do you approve of the fact that elderly people don't have to die in the street if they run out of money?
At the very least this campaign has introduced some children to the topics of political science, economics, social science and history. Where did we come from, how did we get here? Good work.
If you enjoy having weekends off, thank a socialist.
If you appreciate the eight-hour work day, thank a socialist.
If you approve of minimum wage, thank a socialist.
If you like living in a country where it's illegal to sell your child to a sweatshop for a dollar a week, you can be thankful that socialists, yes those are anti-capitalist, anti-free-market socialists, worked hard in the face of big business and government opposition to make that happen.
Do you like the fact that you don't have to step over sick homeless people on the way to your car? Do you feel thankful that hoards of starving orphans aren't begging you to carry your bag at the airport? Do you approve of the fact that elderly people don't have to die in the street if they run out of money?
At the very least this campaign has introduced some children to the topics of political science, economics, social science and history. Where did we come from, how did we get here? Good work.
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