A Writer Wrote This

 The workers control the means of production. That sentiment goes pretty far into the quick and easy reasoning for me to back the Writers Guild in their current strike. To say that I am a "union man" would be a bit of a stretch, but since I pay my dues and I have participated in a number of work actions, I suppose I am guilty by association. But setting my traditional union ambivalence aside, I don't know how anyone outside of the corporate offices of the major studios could see things any other way. A handful of people are getting scandalously wealthy on the backs of a group of creative folks who are far too often not seen or heard even when the words they string together are. 

So why aren't they getting the same sort of big money that the far less creative executroids who "make deals" and "take meetings" get? Something about corner offices and capitalism. Once upon a very long time ago, there was a company formed by Charlie Chaplin, DW Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. They called it United Artists, created in 1919 to keep artists in control of their own interests rather than be dependent on commercial studios. Quite the ideal. Their studio has been bought and sold a number of times over the past century, with each iteration moving just a little farther from that ideal. The height of the irony surrounding these deals may be found in the absorption of UA by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, whose motto translated from the Latin is "art for art's sake." MGM has, to its credit, helped fund a lot of art, but art was not the underlying motivation. 

Money. That's what they want. So they lure artists to their bungalows and have them crank out art that they can proceed to turn into more money. 

Lots more money. That's what they want. The so-called Independent Film craze that broke out in the seventies here in the United States was quickly sopped up by studios who could offer big paychecks for those same gritty off-the-wall creations that were apocryphally paid for with credit cards. And then the studio would own them, free to release these works of art based on their business plans. If a director or a screenwriter got rich, it was never as rich as the ones holding the purse strings. 

When VHS turned into DVD and suddenly you could have the movie-going experience in your own living room, the artists who made those evenings possible had to go on strike to get the tiniest slice of the pie their overlords were enjoying. Now they don't even have to pay for the physical media. They just push a button and suddenly someone's vision can come streaming onto your big screen or your telephone at rates designed to keep you attached to that device and the studios who act as the dealer. 

Strike! Don't write another word until you get paid properly for your efforts. 

So, I guess upon reflection I'm a union guy after all.