This is part two in a series about how the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes are affecting Western Pennsylvania’s film community. It’s also the second of two features focusing on the experiences of local SAG-AFTRA members.
Over the past few weeks, the Post-Gazette has been catching up with a few Western Pennsylvania-based actors to discuss how they’re dealing with a lack of Hollywood movies or television shows shooting here this summer. The production drought stems from the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which has shut down nearly all film production nationwide.
A few themes have emerged:
• Everyone wants to reform a residual model that sometimes pays actors literal pennies for work that appears on streaming services.
• A proposal that would allow studios to pay background actors for one day of work while using artificial intelligence to scan their faces for use in perpetuity is a pivotal issue for SAG-AFTRA members.
• Actors are concerned about their ability to make ends meet over the next few months and potentially beyond.
• Working-class actors can’t survive on entertainment work alone under the current Hollywood system and these strikes are necessary for securing the present and future of the entire industry.
“We all are a big family,” said Ted Williams, a Pittsburgh-based entertainment worker. “What affects one [union] affects everyone else on this strike. ... We take care of our own.”
No more long vacations
Name an aspect of film production, and Ted Williams has probably at least dabbled in it. The 55-year-old South Side resident has been in Pittsburgh since 1983 and only became a part of the local film scene eight years ago. Since 2015, Williams has gotten work as an actor, stunt performer, stunt double, props specialist, special-effects artist, animal wrangler (horses and dogs), assistant director and even COVID coordinator.
Williams is both a member of SAG-AFTRA and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which covers most crew jobs on a Hollywood set. Just about “every aspect of the strike affects my livelihood” and those of Williams’ friends and co-workers. He’s fully supportive of SAG-AFTRA and the WGA’s efforts, especially the strides they’re hoping to make in improving the current streaming residual model and safety on sets.
As someone who started out as a background actor, Williams thinks “the fact they could just disappear [due to AI] is crazy.” Hollywood essentially eliminating the option of having a Swiss army knife like Williams around would mean productions would lose out on hiring a guy capable of everything from getting blown up in a mining accident on the Hulu series “Dopesick” to both creating fake snow and wrangling horses for the Pittsburgh-shot Netflix film “The Pale Blue Eye.”
Last year, Williams worked on 11 projects in nine cities. This summer, he has been biding his time at a horse stable in Zelienople. His new employer understands that “I could leave at any time” if the work he is most passionate about suddenly returns to Western Pennsylvania.
He feels for folks like the dozen-plus background players who were promoted to SAG-AFTRA members during production on the upcoming locally shot Netflix film “Rustin” who can’t hype up their first big movie roles. (SAG-AFTRA considers promoting projects made by and for struck companies to be crossing a picket line.) Williams said that everyone in his orbit is rooting for the actors and writers while also hoping for a swift end to this impromptu summer vacation.
“We already took a long vacation during COVID and were chomping at the bit to get back to work,” Williams said. “It’s going to be the same thing here. When this thing is over, we’re all going to be ready to go.”
‘Everybody is affected by SAG’
James Howard is a Washington, D.C., native who has been living in Western Pennsylvania for 40 years and finding acting work as a SAG-AFTRA member for the last two decades. The 65-year-old Plum resident was in the process of auditioning for a Disney movie and gearing up to work on Clint Eastwood’s new film shooting in Savannah, Georgia, when the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes threw a wrench in those plans.
It hasn’t been too difficult for Howard to secure on-camera work around here and elsewhere. Some of his principal roles (with speaking lines) have required him to spend up to three months on a single set. Parts as “a day player” or “core background” in, say, a courtroom scene or the stands of a boxing match usually garner two or three days of work.
“Everybody is affected by SAG” in this region, including union and unaffiliated film workers, Howard explained. Background actors outside of New York City and Los Angeles are generally non-union, but “you’re working on a SAG production in Pittsburgh” if it’s something Hollywood brought here, as Howard put it. It may be tough for some to swallow one union shutting everything down nationwide, but that didn’t stop Howard from voting in favor of an all-out SAG-AFTRA strike.
“Everybody knows that we’re being taken advantage of,” he said. “As bad as we need the money, it would be bad to not enforce it at this time. We can’t move forward with what we have.”
Commercials, print ads, gig-economy work and various odd jobs are currently sustaining Howard financially. He recently received a commission for driving to New York and picking up a car transmission. Like many, Howard is praying that this production drought will end after the strikes are resolved and Hollywood’s floodgates are open once again.
“My biggest hope would be that there’s a flood of work due to the stoppage and that everyone has more work than they can handle,” he said. “That’s the silver lining that we’re looking at, hopefully.”
‘A moment that has to happen’
In recent years, Tressa Glover has been able to subsist on a host of creatively minded projects including film-acting gigs, local theater productions, her “Yinz are Good” podcast (closing in on its 100th episode), producing for YaJagoff Media’s Q92.9-FM radio show and gaining clients through YaJagoff’s marketing company.
The “first wave of recognition” that something was amiss in Hollywood hit the Mt. Lebanon resident and SAG-AFTRA member of 11 years when her agent abruptly stopped sending her notices for upcoming auditions. Her experience as a Western Pennsylvania-based actor left Glover used to “having to hustle and do more than one thing at a time,” but that sudden lack of Hollywood films and shows coming here was still jarring.
“[W]hen you’re based in a market like Pittsburgh, it’s not like I’m auditioning every day anyway,” she said. “It wasn’t a severe drop-off. ... You do feel the absence of it.”
Glover is just as concerned about streaming residuals and the advent of AI as other SAG-AFTRA members. But the items she most wants to see addressed in a new contract are even more basic.
“We’re talking meal breaks and paying people late,” she said. “There are flat-out rejections. ... People are fired up in a communal, let’s-support-each-other way. Here are the things we deserve, and let’s join together to get them.”
If nothing else, Glover believes the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes will force the AMPTP to gain a better understanding of where those unions are coming from and “who’s represented in that” — aka the vast majority of actors who are “not working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks out of the years.” No Hollywood projects filming in Pittsburgh for the time being is worth it for her if that means solidifying the future of Hollywood’s middle and lower classes.
“This is a moment that has to happen for the business,” Glover said. “If not now, when?”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: July 27, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: July 27, 2023, 8:06 p.m.