Oh man, you’ve got to love those characters in the Screen Actors Guild.  A bigger bunch of screwballs and morons I have not seen since the last Three Stooges film festival.  Coming off one of the most miserable days in the financial markets EVER, in which the Dow saw its biggest one-day point loss EVER and media stocks took a pasting that makes Vietnam look like a schoolyard scuffle, the Screen Actors Guild issued an open letter demanding the resumption of negotiations.

Check out the story from Studio Briefing.  I love these guys.

In an open letter sent to the AMPTP and the news media on Monday and published as an advertisement in today’s Daily Variety, SAG President Alan Rosenberg and National Executive Director Doug Allen proposed that the two sides focus on three issues, one involving “force majeure” protection and the two others involving new media. The letter warned, “If your intransigence continues, however, our choices become harder and fewer.”

Yes, it’s true!  Your choices DO become harder and fewer because no one gives a flying fig whether you DO go on strike or not.  The only problem is-and it’s a problem you don’t even realize is yours–is that it’s entirely your own problem.

Don’t you realize that a huge chunk of your membership is dual enrolled in AFTRA, and much of the rest can be replaced?  Don’t you realize you’re going into the most miserable time of the year for movie releases anyway?  Every day you don’t do something, that’s another day for AMPTP to stockpile films to outlast any strike and line up fresh actors who don’t have SAG membership to work for them!

And to underscore SAG’s unimportance, the word comes back from AMPTP:

Late in the day, AMPTP President Nick Counter responded, saying that talks would not be productive unless SAG is prepared to change its position on those issues, essentially tossing the “intransigence” accusation back into SAG’s lap. “We do not believe that it would be productive to resume negotiations at this time given SAG’s continued insistence on terms which the companies have repeatedly rejected.”

They don’t CARE, SAG.  I can’t believe you’re still banging this drum when literally everyone else is on board BUT YOU.  It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad, but I’m still laughing anyway.

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