It only gets better!  I tell you, the news coming out of the Screen Actors Guild is a funnier comedy than ANYTHING their membership of mostly overpaid hacks has churned out in years!  Despite the fact that their contract expires at 12:01 AM Tuesday July First, the Screen Actors Guild refuses to even entertain the prospect of a strike!

And if you thought there was an unusually high amount of exclamation points in that last bit, you’re right–I’m just really hyped up about this.  I haven’t laughed this hard in a good while, and I have the Screen Actors Guild to thank.

Okay, some background–basically, back when contract talks started, SAG was almost refusing to bargain with the AMPTP, virtually guaranteeing a strike.  After all, it’s hard to make a movie when the cast won’t cross a picket line, so it could be said that SAG had the whip hand.  But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the bargaining table–SAG’s cohort organization, AFTRA, another acting union whose membership is partially comprised of SAG members in Eddie Murphy-esgue dual roles, signed an agreement with the AMPTP.  And this left SAG in an extremely uncomfortable position, and I’m not talking about the back of a Volkswagen.

The current head of the Screen Actors Guild, meanwhile, had this to say about the direction SAG will likely be moving in:

“We have taken no steps to initiate a strike authorization vote by the members of Screen Actors Guild,” Union President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement Sunday. “Any talk about a strike or a management lockout at this point is simply a distraction.”

Meanwhile, of course, the AMPTP has a modest rebuttal to SAG’s non-strike claims:

“The industry is shutting down because SAG’s Hollywood leadership insisted on 11th-hour negotiations and dragging these talks into July so they can continue attacking AFTRA.”

Who’s right in those two clearly contradictory quotes?  Probably a little of both, but in all honesty, I see the problem being on SAG’s end.  The writers and directors and even AFTRA got their contracts arranged–why wouldn’t SAG take a comparable deal?

That’s an easy one, of course–they won’t take it because they can’t.  Taking such a deal would do horrible things to the “star” system, and even the rank-and-file want a shot at the brass ring someday.

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