New Feature: If you’re in the car, or cooking, or just lazy… you can listen to me read this story for you, in the audio file below.
If you stand in the hills of Los Angeles, beneath the Hollywood sign, just as the sun is going down and the day’s heat is finally easing, the city’s aging, humble, north-south streets light up magnificently, with miles of headlights, like strung pearls falling gently into the ocean. The view inspires a feeling which speaks to the city’s greatest gift; transforming mundanity into magic. In such moments you can even be convinced that this is the center of the universe.
At ground level, Plymouth Boulevard is one such seemingly ordinary street. It runs approximately 2.5 miles, north from Mid City, dead-ending at Paramount Studios on Melrose Avenue. I drove it one morning last week, on the 100th day of the Writers Guild of America’s strike, to accompany my friend Rose McIver on the picket line.
Rose’s union, SAG-AFTRA (which represents actors and other performers), had joined the dispute less than a month prior and she has been an active picketer since. That’s just Rose’s way, she’s active. Always, in all things, and I admire that about her.
The strikes have made worldwide news. The battle for control over streaming income and the use of AI technology to replace human labor being the most well-documented points of contention between unions and producers.
I drive by a picket line most days and was interested in the very point of these age-old gatherings themselves. Why would a fight that centered around so much technology be waged with cardboard signs on sidewalks? I wondered. What was going on down there that seemed so important to the actors’ and writers’ cause?
The final mile of Plymouth Boulevard brings a change in scenery, as it runs through the exclusive Hancock Park neighborhood. Its grand homes’ lawns and hedges kept self-consciously tight, to the point of looking sprayed on. Both trimmed regularly by immigrant men, whose large trucks, overburdened by garden tools, routinely narrow the street’s course.
As I made my way north, carefully avoiding a traveling car wash serviceman’s rear end, sticking out from an open door and into the street on the last bend, the Hollywood sign slid into view between palm trees, with Paramount Studios’ iconic water tower almost floating in air against the hills beneath.
This is just another of Los Angeles’ many “nice” neighborhoods. That is to say, a wealthy one. A wealth it displays without hesitation. Hollywood unions aside, the residents haven't seen a protest since 1948, when Nat King Cole suffered his family dog being poisoned, vandalism to his home and racist abuse from fellow neighbors, simply for being the first African American to buy in Hancock Park. Called “undesirable” by the Property Owners Association - the members of which I presume had never even met him - Mr Cole responded “...if I see anybody undesirable coming into this neighborhood, I’ll be the first to complain.”
Today’s show business protests are noticeably less hostile. The opponents work together typically, and as I neared the end of Plymouth Boulevard, I wondered how many studio executives or producers and big movie stars reside side-by-side here, just beyond the sloping lawns and high walls.
Rose and I arrived to a warm welcome at the SAG-AFTRA tent across Melrose Avenue from Paramount’s gates. There were piles of t-shirts for members, donuts inscribed with #SAGAFTRASTRONG, lemonade, vegan ice cream and of course, stacks of picket signs. I wasn’t sure what they’d make of an interloper like me, but the atmosphere was decidedly more-the-merrier, over drama club clique. We checked in, grabbed our signs and crossed the street under a smattering of morning clouds.
Music played beneath the studio’s famous arched gates, competing with the endless stream of traffic and chit-chat. Honking has become a way to support the unions as one drives by a picket line. On a busy morning on Melrose, all those car horns add up, further escalating the clamorous, festive atmosphere.
Apart from the student union at my university, I’d never been in a union or on a picket line. Before calling Rose to see if I could join her that day I’d wondered; Other than hold a sign, what do you do?
It turns out you walk, a lot. Organizers with bullhorns managed the stream of human traffic, as we made a long loop up and down the sidewalk, lapping like swimmers between two traffic cones. As the crowd grew, the cone at one end moved further and further away from the studio gates, lengthening the line. The organizer on that cone solicited picket sign high-fives from each turning participant, eventually forcing a tear down the top of their placard.
I was embedded with the actors, but felt bonded to my fellow writers on the screen side of the game, too. They provide more wit in their signage and have a blank space left open for improvisation. One teenage girl’s Writer’s Guild sign simply read: “PAY MY MOM!” Powerful in its simplicity.
The actors provide the well known faces, of course. Including Rose, whose latest role is starring in a popular CBS comedy called Ghosts. As the morning wore on, other familiar faces arrived and joined the loop. It can be hard to spot a star when they’re in a free t-shirt, sunglasses, cap and shorts, but I’m pretty sure I saw; Awkwafina, an SNL cast member whose name I can’t remember, a guy from the Marvel movies who’s not a superhero, the drummer from That Thing You Do and others I couldn’t quite place. I also met a guy who eventually told me he plays a TV superhero, putting me out of my misery. I knew I knew him from something.
Paparazzi photographers were out in full force and I got dragged into some shots. They’ll be disappointed when they get home to scan their work and realize I’m not the tattooed chef from The Bear, or the doctor from Northern Exposure, or the dorky one from Saved By The Bell, or a young Sean Penn, or the lesser-known LaPaglia brother. Along with a hundred other actors people have told me I look “a bit like” over the years.
But in a sense, I did still feel like one of the gang. I’ve been to a lot of industry “events” during my two decades in Los Angeles. That’s what parties are called when the organizers don't want you to assume you’ll have a good time.
Parties are fun. Events are work. My wife attends a lot of events and in time my criteria for joining her have tightened. I’ll go if she asks me too, or if I’m particularly interested in the screening, but otherwise stay home. She’s good at her job and even better at socializing. I don’t need to muck up the gears just to get free popcorn and early access to a film I’ll only make fun of later.
Given the stakes for those attending the picket lines, I expected the atmosphere to verge on “event”. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it more “party”. If the writers bring wit, the actors unmistakably bring groove. Someone set up a karaoke station by the studio gates and a jovial lady went around soliciting singers. Unsurprisingly more than a few actors were willing to strut their stuff for the crowd. “Thursday is ‘90s R&B and hip hop day at Amazon!” someone told me.
It wasn’t a rager, but there was a definite hanging-out-in-the-kitchen party atmosphere. Groups split open and rejoined. People asked for selfies. Friends yelled out to friends and as I am now very used to after years of friendship, Rose knew a lot of people. She introduced me around and we all chatted between honks and bullhorn announcements.
I heard about summer vacations and trouble with the in-laws. I was warned of the potential for getting pink eye from handling an overused picket sign, which led to a quick round-up of routine kid ailments. A recent brazen car robbery at gunpoint in West Hollywood was recounted, with a relatively happy ending (no one was hurt). One writer/director who had been on the picket lines almost every day, and had the tan to prove it, explained how and why his show was suddenly removed from a streaming service for complicated financial reasons, right before his daughter wanted to air it for her friends at a slumber party (the studio refused to even send him a copy). I learned which studios had the best parking and most shade for picketers. At one point, a man in a convertible stopped, and leant on his horn in solidarity, waving one arm like a conductor as it rang on and on, shutting down conversation until the light changed and a few of us could speculate as to what drugs he might have been on. Then we laughed. On a picket line.
Everyone had a story to tell and it occurred to me that maybe that’s the point. That’s what humans do when they get together, tell stories. Beaming film and television into millions of households is the greatest advancement in “getting together” since humans discovered fire. Whether in groups or alone, we all share these audio visual stories in our own time. Then re-share them again and again in conversation.
Film and TV are the most popular forms of storytelling ever devised. What will those stories become if computer programs write them and digitally-generated images portray them? Stories gain their value, surely, from a human telling another human something about their lives and by extension, our own. Not from a machine that thinks it’s a human, trying to make a quick buck for someone with a calculator.
In that way the picket line is still a powerful symbol. Film and television are collaborative art forms that rely upon community action. Its makers gathering in person, to unite in a cause, turns out to be a fitting demonstration of the limits of technology-based communications. All those studio bosses demanding workers return to the office en masse after COVID for maximum productivity, are the same ones denying many work-a-day writers and actors that same opportunity to coalesce. To have time to work together and the funds to allow it.
There are limits to what humans can achieve apart. What better way to protest an existential threat to that, then, than by physically staying together? By turning up on the doorstep of the enemy, day after day, and throwing a nice little party.
With our legs tired, the sidewalk full and the sun high, the party felt like it was near to ending for the day. Rose and I made our goodbyes, leaving while the picket line was peaking.
As we crossed the street, a fellow actor Rose knows walked past us at the light. He didn’t see her and was gone before she could stop him. He quickly disappeared into the crowd and we paused on the opposite sidewalk, while Rose tried to spot him. After a few seconds she did.
“Joe!” she called out over the busy street. “Joe!!!”
Amongst the traffic and the honking, all the chatter and the karaoke, he had no chance of hearing her and walked on, pumping his picket sign in time with the beat. Rose and I returned our picket signs to the stack and walked on toward our cars.
“Oh well,” she said. “I’ll text him later.”
Great article Toby-an enjoyable read.
Great article stony I do hope they get their pay rise 👏🏻