Hollywood strikes home

Hollywood and the silver screen can often feel far away. The WGA and SAG strikes might seem like a minor inconvenience to audiences in Iowa. However, that’s not true for everyone.

Creston-native and a graduate of Creston High School’s class of 1990, Amy Higgins has worked as a writer in Los Angeles since 2011. Since then, she has worked on various projects, including Disney’s “Wonder over Yonder” and “Star vs. the Forces of Evil.”

Higgins is a member of two different writing guilds: The WGA (Writing Guild of America) and TAG (The Animation Guild). Though TAG is not on strike, WGA has been since May 2.

“Because I’m in both guilds, it’s a little more complicated,” Higgins said. “It’s a little up to me, and I have largely chosen to not really participate in writing services. The other understanding is, if you’re in an actively run show that’s in full production, which I am, I can continue services on that.”

TAG’s website has a long list of rules regarding work during the WAG strikes, but one thing is clear: Do not cross the picket line.

“I’ve been pretty firm on my stance not to cross the line,” Higgins said. “They don’t get anything from me, they don’t get anything from anyone.”

While Higgins hasn’t had the chance to picket directly, many of her friends have.

“I’ve been in Iowa for most of the strike because I’ve been dealing with my parents’ estates, but I have a lot of really good friends that are out there on the lines almost every day,” Higgins said. “It’s a very, very difficult job to have to continue out there, picketing, walking for hours at a time, staying true to the cause even when it feels like it’s going nowhere.”

She said there are a number of reasons writers are striking, including the effect streaming services have had on writers’ incomes.

“When I first started, writers could largely count on nearly a year-round job,” Higgins said. “There’d be 26 to 32 episodes a year, so you’d be writing for 32 weeks a year, plus or minus a few. You would have a long term gig to pay for the very high cost of living in California.”

However, as streaming services began to rise in popularity, the job consistency changed drastically.

“Since the streaming services started to happen, they’ve had much shorter seasons. People write for six weeks or 10 weeks,” Higgins said. “You’re going from show to show and have become a freelancer. Instead of having a salary, you’re going in for a few days, brainstorming a show, and then getting paid to write on it.”

Payment for writers used to include a salary, a script fee and residuals. Writers now get paid much less and have lost their residuals. Residuals refers to the money made by reruns or other reshowings of media.

“Usually they get the freelance fee, maybe three or four days of coming in the room, they get a script fee, and that’s all they get for the year. It can be less than one weekly salary for the whole job,” Higgins said. “In streaming, it gets shown to a much higher audience level and you don’t get paid for the shows that you write. There’s no residual payments.”

In addition to financial issues, writers worry about the advent of artificial intelligence, or AI.

“AI is in its very early days. How it will evolve is pretty scary,” Higgins said. “My job may be totally obsolete in a year, five years.”

However, Higgins holds doubts about AI that production companies might not yet have.

“In my heart, I don’t think a robot can ever achieve a screenplay like ‘Raging Bull’ or a Scorsese movie or Paul Thomas Anderson movies. I don’t think that will ever happen,” Higgins said. “I don’t think you’ll ever get ‘Oppenheimer’ or ‘Barbie.’ They’re never, ever going to be written by a robot. It just doesn’t work that way, but you will get a lot of mediocre, low-level shows.”

Higgins believes the strike will last quite a bit longer, despite the addition of SAG.

“I was talking to my agent the other day and we were speculating on it,” Higgins said. “I think the strike will go to Christmas. I think when the content starts to run out, it will feel frightening for them, it will be worrisome to the companies. They probably have enough content to last them for a little bit longer.”

Until then, Higgins suggested a couple of actions audiences can take to support the strikes.

“Write letters, watch good content, watch sophisticated content. Shows like ‘Succession’ or ‘The Bear’ or ‘Game of Thrones,’ whatever great shows have been on in the last 10 years,” Higgins said. “Those were written by highly skilled people and it shows, it shows the level of abilities.”

Higgins knows that the problems of Hollywood can sometimes feel like far away issues, but she wants Iowans to remember the importance of the issue.

“It sounds like it’s champagne problems, but the truth is, it’s a pretty big economy,” Higgins said. “You just think about what 99% of humankind does is watch content at some point of the week or day, probably more than once. Our economy is very much based on written material. It’s fundamental to our lives, and without it, I don’t know that the world that we know continues on in the same type of way.”