Dear Clint Eastwood

Dear Clint Eastwood

Hi Mister! Don’t sweat the Golden Globes thing.  It’s not the Oscars, you know?

You’ll be happy (I hope!) to hear that my blog is going well.  It seems I’ve finally got another reader or two (my friends and family) and they have mentioned that although they like the writing, the writing goes on for too long at one sitting, and I should shorten my entries.  I will bow to their wisdom.

As I’m sure you know, Clint, I need the time to do other things, like look for a film project, then work on that film project, at which time I won’t have any time, and I will resent having to drag myself out of bed after only three hours’ sleep on my one day off to write something of enduring value or at least passing interest.

In fact, I am a teensy bit resentful right now, if you want to know the truth, Clint.  Other than the friends and family I bullied into a critique over the phone or by email, nobody since the first blog entry has commented on my work (I remain grateful to Liesl and Mark).

Not even you, Clint Eastwood, and I specifically asked you for feedback.  But it’s all good—you’ve been busy, I know.  Still, I did want to ask you, if it comes down to a vote, are you going to vote for a strike, Clint?  Is that looming SAG strike why we can’t get a single show up here in the Northwest that hasn’t folded a few weeks in?  Is that why everybody I know is poised on the brink of losing their healthcare, their house, and their sanity?  Some of my union brothers and sisters are reduced to working in retail, Clint.  Retail.  None of us punks are feeling lucky these days, Clint.

I resent the Money People, too.  The Big Wheels of the AMPTP, who have apparently offered up a contract where they refuse to share the wealth of the New Media with the people who star in it.  What do you think, Clint?  I mean, you’re sort of a player in both camps, right?  Are they being fair? Of course I don’t know the details; I’m just a standby painter, a tiny cog in the gigantic machinery of the Business with no great labor relations vision to impart.  But what I do know, deep inside my LA-gone-pine-tree-country-bumpkin heart is that I saw a bumper sticker the other day that told the Truth.  It is the unavoidable, outrageous, permanent-beyond-any-contract Truth.  Here is what it said:

“Everybody does better when everybody does better.”

Hmmm… I hope somebody doesn’t come after me, now that I’ve used that quote, looking for royalties due them according to their contract because they thought up the bumper sticker.  Right now I don’t have two cents to spare, because, probably like the bumper sticker writer, I am not doing better, and haven’t been doing better for a long time.

Even so, I am still going to charge over $10.00 to my close to the limit credit card to see Gran Torino next weekend, Clint.  Because not only are you handsome, interesting, and aging well, but you are actually a wonderfully intelligent director with the ability to create images and stories that genuinely affect me, long after the screen goes dark, and I’m back home, sending off the next resume to the next production company that will offer me the absolute minimum union wage for my job, no matter how many years of experience I have, or how well I do my work.

I don’t blame the production office management—they have the bottom line to consider.  However, I can’t help noticing that I am making the same wage today that I made on non-union movies in the nineties.  The difference is that now I’m getting health care benefits, overtime, and I occasionally receive enough contributions into my 401K to cover the finance charges for handling my 401K.  Unfortunately now, after the stock market collapse, I may end up owing more money to the financial institution that handles my 401K than I actually have in my 401K.  Doesn’t that seem wrong to you, Clint?  As wrong as making the same wage for ten years?

Unions, Guilds, the Money People and the Big Wheels… Why do I get the feeling that we on the labor side of the equation have been running, as someone I know once suggested, “a race to the bottom?”

I guess we have all forgotten that everybody does better when everybody does better.

Oh Clint, I’m sorry to bend your ear for this long.  I know that things have to be shorter these days—we’re all short on everything, from time to cash to those pesky mortgage payments.  What I really wanted to tell you was this great story about when I worked on a movie in LA at an old deserted insane asylum, late at night, with an all-girl crew, and we found out that we were not alone—that one of the old inmates had returned that night…

Oops!  I’m out of time, Clint.   I’ll get back to this when I’ve got a few minutes next week.  Or you can give me a call.  Hey, maybe you need a union standby painter on your next show?  You know I work cheap.  Of course, these days, of those who are still working, who doesn’t?