The Kenworthy Theater in downtown Moscow hosted a live forum Tuesday with actor Micheal Kostroff who represented the Screen Actors Guild, and Benjamin Flores, who is a writer representing the Writer’s Guild of America and a Moscow High School graduate, after a screening of The Player.
Moderated by a well-known professor at the University of Idaho, Professor Kenton Bird, they discussed the recent strike taking place in Hollywood.
The Writer’s Guild of America, or WGA, went on strike in May 2023, and the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG, went on strike in July 2023, making this the first time since 1960 that both guilds have been on strike at the same time.
Micheal Kostroff, best known for his five seasons on The Wire, started off the forum by discussing the major issues and why SAG went on strike.
“There’s a misunderstanding about what is going on,” Kostroff said. “It’s not rich, famous actors asking for more money. It’s also not the wannabees who have not qualified in any way asking for a handout. It’s blue-collar workers, folks like me, who live modestly and make a living as actors.”
He then went on to discuss more issues.
“There are two big things. One is AI. There’s a lot of movement around artificial intelligence. [Film makers] have started asking background actors to get scanned so that they don’t have to hire them anymore, and they can reproduce them. They are playing around with Chat GPT with writing scripts,” Kostroff said.
He also states that the actors don’t have any guardrails on how their images are used in any future products.
Another issue that the WGA and the SAG are fighting for is streaming services.
“In the old model, we get a job, which is hard to do, and every time that TV episode is played, we get a tiny little bit of money for our work. But now with streaming models, [companies] are claiming that they don’t know if anyone is watching so they don’t give us [money] at all for streaming,” Kostroff said.
Flores, a local high school graduate, as well as a writer, performer and filmmaker, discussed his takes on the issues.
“I think that what the WGA is waging a similar war with SAG, and it’s a war for the continued survival of the profession,” he said.
He further discussed the shift into streaming saying, “[This leads to] the decimation of the ability of people who do not have financial cushion to make their way in this career. It leads to a bottleneck in which only people who have some family money or financial security are able to enter the profession. Which of course means there’s less diversity in the profession.”
When asked about how the strike has impacted Kostroff’s previous works, he stated that he doesn’t have any work that needs promotion, but he did discuss the people that this strike is hurting.
“I miss auditioning. I miss going to work. I mean, we all want to work. This strike is obviously not just affecting writers and actors, but also just an endless number of departments. The caterers, the makeup people, the directors, the casting people are even out of work. My agents are out of work. So, it’s sort of affecting everyone.”
He also went into the severity of the situation.
“The issues are so important and non-negotiable to us that we are determined to see it through,” he said.
Kostroff then accounted for his experience on the picket lines.
“I keep saying you’ll never see a happier group of unemployed people. The comradery, the commitment, is really nice. I’m running into old friends that I haven’t seen in years.” Kostroff talked about his experiences with other writers and actors. “We never get to talk to each other.”
Flores accounted for how both SAG and WGA are working together.
“When I was out on the picket line, prior to SAG authorizing their strike, we were joined by many actors representing SAG as individuals picketing alongside us. And I heard directly from those people in conversations on the picket line, that they looked at how aggressive the WGA had grown in the past few years,” Flores said.
Kostroff ended the forum by stating, “We don’t have a plan B. These issues are so important and, by the way, they are national issues. They don’t just apply to actors, but all over the country, the discrepancy between what the CEOs make and what the frontline workers make has grown exponentially.”
“I don’t know how it ends, but I think we are all as a group determined to see it through and stay out as long as we need to,” Kostroff said.
Andrea Roberts can be reached at [email protected]