Sheila Nevins talks about how she navigated the workforce early in her career as assumptions about women were changing in America; Now that the DGA and WGA contracts are signed, it’s time for SAG-AFTRA to step to the negotiating table; Mexican-American singer Lila Downs has a new album that takes the romantic ballad genre known as bolero and pairs it with topical lyrics.
A 2017 writers' strike was averted, but what about actors?
Now that the Writers Guild of America has ratified its Hollywood contract, it's time for another huge industry union to hammer out a deal.
SAG-AFTRA, which represents actors and performers, has started formal negotiations on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios and TV networks.
The existing contract expires on June 30th.
To understand what’s happening with the SAG talks, we spoke with
. He’s an entertainment lawyer and a contributing editor at The Hollywood Reporter:
What are the key issues to be ironed out, and how different are they from what the WGA was after?
There are some similarities, actually. It starts with the issue of series that have short seasons — the sort of stuff that you watch on Netflix or basic cable these days, with six, eight, 10, sometimes 13 episodes, rather than the traditional TV network [season of] 22 episodes. That caused problems for writers. It also causes difficulties for actors. And the problem is that when there are fewer episodes you get paid less because you're doing less work, but then you get held under exclusivity contracts from year-to-year. The contracts and the exceptions and caveats differ a little bit between the actors and the writers, so it's not literally the same issue and solution, but it basically is very much that issue.
I think a lot of people think of actors flying around in private jets and making millions of dollars, but the real truth is that the average working actor makes a little bit more than $50,000 a year. And the vast majority of people in SAG-AFTRA make much less than that. So what are the issues that are important to the average actor?
Basic wage increases are important, residuals are important, but interestingly, both of those are issues that essentially were settled by the Directors Guild. There's a phenomenon called pattern bargaining— the first union to negotiate, which is usually the Directors Guild, sets the pattern for the other two. So the Directors Guild got essentially three percent annual wage increases for each year of the three-year contract. The actors are going to get the same thing, just as the writers did.
The Writers Guild negotiations came down to the last second. Is there an expectation that things will go more smoothly with these talks?
These negotiations probably won't be a nail-biter in the same way. The contract expires on June 30. I have been told by a source that there has been some bumpiness in the talks. They've had subcommittees talking with each other for the last several weeks and are just starting formal negotiations, but whether that bumpiness is just sort of the normal give-and-take and up-and-down, or whether it really does portend serious difficulties, was something I was not able to determine. Most people do feel that these are going to be much smoother talks. There are a couple other issues that are in play that those subcommittees have been kind of pre-digesting. One of them is funding for the union's pension plan, and you'll remember in the case of the Writers Guild, the issue was funding for the health plan. And there are also some issues related to travel and per diems and so forth.
Historically, actors have been less likely to go on strike, but if there was a work stoppage, what sort of impact would that have?
Well, if you have actors on strike, you can have the best script in the world and the best director in the world, but when you yell, Action!, there's no action, so it would shut the business down ... It'd be quite devastating if there were a strike. So far we're not getting indications that there will be though.
Editor's note: Some staff at The Frame and KPCC are members of SAG-AFTRA, but their contract isn’t affected by these negotiations.
Lila Downs adds a political touch to the traditional bolero
Mexican-American singer Lila Downs became well-known after she appeared in Julie Taymor's “Frida” in 2002, and her performance of a song from that film on the Academy Awards.
Over the course of her career, she has always engaged in political issues. Last September, during the U.S. presidential campaign, Downs wrote a song called “The Demagogue." It was her critique of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. After the song was released as a single and "nothing came of it," Downs says she was both depressed and angry:
"Sometimes being explicit isn’t very useful. That’s what I felt when we wrote “The Demagogue.'"
Downs then wrote a song called “Envidia” — “Envy,” which she performs with Argentine rocker Andrés Calamaro on her new album, “Salón Lágrimas y Deseo (Salón, Tears and Desire”).
After getting angry because people hate us, because we’re racially inferior to them, well, you know what I think of you? I think you’re envious of me. That’s what you are. You may be white, but you know what! You don’t know how to dance! Hahahaha! And I’m being very confrontational about that in this song and I really do think it’s about envy.
It’s in the aftermath of the U.S. election that Downs decided to make an album focused on romantic songs called boleros. These are ballads that are considered standards and are very popular in every Spanish-speaking country.
But Down's boleros are not love songs. She says her collection is related to the way people are feeling today in Mexico, where she lives. She says the messages in the songs are political and universal in a profound way.
The bolero called "La Mentira" (The Lie) speaks about the relationship between a politician and a person who helped elect him:
At the end, it says, Well, no problem, you can just leave and pretend like we have no relationship here, because this promise that we have is based on a lie, right? And it says, You can just go, because God is not involved in this decision.
Downs says at the center of the violence in Mexico, is the loss of basic moral values:
People don’t have a conscience and have no sense of what’s right or wrong. Of course, not everyone. What I mean is that the violence has gotten stronger and stronger, the presence of the violence in this country. And it starts to make you wonder whether we’re going to be able to live our lives the way we have been living them. It’s really scary.
In the ballad called “Seguiré mi viaje" (I will continue my trip), Downs says it’s the voice of an immigrant who travels back-and-forth between Mexico and the United States:
The lyrics say, Oh, so now you think you’re superior, you’re above me and I’m beneath you? But you know what? I don’t care, I’m going to continue on my trip, which I love, because seguiré mi viaje is a very hippie kind of [term] — Your trip, you’re going to continue your trip. And what I feel is that it’s the paisanos you know, coming back and being strong and saying, I’m going to continue my trip, no matter what.
Despite the backlash against immigrants in the U.S., Downs is hopeful. Her new album opens with a song called “Urge.” The voice of the immigrant makes a plea:
“With my heartbreak, I’m just kind of rolling around like a rolling stone, I really just need somebody to listen to my failures and my successes.”
Downs says now is a great opportunity to show who the immigrants from Latin America are. After all, they’re just like others who came here before, in search of a better life.
Sheila Nevins' long road to the top of HBO's documentary division
These days, HBO is perhaps best known for scripted series like "Game of Thrones" and "Veep" but there’s a huge part of the HBO universe that is, and always has been, devoted to nonfiction filmmaking.
And the President of HBO Documentary Films is Sheila Nevins.
She’s been in that post for 13 years, but has been with the prestige cable network consistently since the early 1980s. In that time the number of Emmy, Peabody and Academy Awards her films has won is astounding.
Now, Nevins has written a book of essays called “You Don’t Look Your Age ... and Other Fairy Tales.” She’s also put out an audiobook version that’s read by a range of people including Lena Dunham, Meryl Streep and RuPaul.
Interview highlights:
On whether "You Don't Look Your Age ... and Other Fairy Tales" could be seen as a documentary about her life:
No. It's a version of experiences in my life told both by me, myself and I — and by somewhat imaginary characters who have experienced things that I may have experienced from a distance, or may have experienced personally. But I chose to pick imaginary people since, in my work, I can never imagine anything. It has to be what's in front of me — the dark truth. So in sitting down and writing, I was able to use different colors and move into other areas with somewhat imaginary characters, which I had not been allowed to do for the thirty-some-odd years I'd been working in documentaries.
On how popular culture affects the female image:
I don't want to be deemed "old" or "useless." The two words seem to go together. I fight it in a pathetic, subservient and, I would say, rather stupid way. I don't want to walk into a room and people to feel sorry for me because I'm so elderly. I don't want that anymore. I just want to look as good as I possibly can. And to subject yourself to the kinds of things that I've subjected myself to is demoralizing, but I've done it. And I'm ashamed and both proud simultaneously — proud that I'm still working in my late-70s, and tragically depressed with myself that I had to do all this artifice to gain the confidence of talkback and achievement.
On Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 book "Sex and the Single Girl":
I got out of graduate school in 1963 and I actually read it like a bible: Be sexy, wear plunging neck lines, get a push-up bra, flirt with your bosses, sleep with your bosses if you have to, have long hair, tight skirts, look better than their wives and be a Cosmo girl. I was a Cosmo girl from '63 to '70-something, until I realized that I was really unhappy and very depressed. What happened was, I heard Gloria [Steinem] and Bella Abzug and realized that I didn't have to be this courtesan — this sexy person — to achieve, that I could somehow achieve on my own merits. I don't have to flirt with Mr. Boss. I can just tell him my ideas. Gently. Not lean too far over that I fall forward, but I can sit upright. I don't have to put lipstick and mascara on before a meeting. I can go in sort of tired because I've been in the editing room all night. Gloria allowed me to play in a man's world without becoming a girly girl and I'm very grateful to her for that.
On women in the workforce:
In my day then, I was really an anomaly. There weren't that many women in the workplace. Now there are more women in the workplace and we're all clamoring to say, What about me? It might, in many ways, be more difficult because of volume and because maybe the men are somewhat intimidated by the fact that it's a movement, not an individual. So I don't know about the gains. I look at pictures of various corporations and I see men sitting around the table. Whether it's in the the Trump White House or another corporation that I might be looking at a picture of in some business magazine. [There are] very few women at the top. I don't know what it is. I don't know what we did wrong. I don't know why, all over the world, women are suffering so much. Why are men throwing acid in their face because of some god that would never have said that? Why can't women have an abortion? It's their body. What is it you guys have against us? It's not our fault we're smarter than you and live longer. We didn't mean that.
On whether writing her book informs the kinds of documentary films she wants to make:
I think not. We've always done films about injustices, so I don't know that the books stimulated it. I think it made me a central character spiritually and emotionally in the films that we had already been doing and would continue to do. And that somehow the underdog, whether it was a woman or a person with autism or whatever — whatever the underdog was — we would be there. That was the greatest part of a documentary, always, was to champion the rights of people who don't have center stage. To back off celebrity and go to the guy who's trying to make a living, or the immigrant who doesn't want to be deported, or the person who has a disability. That is the great function of [documentaries]. It's a playing field for people who have and people who have not. But the haves have to give to the have-nots. [Documentary] is the success of the trickle-down theory in the sense that you've got the budget to make it. Well, make it about someone who can't make it by themselves. I think I always was there. I don't know if the book changed that, but it made me a player in the stories that were not about me.
To hear the full conversation click the play button at the top of this page.