At Jacobin, Alex Press breaks down what the writers’ and actors’ strike in Hollywood as all about. ‘“There used to be people running these companies who thought of themselves as stewards of the industry,” said the WGA’s Mike Schur, reflecting on what led to the strikes. “They’d think, ‘I’m sitting in the chair that Jack Warner sat in, and I have a responsibility to the history.’ Now these guys are tech bros in Cupertino. They’re not people who care about Hollywood qua Hollywood. They are people who think that this is an industry with inefficiencies, and if they can eliminate those inefficiencies, they can suck out a bunch of money and then sell and move on in the same way they have with other industries.”’
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Categories: Notes
The Cultural Gutter 
Last year, Ryan Reynolds created a short video highlighting two of the “background actors” in his movie “Free Guy” (where he played an NPC in a MMORPG that accidentally developed self-awareness). They are probably listed (if at all) in the credits as “Woman jogger” and “Man with briefcase”, but Janelle Feigley and Brandon Scales still had to show up for makeup and wardrobe, learn their cues, hit their marks, and not steal a scene from a “named” actor. or screw it up so it had to be re-shot.
Those roles are the ones most likely to be replaced by AI “characters”. They are the actors that the strike is about.
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