It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Zandra Polard 0:53
Morning Las Vegas, it's Zondra bone art. It's where I am. Today, we're talking about the Hollywood writer's strike, and how it is affecting my mental health. Personally. I want to give a special shout out to my wonderful, wonderful sponsor, our D Evans enterprises. They are a family run company for over 35 years. And they work in the Las Vegas area. So if you are having any contracting needs, build design, please visit the website and check out some of the things that are D Evans Enterprises has done now. Their website is www dot R D. Evans enterprises.com. The phone number is 602-815-9991. You know, they also do residential stuff, you know if you want to add on to your home, or something like that, but mostly he's a commercial builder in the Arizona and Nevada areas. Okay. So thanks again. Now, I have a special guest on the show. His name is Marshall Todd, and He is the executive producer of the series woke they are in their second season. Marshall has done a lot of writing for some major movies that we love. I know one of them is barbershop. Yeah, yeah. And I believe there is a new one that might be coming our way sometime soon. If he is indeed writing, I don't know yet. So anyway, let's get him on the line. So he can help explain this writer strike. Hey, Marshall.

Unknown Speaker 3:04
Logic, what's happening? How you doing?

Zandra Polard 3:05
Hey, man, thank you for coming on the show. It's been a while I think maybe it's been about a year or two.

Unknown Speaker 3:13
No one else but a year? Not two. Okay.

Zandra Polard 3:17
Yeah, maybe a year and a half. But thank you for coming back. I was just saying that. Wolk is doing so well that you guys got a second season.

Unknown Speaker 3:27
on Hulu. Oh, yeah, we got it. We got canceled. Oh,

Zandra Polard 3:30
you did? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what happened with that?

Unknown Speaker 3:37
You know, part of the reason we're striking, we don't know. Because they never showed us the numbers. If they said it wasn't cost effective. It didn't make sense to move forward. They had other shows, and they didn't need us. So you know, we got canceled had a feeling it was coming. You know, there were certain you know, the signals you get on the walk up to the conversation about when maybe the season three or not. And

Zandra Polard 4:04
everyone's staring at you.

Unknown Speaker 4:06
No, no, we were just those conversations were not happening. One, when we got season two, the walk up to season two, there were certain things that took place a performance meeting the conversation get proceeds since they were going to pull the trigger on season two. Well, if season two, that those things didn't happen. So, you know, get a phone call out of the blue saying, you know, guys, thank you, but no, thank you and I gotta move forward with this.

Zandra Polard 4:34
Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Well, I know that you did. I was mentioning. You're writing for barber shop. I mean, that's a classic, right? Yes. Yeah. So we like the stuff that you're doing. That's cool. Now what I need you to do, is I need you. You're on this show because I need you to explain the writer strike. And I was letting the audience know that your strike is affecting my mental health. Because it's messing with my financial stability. My husband, yeah, for those who don't know, works in the entertainment industry, and the strike is affecting everybody, you know, from transportation, food service, you know, things that they rent for the movies, just everything actors, cameraman, everybody. So why are we striking? How long is it going to be? Because my I'm looking at the clock. Yeah, give us an explanation. First

Unknown Speaker 5:44
and foremost, I should say writers aren't as wealthy as people think they are. Okay. And it really is. I'm not saying this. Just because I'm pretty much it's a blue collar job. It's a hustle. Everything in this business is a hustle. It's gig the gig. Sometimes you like pirate or CIF. You always go for the next job, the next heist. Having said that, when it comes to streaming the lane I chose to sort of be in what was on Hulu, you know, of course, Hulu, Netflix, and those companies that have revolutionized the idea of streaming. What, what unbelievable is you can create a hit song. And if you got a million streams, you get paid in relation to those strings. So if someone told you 100 million people heard your song, you get paid that amount of money. Right? Okay. With with streaming, and this sounds incredible. For two seasons of woke. No one ever gave us the data. And that's their MO. That's their thing. Trust us. Your show did this. And you say, Well, can we see the string? Can we see the data? They go? No, thank you. So so so the situation that they created is you could have a hit show, right? I could have the show. That's not a hit. That's terrible. We get paid the same amount. Okay, and that benefits streaming? Because you don't know their back end? Because they don't tell you that back? How much money is Netflix making on Queen Charlotte? No one knows that. I doubt they're going to Shonda right as it is now a deputy go to sunrise going you get this amount? Thus, we're going to give you on top of that we've already paid you this amount of money. Well, and here's the

Zandra Polard 7:46
thing with the actors, though, too, right? Don't they only pay them once? When they do like Netflix, Hulu or something like that they don't get paid. When? You know when it reruns, like for reruns or anything like that? No, no,

Unknown Speaker 8:01
no, you read all this stuff about about training deals. And it's to their advantage, that they pay all this money upfront. That's 800. So and so got paid to me. So it's all for show, because at the end of the day, they don't tell anybody pays you a lot of money up front. You wonder about the backend. Right? So on woke, they paid us generously upfront. But then once the show started, and we were like one of our guys, they would never give us the data. And so two things could possibly be true. Well, one, a two, one, they're making so much money on the back end, that they don't want to share it. Which is why we're striking, okay, because you need to share because we're the creators or two. It's all smoke and mirrors. Streaming is not as successful as they, as they want you to believe Netflix is successful. Hulu is successful. Oh, so they say they have shareholders. They have investors, that people who depend on them in a success. But if they did have to turn around and show the data, who's to say they're telling the truth. So, so this came to a head? And I knew it would because I don't I can't imagine. You know, we we worked hard on work. We put in the hours, and for them to turn around and go, we're not going to tell you how many people are watching your show. Trust us. It's doing this or that is is is ridiculous. So it had to come to me when you asked nicely and then it had to come to a head which one of the reasons were striking.

Zandra Polard 9:43
And just and you know, you guys have a lot of support. I'm not saying I'm not supporting the writers strike. Of course I am. But I'm just saying that the effect you know, it's very personal about

Unknown Speaker 9:56
Yeah, it trickles down. If you take the Writers Guild voted, I think 98% to authorize the strike, right? Okay. Now if you take the percentage of writers that are actually making money in the guild, I would off the top of my head, that's 10% 8% that are making a living wage. So most of the writers of the Guild are broke. Okay, so you don't think they're suffering because of this. Because when the scribes not, when it's horrible, there's the potential you can get a good job. It's always the Bake Off, it's always a job opens up. Everybody's trying to get staff on this TV shows that TV show, but because of the strike, everything grinds to a halt. So the writers at the bottom and in 2008, that writer strike I remember that was at the bottom. Yeah, that that strike that

Zandra Polard 10:57
was short lived.

Unknown Speaker 11:00
But no, it was 100 days. It was enough for me to be ruined. Oh, yeah. It was long enough for me to be desperate. And I will say this. It put me in a situation where I went from features to television. And it was a wise choice. And I think without that strike, I wouldn't have made that choice. But But still, it was hard. And I think for all, but a few to 2% at the guild who are making, you know, baseball money, this is hard. And the writers do have a soft spot, or they acknowledge the fact that on down the line. This is impactful to all of us, everyone that was on the set from Trump booster to the makeup artists to the assistant director

Zandra Polard 11:55
to me, it's where I am

Unknown Speaker 11:58
this hurts everyone. Yeah. What focuses on the focus is on the people at the top who are saying no. And and now you have what in a matter of what 12 days so 10 days the actors are going to go on strike. See

Zandra Polard 12:16
now look, it started with the writers and then didn't the directors go on strike and now it's the actors is that right? Oh, no, no. Okay, go

Unknown Speaker 12:24
see the DGA though when I say carefully because I got friends in the DGA. What does

Zandra Polard 12:32
that say that again?

Unknown Speaker 12:35
In DJ directors go, Oh, okay. Okay, maybe we'll never really about strike. Okay. They are strike the verse. They usually are the first to make a deal with the producers. And that's what happened here. That director we're asking for some of the same thing we were asked before but their fight is not our fight. Now. I would say that if you're in a union our fight is our fight. DJ didn't see it that way. So they made a deal. Okay, now you have a lot of directors who are going on record saying that they the deal is is not good that they don't vote for it that they think they should stand with the Writers Guild. Having said all that, the actors guild standard stands with us, the teamsters stand with us, but I think if the actors go on strike I think that serves to shorten the strike. In other words, you can you can write off the writers to a point you can cancel all the overall deals you can find other writers in on actor projects and save a couple of million in the short term. But in the long term, the writers not working it's shutting down shows people are hurting because those shows are being shut down. Now you have the the possibility of the actors going on strike two days from now which was shut hold it down completely. Wow. The producers to come to the table and toxic okay.

Zandra Polard 14:24
So we need the actors to strike then. You said in two days

Unknown Speaker 14:30
now in 10 days Oh and 10 Okay, yeah, we need the accuracy strike to shorten the strike. Yes.

Zandra Polard 14:37
Because I think you guys were more into giving to the writers were given a deal but you guys were like No, that's not we didn't you guys didn't like it.

Unknown Speaker 14:46
No, no, no. The thing that we I think the friction came about because Netflix and the streamers won't reveal their their data. Analytics

Zandra Polard 14:59
Do you think You ever will?

Unknown Speaker 15:02
Yeah, you gotta after, okay. It's thinking, Boy, I don't think dislike ends without Netflix, coming to grips with the idea that we have to give a number of how many people are watching any given show? Yeah. And based on that number we got to start paying creatives accordingly. Yes, that this this is like, hey, I'll pay you $50,000 to write this show, and then not tell you how well your shows doing. What how much money you're making none of your business? Yeah. Do you want to take the view or not? And you go because most writers are hungry? Yeah, yeah. How do you like? Yeah, I think they do. So that for me personally, that's, by me having a show on Hulu, and experiencing that how streamers treat you. That is by that's the best of one point of dislike I'm the most passionate about because I don't network TV. I fell in love with streaming years ago. It's like the Wild West screaming, you can down sites and streaming. But ultimately, I love the idea of having a show with eight to 10 episodes of season three, four seasons and moving on to the next creative thing. Right.

Zandra Polard 16:25
And I like that I can just get through the whole season without waiting, you know, a week at a time.

Unknown Speaker 16:32
There you go. So I always thought filming was was the move. But once I actually sold the show, and got into that that system, and then they were like, trust us. This is what you're doing. These are the numbers. And if it will show us the numbers they would like not trust us. That was weird. Trust

Zandra Polard 16:52
you. I don't even know you. What's your last name? Western. So yeah, screw that. So now with the actors I do they have like the same, because I was mentioning earlier. A girlfriend of mine. She was complaining about Netflix in particular. About You know how they get paid. They don't pay as much and even with my husband when he's on one of those streaming shows. They don't pay the same.

Unknown Speaker 17:26
us crazy. Netflix talks about how dope it is how successful it is, right now. In stock market. Netflix is like up like 125% Okay, yet they turn around and go. We can't pay, right. We can't pay you these residuals, you know, it's streaming. It's a thing that you don't understand. Because we're from the tech and you're from Hollywood. But trust us, this is the way it should be. Here's some money be happy. Oh, something happened yesterday. I don't. I don't know how this is gonna shake out. But you have HBO Max, which is now Max, which is just stupid. licensing their shows to Netflix. One of the shows was insecure.

Zandra Polard 18:14
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 18:16
So Netflix is a competitor of HBO. Nice. The two streamers who compete against each other. Now, as of yesterday, they're in cahoots. I don't know how this plays out. So then I'm like, there's this ESA ready to check because of this, basically, because the article I read talked about the benefits like, Oh, now shows like insecure. We'll have a larger platform and an international audience. And I'm like, okay, back. Cool. But does each array see a bump in her pay?

Zandra Polard 18:53
Yes, good point.

Unknown Speaker 18:55
And you can't say what used to raise which does that? That's that's nonsense, right? Who at their job will turn down money when it's owed to you? Because you said it doesn't exist. Right. So Ray worked hard for five seasons, she created something that was a hit for HBO. And now it's really saying it's selling the rights of that show to the competitor to then display. So in the article it never mentioned Issa Rae at all. So, um, it's a new development. I'm gonna What is this mean? That

Zandra Polard 19:35
means she ain't getting paid and they are. is simple. They didn't mention it for a reason because they didn't offer anything. That's what I think.

Unknown Speaker 19:46
I agree. I agree. So,

Zandra Polard 19:50
can you explain Can you explain the AI like a lot of people are saying, you know, now artificial intelligence. What? Explain that. To me, what are they talking about?

Unknown Speaker 20:01
Okay, so I'm going to take the position of the average person because I was that guy about two months ago, when the Writers Guild sent me an email about the pending strike, they said, one of our points is AI. So at that moment in time, I'm like AI. So I'm writing stuff. I'm origin. I don't. There's a lot of stuff I don't pay attention to. So this AI thing, snuck up on it. So someone said, You need to go to chat TPT and spend a couple of hours on it. I did. I thought it was amazing. I thought, you can type in what you want to say. And this thing says better than you. Oh, my wife. And she's going to kill me for saying this. Here. Here's a podcast, another podcast, a blog. Okay, so she's a chef. So thing was was write me an intro of a blog about chef who travels the world. So check, CPT GPT, whatever it is. Read out this, this this first paragraph? That was amazing. And it sounded like my wife. Oh. So that's what I'm like, I I spent two days down a rabbit hole, typing up all kinds of stuff. So then I'm like, Okay, now I get how this is dangerous. Because so and so then I released a friend of mine, European producer, and, and we were hanging out at dinner once and I said about it. The I said, I'm gonna do immunity. I think it's scary. But I don't want to, you know, I don't want to run around saying is scary, because it's new to me. And then he was like, Well, I, he said that he was were writers that turned into an outline. And he put the outline in AI. And it improved it. And then I'm like, Wait, what are you talking about? He said, Yeah, he goes, I use AI to write my emails sometimes. And that's what I'm like, You serious?

Zandra Polard 22:12
So I'm sure some students here at UNLV probably use it to help them with their papers. My engineer is like shaking his head like a no, I don't think so. And no,

Unknown Speaker 22:25
no, no, I guarantee you because I because once I discovered what it was my 17 year old daughter seen in high school this year, I said, Hey, you know what? This? Yeah. Okay. I got classmates who use it to write papers. I'm like, Are you? Are you serious?

Zandra Polard 22:40
You are doing it the old fashioned way. Overly

Unknown Speaker 22:47
structured? Have you ever done that? She's like, No, I haven't, um, or you know, a lot of them. You're just like, No, because I found out chat. DBT is like the secret is like the thing people use to help write something without telling you. And now Google, Google is introducing a new feature called helped me with my email. And starting next month, when you open up the email, if it will give you a prompt, you can write a regular email, or what do you want to say, and it will give you suggestions on what to write. So the fear, the natural fear for writers is okay, but we got it. What producers gonna do are, have type in coordinates, type in instructions to have this AI, write an outline, okay? And then hire a writer to come in and rewrite the outline,

Zandra Polard 23:45
to put like, more of the emotion into it or something, or

Unknown Speaker 23:47
to put a human touch to it. But the fact that there's even a direct dialogue in the first place where they would have normally paid a writer is Tao. Yes.

Zandra Polard 23:59
So it to me, You know what it sounds like? The grocery store. When I go to the grocery store, I don't want to check out my own items. I don't want no I'm serious. I think that this compares to the supermarket for the average person, right? When we started going grocery shopping and we had to do self checkout. No, no, I don't want anybody losing their job. Go on and check them out for me. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 24:30
The target next door to so I live literally 50 feet from a target. Okay, so about six months ago, if you go to Target 8am There are no cashiers. So it's a two floor target. And as is one cash on the bottom floor, but the top floor and most of the bottom is all self checkout. So basically, they're cutting hours of the employees. And that last one is a Until about 12 new. Yeah. And they have employees that if it gets crowded and busy, they'll come out in open up their lanes. But from eight to 12 is just the self checkout, which means someone's hours got cut someone's hours that got saved with AI. Yes, what hours? Someone's hours getting cut.

Zandra Polard 25:26
They're trying to eliminate that that industry

Unknown Speaker 25:30
where the guild is like, we don't know. We think we have a hunch about where these hours getting cut, but we don't want you to use it at all. And if you do use it, you should let us know. Right? Well, just my producer friend who uses AI to sweeten up outlines. I was horrified. And I told him as much. I'm like, Dude, that's not cool. And it was like, it's a, it's a tool that I use, and it's effective. And I'm like, I understand that. But you're, you're taking work from a writer, right, and you think you're approving it, or you're creating a piece of material. And you're hiring writers to improve it. But either way, there's the step there, that you're cutting out. The writer gets cut out. So across the board, if you accidentally add all that up all the producers who are doing the same thing, it adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars of writer fees that are not not getting to writers.

Zandra Polard 26:37
Wow, that's AI. Now we know it started with, you know, on your computer with the tab button where you know, would finish the sentence for you. Yeah, yeah. And now it's gone.

Unknown Speaker 26:50
Again, it's, it's amazing. I will say this, it truly is. Up. Me personally, I'm trying to figure out how to integrate this into my my creative life. Because it's not going anywhere. And it's truly spectacular. If you just get on any AI app, and start typing in, like, like, if you say I want you to write a love letter to my husband, who is dot, dot dot, and you add in those words, it's gonna spit something out. And it's gonna be like, Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. So yeah, scary.

Zandra Polard 27:30
Wow. Well, how long do you anticipate this? distracted me? What do you think? few more months?

Unknown Speaker 27:38
I? Well, no, I I wrap my mind around the whole summer. Initially.

Zandra Polard 27:46
Okay. And when is it going to affect the the people who are sitting on the couch watching the movies, because now there's still content, right?

Unknown Speaker 27:55
This content that they had had had loaded up banked up, but now you have all these shows that are pausing. Stranger Things stop Yellowjacket stop. We have literally I think 50 About 50 names, the top shows that have stopped production because right to strike. Having said that, I would I thought the writers were alone on this crusade. Somebody's just gonna last last summer. But now that we're literally nine days away, nine days away from the writers from the Aqua striking, right? Exactly strike. And I

Zandra Polard 28:33
hope they do. I hope they do, too. Because it sounds like it makes sense.

Unknown Speaker 28:38
Oh, it doesn't make sense for them. And it makes the strike much, much shorter.

Zandra Polard 28:43
I want to thank you so much for clarifying what's going on, so that we have to have a better understanding. I've gotten so many phone calls with people who are concerned. And then also really quick. It also not affects just California but also Atlanta because Atlanta, you know, is doing a lot in the film industry as well. So, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Marcia, for coming on. You're always welcome. I look forward to hearing about your next project. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Did you want to give a shout out before I let you go?

Unknown Speaker 29:19
No, I mean, just to speak. Thank you for having me on, man. Yeah, I'm a fan. I'm a fan. So thank you for having me on. Thank

Zandra Polard 29:27
you. Well, 91.5 this is Andro pole art. I want to thank you for tuning in. You know, I'm here every Saturday at 7:30am. And if you're not up that early, you can always catch me on your favorite podcast. I am on Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon. And of course, you can always go to my website. It's where I am.com and my social handles are at it's where I M L V. All right. So thank you and we'll talk to you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai