The following article is written by Michael Lee Nirenberg, author of the forthcoming oral history Cinematic Immunity.
In light of recent labor actions by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA that have shut down commercial film and television for the foreseeable future, it’s a prime opportunity to share an excerpt from my forthcoming oral-history book, Cinematic Immunity. The 1990 Producer Lockout is a lesser-known chapter in the tense history of Hollywood’s labor relations. Personally, I only know about it from having worked with people who survived it. During the 2007 writer’s strike I was a rookie movie-TV scenic artist in United Scenic Artists Local 829. I got my union card earlier that year and was getting a crash course in organized labor.
During the 1990 negotiations with IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) the studios were pushing what was called the Hollywood Basic contract onto New York unions. They used this contract on the West Coast, where they were used to paying people less money for the same work. But one union, Motion Picture Studio Mechanics Local 52, held out and refused to take the pay cuts. The producers then decided to starve New York out, and for about a year there was little to no work. This is exactly the kind of approach the AMPTP is doing today at the national level. This chapter details the carnage of that fight.
The Producer Lockout is an excerpt from my forthcoming 2024 oral-history book Cinematic Immunity. It’s about New York City and its movie crews––the people who have seen everything, know where all the bodies are buried, partied hard, worked harder, and are never interviewed. The book is cut together from hundreds of hours of original interviews I did during 2020-2022 with the (mostly) retired props, art directors, camera operators, special effects, set dressers, scenic artists, makeup artists, assistant directors, etc.––I even got the industry’s top insect wrangler. There’s chapters on every important movie and TV show shot during the golden age of New York, from Midnight Cowboy through The Sopranos. Film history’s greatest technicians and innovators tell us how they got the shots, and how much fun they had doing it.
It’s still a bit early to preorder it (follow me on Twitter for those updates), but I wanted to get this out there to see what kind of pricks we’re dealing with.
The Producer Lockout
With the expiration last night of a contract between the major Hollywood film and television producers and a production crafts union, New York City is facing a slowdown in an industry that is a source not only of prestige but of badly needed jobs and revenue as well.
At stake is the continued employment of nearly 3,500 workers who toil on more than 100 New York film productions yearly, as well as the future of the city’s third largest industry, behind tourism and fashion. Film and television production pumps more than $2.7 billion into the city’s economy each year, according to the Mayor’s Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting. –– The New York Times, November 1, 1990
Barry Wetcher (still photographer, Local 600): What I remember most about [Lean On Me (1989)] besides having to travel to Paterson, was that in those days we had a great contract. You were on the clock once you crossed over the George Washington Bridge. There was no like 30-mile rule. In those days, even if you worked in Brooklyn, once you crossed anywhere into Manhattan you were on the clock and the same thing coming back. So I used to drive [boom operator] Kim Maitland every day and we’d be driving home from Patterson and it’d be like a fucking traffic jam at the bridge. And we’d be sitting and waiting to go over the bridge in triple time.
In those days we didn’t have time and a half. There was no time and a half in those days. After eight [hours], you went right into double time. And then two and a half that’s 14 [hour day].
Tony Gamiello (set dresser and props, Local 52): We would get double time and triple time, and we weren’t getting that to get rich, we were doing that so we wouldn’t have to work 20 hours a day, like my grandfather did, sleep on the stage. We would do it so we can have a life.
Barry Wetcher: Once we [Local 644] merged with LA, in New York, we became part of the Hollywood Basic agreement. The Hollywood Basic agreement is an agreement between––I think it’s 13 Hollywood locals and the producers. And those local include camera, hair, makeup, studio teachers, publicists, [etc]. It’s a little different and the Hollywood Basic agreement covers work in the 13 Western states. I don’t really know your local’s contract, but it’s different than Local 52. Local 52 only really has jurisdiction in New York, New Jersey. And that’s it. So my local, before we merged into local 600, when we were three separate camera locals, 644, 666, and 600.
Tony Gamiello: For a while in the 80s there was conflict between unions. There was competition. There were two film locals NABET and the IA. NABET merged into Local 52, they ended the NABET 15 charter. And they expanded our jurisdiction, because ours is really New York City in [Local] 52. They expanded our jurisdiction to all New York State, Connecticut, New Jersey, and all of Pennsylvania except Pittsburgh, who already had a local, and Delaware.
Barry Wetcher: The way that the Hollywood Basic contract is ratified is via electoral college system. So you have 13 locals. I think it’s 13, voting on one contract. So for instance, in the late nineties, camera used to have a provision that a camera operator was mandatory, had to hire a camera operator.
So when the contract was being voted on, my local, by a 90% majority voted it down. And the only other local that voted it down was the prop local in LA. But the other 11 locals voted for it. So it passed, because it’s an electoral college system, which goes by how many members you have. So therein lies a big disadvantage of that contract. Because you have studio teachers voting on whether there should be a camera operator. They don’t give a shit. They don’t care.
So in my eyes, it’s a very flawed contract. Because you’re voting on things that don’t really apply to you. So maybe that year the grips got something or didn’t lose something so they were happy to vote “yes.”
The Hollywood Basic––their contracts were never as good as the New York contracts, but it was okay. And they used to let a lot of non-union work go on there. So they lost a lot of work. And then the producers basically pressured them [Local 52] to sign this contract and the producers got a sweetheart contract. So once that happens, that’s when they lost nights and weekends and sixth day––any five days.
After that happened in LA, in Hollywood, when it came time for the New York local to negotiate, this is what the producers wanted. And that’s how that came down. And you heard about the boycott of New York, right? The walkout, the boycott. That’s when that happened, when the producers wanted the same conditions that they had in Hollywood. My local, the camera local agreed to it. Local 52 obviously did not. And that’s when they boycotted New York.
Tony Gamiello: Local 52 was the renegade local.
The producers have promised to steer films away from New York City until an agreement is reached with the union, Local 52 of the International Alliance of Theater Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators. It provides the sound people, electricians, shop craftsmen, prop people, camera grips, gaffers and set dressers for the city’s film and television productions. –– The New York Times, November 1, 1990
Don Nace (scenic artist, Local 829): I thought the boycott was extremely frustrating because we all knew what was happening. All of a sudden New York had a lot of work. The reason New York had a lot of work because they were boycotting in LA. And because their contract was on a different timeframe than the New York contract, we sort of knew what was coming, but we had all this work and we were just working away and working away. And then they settled in California finally after, I don’t know how long of a boycott it was. It might have been a year.
Tony Gamiello: They put the pressure on us, they locked us out. And it was very little work for about a year or so. It was about two years. It was very little work, if anything, unless you worked on a commercial.
Barry Wetcher: I think it was 1990. Somewhere around 89, 90. The boycott was right after the NABET merger with New York. So it was around 1990. They boycotted New York for about five months. Basically nothing shot there. And I remember the 52 guys going, Hey, they got to shoot here. Meanwhile, they made the Babe Ruth film in Chicago. So they didn’t have to shoot here.
I’ve gone through about three writer strikes in my career. This was serious. Some people call it the boycott. Some people call it the lockout. People lost their second homes, their boats. There was no work here for months, many months. I mean, there was never any film work in January and February in New York anyway. Nobody wanted to shoot here because it was too fucking cold.
Don Nace: So, California signed their contract and within a couple of weeks, there was no work in New York. Everything went to California and we knew it was going to happen. They just picked us off one at a time, like a sniper, and then for months there was no work. As I said, I had Malcolm X and a few others did and there were [back]drops. And so, the drop painters and the lucky few on Malcolm X had jobs. People lost houses, I guess. It was economically devastating.
Spike Lee behind the scenes of Malcolm X
Tony Gamiello: Some of us were collecting unemployment trying to get other work a lot of guys lost their homes, lost their wives and girlfriends, marriages broke. Because when you haven’t work for two years, it’s not good.
Bill Reynolds (prop master, Local 52): They really came looking for us then. But a lot of people really hurt because of that. In fact, we talked about it at that time after the fact, maybe a year or two after the fact––you’d think of the names, “What the hell happened to him?”
And then somebody would say, “Yeah, they got out of business. They’re doing whatever they’re doing now. They’re a plumber now. They’re an outside carpenter now.”
But that did drive some people away from the business. And really was New York. All of the California locals pretty much were in unison, but we were not connected with them. We had autonomy.
Tony Gamiello: People thought we were on strike and we weren’t. They locked us out. So our union president at the time, Frank Schultz wanted to buy a half-page ad in the New York Times and spend $10,000 to state our side of the story that we’re being locked out we’re not striking or anything like that and New York Times refused to run it. So much freedom of speech, so much for the first amendment, so much for unionism. They were anti-union and basically, they didn’t want to piss off the movie companies who were advertising in the New York Times. So they wouldn’t run our side of the story. After that if I saw somebody with the New York Times I said is, “Get that rag outta here! They’re anti-union scumbags I want nothing to do with them.”
Anyway I go to this film festival at Westchester Community College, because I had went there, and they have this small film festival. And they at the end, they had all these different movie people talking and one of them was Alan Arkin. At the end, somebody gets up and says, “Mr. Arkin, when are they going to end this strike in New York?” Well, I had to raise my hand and I got up and say, “Mr. Arkin there’s no strike in New York. We’re ready to go back to work now that locking us out to get into a contract.”
And he goes, “I didn’t know that.” And here’s a guy, an actor who’s worked in the business and he didn’t even know they were locking us out. The point was they were trying to silence us and then censor everything and not let us get our point of view out, because they didn’t want to piss off the movie companies. In the meantime they put the squeeze on us. They could do that because movies you could make anywhere. TV shows can make anywhere. They couldn’t do that with Local One because when Local One had a problem, then the International would go to them and say how could we work this out? Because you can’t take Broadway on the road. Broadway is people come from all over the world to go to Broadway to see plays. Local One was a bit more flat, whereas 52 and the rest of the IA locals––you have to give in because they can shoot movies anywhere. I mean, they shot Rumble in the Bronx in Toronto. Well, I didn’t see any long peak mountains in the Bronx.
So, they pit jurisdictions against each other and everything else.
Barry Wetcher: Local 52 eventually capitulated. I mean, and the story as I heard it, I don’t know if it’s true, because I’m not a member of local 52. At the time I think Wally Stocklin was the president of local 52. He was a prop guy who became a teamster after he retired. The story, as I heard it, was Local 52 went out to LA to negotiate and told the producers, okay, we are going to recommend that our members vote for this contract, this bullshit contract.
And again, this is secondhand I’m telling you. I don’t know if it’s fact. When they came back and spoke to the members, they told the members not to vote for the contract. [Laughs.] They told the producers, they would recommend it, but actually they told the members not to vote for it. So the members rejected the contract and the producers went fucking nuts and locked us out. So again, I don’t know, because I wasn’t, there, never local 52, but it all sounds right to me. [Laughs.]
The producers contended that the local that rejected the contract proposal, Local 52 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators, had reneged on a promise to recommend the deal to the local’s rank and file.
The producers, through the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in Sherman Oaks, Calif., said that they had made concessions in the negotiations based on assurances that Local 52 would recommend ratification.
Yesterday the alliance issued a statement denouncing Local 52’s failure to urge ratification as “outrageous and unprecedented.”
“Local 52’s leadership has no interest in reaching an agreement with the producers,” the statement from the alliance said.
Ray Fortune, the business manager of Local 52, denied the allegation. “Wally and I did not have the power to make any kinds of deals,” he said, referring to the president of Local 52, Walter Stocklin. –– The New York Times April 17, 1991
Tony Gamiello: So basically they forced the contract down our throat at that time. They appeased of us some things, but the thing that hurt us too, we went to time and a half to double but what hurt us is they got us to do any eight hours and any five days. So in other words, if the production wanted to work Wednesday through Sunday, you wouldn’t get overtime to Saturday, Sunday until your ninth hour.
Years ago, we used to come in after three o’clock it was a night call, you get time and a half when you were starting. Well, they changed that so you’ve come in late and you work, difference eight hours, you get straight time before you went to time and a half, which, if you’re working those nights all week, that’s fine. But if you’re just on the job for two days, or a day or two, now you couldn’t take a job in the daytime because you’re working that night, and you couldn’t take a job the next day because you’re sleeping because you’re working all night. So it’s kind of hurt some guys that way, unless you want the job steady and work nights with that same production all week.
Don Nace: After a year they said, “Okay whatever it is you want we’ll do it. We’ll go from double time to time and a half. I’ll go to an eight-hour day instead of seven” or whatever it was. And finally, we went from a seven-hour day to an eight-hour day and from double time to time and a half and other concessions. So, that was a pretty big concession.
Barry Wetcher: It was only a good move in terms of our pension and health plan, because I mean, as you know those costs just kept going up and up and up and I’m not going to say ours was in trouble, but becoming part of the Hollywood Basic now put us into the motion picture plan, which was a very viable plan.
For us that was the one big advantage. But the disadvantage was now we had a shittier contract.
Tony Gamiello: It’s a little different now. That was ancient history, but a lot of the youngsters don’t know about that. That’s the problem, they get lured into a false sense of security. It wasn’t always like this years ago, you didn’t have all this TV. Some TV shows would come here for a couple of weeks to get the experience and they shoot everything on the west coast in the studio. NYPD Blue used to do that.
Don Nace: That’s what was told to me by this guy who was being regretful about the way it was in the past. All the way back with the people who worked on the original Jackie Gleason Show where it looked like the set was going to fall every time they closed the door. They made lots and lots of money and the wages gradually in our lifetime just diminished slowly year after year. And, that’s our legacy. We did the best we could. I don’t know.
Barry Wetcher: I mean, we were a real union. Today it’s like a club. We were proud and we were strong and the producers were afraid of us. That’s not true anymore. It hasn’t been true for many years. When I started, the guys that were in charge of the studios, they were filmmakers. You know what I mean? Today they’re MBAs. So when you go negotiate a contract, the guy that’s sitting across from you is a lawyer who studied labor relations at school. Never been on a film set, ever. He has no clue what it’s like to work 14 hours in the rain in 20-degree weather or 30-degree weather, no clue. Doesn’t understand if you don’t eat for 10 hours, what that’s like.
Whereas I think in the past, even though their job is to negotiate the best contract for them, they understood that. I’m not saying they were compassionate, but at least they understood it. Today they negotiate with people who have no clue––none, never been on a film set.
Cinematic Immunity will be published in 2024.