5. Krekorian Act Enforcement
In 2010, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office used the Krekorian Talent Scam Prevention Act primarily as a tool to regulate casting workshops (much to the chagrin of some in the casting community). But in 2011, things got real. In late July and early August, Deputy City Attorney Mark Lambert notched his first two convictions under the Krekorian Act, a 2009 California state law that he was a driving force behind. Just a few months earlier, Lambert's office had used the threat of prosecution under that law to pressure Central Casting into halting its long-standing practice of charging a $25 photo processing fee to actors applying for background work.
Just one day after the City Attorney's Office sent a letter to Central Casting in May demanding that it stop charging photo fees or else face civil and possibly criminal prosecution, Central Casting put an end to the practice, while at the same time claiming that it had been unfairly targeted and had done nothing wrong. The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists both expressed support for the City Attorney's Office.
"Screen Actors Guild does not feel like anyone should ever have to pay anything for the opportunity to apply for work," Terri Becherer, director of SAG's Background Actors Department, told Back Stage in May. "We are thrilled that there are laws out there to protect actors and that the city attorney is going to pursue those who are not following the laws."
A few months later, Lambert successfully prosecuted managers Nicholas Roses and Patrick W. O'Brien, who pleaded no contest in separate cases of violating the Krekorian Act. Both Roses and O'Brien had been charged with selling their services to their clients as a condition of representation, a practice that is expressly forbidden under the act.
"These convictions send the message to talent managers and talent agents that you will be prosecuted in California if you try selling classes, photos, or websites to your clients," Lambert told Back Stage in August. "Hopefully, it will inspire other states to protect their actors by passing their own version of the Krekorian Talent Scam Prevention Act."
4. Saving the Soap Opera
Conventional wisdom is that the soap opera—that venerable format that has entertained housewives and employed actors since the days of radio—has been in its death throes for some time. So when ABC announced in April that it would cancel "All My Children" and "One Life to Live," the news shattered no earth. "It is heartbreaking, but it also is not surprising, unfortunately," Holter Graham, president of AFTRA's New York local, told Back Stage at the time.
What was surprising was when, in July, the production company Prospect Park announced that it had secured rights from ABC to turn the two shows into Web series. Until then, the idea of a life for the soap format on the Web had been mostly a pipe dream—one sustained by the small-scale success of former "Guiding Light" star Crystal Chappell's series "Venice," which has been more a labor of love than a model for an industry. But what Prospect Park proposed was audacious: moving the fictional towns of Pine Valley and Llanview and their residents (or some of them, anyway) online.
Chappell, speaking to Back Stage at the time, expressed enthusiasm. "Personally, from the perspective of an actor and a soap fan and a producer of an Internet show, I think it's exciting," she said. "I want to see what they're going to do."
Then the inevitable bumps in the road came. In November, Prospect Park publicly scuttled its plans to revive the two shows, blaming the inflexibility of the unions representing talent in front of and behind the camera. Both AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America West lashed back at Prospect Park, denying responsibility for the company's failure. But like a classic soap heroine, the Prospect Park deal returned just when it looked like it had really, truly died. Earlier this month, Variety cited "sources familiar with discussions" in a report claiming that the company is still pursuing options for bringing the shows to the Web.
3. The Theater Recovery
Every year, it seems that some venerable theater somewhere suddenly finds itself in dire financial straits and has to padlock its doors. This year, that theater was Seattle's Intiman, which boarded up in April, pulling the plug on four shows and turning out a staff of roughly 20 employees, including high-profile artistic director Kate Whoriskey.
But at the end of 2011, there was reason to be cautiously optimistic about the health of the national theater scene. Two studies by Theatre Communications Group revealed that many theaters ended 2010 on more solid fiscal footing than they had 2009 and that the trend would likely continue as 2011 came to a close. "No, it's not all doom and gloom," Teresa Eyring, executive director of TCG, said. "We actually saw some really positive developments in 2010."
Perhaps the biggest of those positive developments was that 62 percent of the theaters surveyed by TCG ended 2010 with budget surpluses—a huge leap from the previous two years. A snapshot survey of a smaller selection of theaters found that a majority also expected to end 2011 with a surplus.
But not everything is looking up. TCG found, for instance, that the average theater's working capital declined dramatically in 2009 and 2010. Still, Eyring said, "When I look at the research, it's heartening."
2. Pirates Under Fire
As the U.S. Senate headed into its holiday recess, it set the stage for a showdown over legislation designed to curb content piracy online. Sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the PROTECT IP Act, which would empower the Justice Department to crack down on websites "dedicated to infringing activities," has the strong backing of SAG, AFTRA, and the Motion Picture Association of America. It has also garnered criticism from organizations as varied as Google, the American Library Association, and Human Rights Watch.
"This is an omnibus grab bag of corporate goodies that will hurt consumers, stifle innovation, foment censorship, and change the Internet as we know it for the worse," David Segal, executive director of the progressive activist organization Demand Progress, said in October. "It's so over-the-top that we're not sure if we should be laughing or crying."
When PROTECT IP reaches the Senate floor in January for a scheduled vote, it will face fierce opposition from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who singlehandedly killed a similar bill a little more than a year ago. But backing PROTECT IP is only part of an anti-piracy push that has found entertainment industry and labor organizations working together with increased energy and frequency. In July, labor and industry groups—including SAG, AFTRA, and the MPAA—launched Creative America, a joint initiative aimed at shifting public opinion regarding content theft (and lending momentum to legislative efforts such as PROTECT IP).
"The industry's lost billions of dollars due to global content theft, and that's less money that's available for new production, which in turn means new jobs," Craig Hoffman, communications director of Creative America, told Back Stage in July. "It also impacts the downstream revenues on things like DVD and syndication, and that has an impact on things like people's pension and welfare and residuals."
1. SAG-AFTRA Merger
When the Screen Actors Guild Awards are broadcast live next month, awards-season prognosticators will be watching to see which actors' performances rank above all others. But for the working actor, the big moment will come when SAG president Ken Howard takes the stage to announce that his union's board of directors has approved a plan to merge SAG with AFTRA, a venture that has been attempted three other times since the 1960s.
That's presuming that all goes according to plan. Howard announced earlier this year that he hoped to be able to make a merger-related announcement at the SAG Awards. So far, that still seems possible, though the timeline looks tight. On Jan. 8, the SAG-AFTRA Group for One Union will gather for a marathon eight-day meeting, presumably to finalize a merger plan for representatives of each union to take back to their respective boards of directors for approval. The SAG board will then meet on Jan. 27 to consider the proposal. The AFTRA board will meet on Jan. 28. The SAG Awards will take place on Jan. 29. The amount of wiggle room appears to be zero.
"Going down the road, it's very clear to me and to many people who work in all three unions that it is a rare performer who only does live entertainment or only does television commercials or only does TV series," AFTRA president Roberta Reardon told Back Stage in January, making the case for merger (the third union being Actors' Equity Association). "All of us work in lots of different venues. Going forward, that's going to blur even more."
The last attempt to merge SAG and AFTRA failed when SAG fell short of the 60 percent approval needed from its members to ratify the plan. That will, once again, prove to be the last and biggest hurdle that merger proponents will face—and they will face it soon.
