Transcript
Speaker: Dirty Briefs is on strike, everyone, because you got to strike while the iron's hot or the wages are low or you are working in unfair conditions.
Speaker: I am a SAG-AFTRA member.
Speaker: I have been in the union for over 15 years.
Speaker: And I will tell you this, I support this strike wholeheartedly.
Speaker: And a lot of you are probably wondering why.
Speaker: is everyone on strike?
Speaker: Don't actors make millions of dollars?
Speaker: Why is Aubrey Plaza holding up a sign on the picket line?
Speaker: Why is Ron Perlman out there talking about fair wages when clearly he's doing fine?
Speaker: It's not
Speaker: Those people.
Speaker: Yes, Aubrey and Ron are probably fine.
Speaker: It's the rest of us who are day players, who are character actors, who only work every once in a while in this industry.
Speaker: What's happening is
Speaker: is our rates are going down and the companies are taking more profits than ever before.
Speaker: Does that sound fair?
Speaker: No, but it does sound like America because that is the way we do things here in this country.
Speaker: Only 14%, 14%
Speaker: of union actors qualify for healthcare.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That means 86% of people are paying out of pocket or a lot of them simply don't have it.
Speaker: And all you need to qualify for healthcare, by the way, is you need to make $26,000 a year.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: And only 14% of union actors don't
Speaker: Due paying union actors are making that money, $25,000 a year.
Speaker: Part of the problem is that, and when everything went to streaming, all of our residual checks stopped with shows that we have created are being sold and we're not seeing any of those profits.
Speaker: When something goes to another streaming service, the content, the producers, the
Speaker: are the ones that are making the money, the producers and the streamers, not the writers and the actors.
Speaker: It's messed up.
Speaker: Why should you care?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Alex, come on.
Speaker: This doesn't affect me.
Speaker: I'm a zookeeper in West Virginia.
Speaker: Well, do you like watching television?
Speaker: Because if you do, get ready, because it's about to start sucking shit.
Speaker: That's what happens right now.
Speaker: They backlogged enough content to make it last a couple of months, but with nobody writing anything, nobody filming anything by the time winter hits, you're going to start really feeling the effects of that.
Speaker: You're going to have binged everything that's already out there.
Speaker: And you're going to go, why are there no new seasons of the shows that I love?
Speaker: Where is Ted Lasso?
Speaker: Where is, and just like that, if that is a show that you enjoy, why?
Speaker: Whatever it is that you're watching, you're not going to get it.
Speaker: And not until they meet our demands, which are so low.
Speaker: They're so low.
Speaker: I mean, you're talking, an average writer makes $69,000 a year.
Speaker: $69,000.
Speaker: 69, hilarious number.
Speaker: Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, makes $74,000 per day.
Speaker: Per day, 75 grand.
Speaker: What do you even do with money like that?
Speaker: David Zasloff, head of Warner Brothers, made $250 million last year while most of us are struggling to afford a jar of pickles.
Speaker: That's why this is so fucked up and that's why we are on strike.
Speaker: That's why when you see people picketing, honk the horn and realize that
Speaker: This is part of the working man.
Speaker: This is the coal miners.
Speaker: This is the electricians.
Speaker: They're being affected as well.
Speaker: So many industries are being affected by this and people think, well, you chose to be an actor.
Speaker: You chose to follow your dream.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But you love listening to music.
Speaker: You love watching TV and movies.
Speaker: And if we can't make them, what are you going to do in your spare time?
Speaker: Go outside, go outside,
Speaker: Good luck with that.
Speaker: A couple days ago, I did a comedy show on the picket line at Fox, and I'm familiar with that lot.
Speaker: That's where I shot New Girl a few years ago.
Speaker: We did a comedy show, and I got to tell you, it felt just like the pandemic all over again.
Speaker: It was not a great show because you can't fully block the sidewalk.
Speaker: So we were all the way at the end of where the picketers are walking in a loop and most of them couldn't even stop to listen to us.
Speaker: It was 96 degrees out while we were doing this.
Speaker: We were supposed to do it at Disney originally and it was too hot in the valley.
Speaker: So they moved it to Fox.
Speaker: Well, it was not much better there.
Speaker: A few degrees.
Speaker: Cooler, sure.
Speaker: But when that sun is beating down on you, scorching your jokes, people don't really want to listen.
Speaker: I talked a lot about the residuals when I was doing my set.
Speaker: I've gotten one cent residual checks before.
Speaker: One cent.
Speaker: Do you know how much a stamp costs right now?
Speaker: 48 cents plus an envelope.
Speaker: That means it costs at least 50 cents to send me a one cent residual check.
Speaker: So the studio is spending 50 times the amount of
Speaker: to have to send me a one cent check just in case you're wondering where all of our money is going.
Speaker: This business model doesn't work.
Speaker: We did this comedy show to try to entertain the people that were in the picket lines, but also to bring more awareness, to show them comedians wanted to show solidarity.
Speaker: We wanted to bring a little levity.
Speaker: And the LA Times was there and they took photos and they wrote an article.
Speaker: And I didn't have to get cancer this time to get in that article, which is really, really nice because that's how I get in the LA Times otherwise.
Speaker: But it just felt like we were back in the pandemic all over again.
Speaker: We're on a sidewalk in between a busy street with traffic going by, literally breathing in exhaust fumes from their gas tanks, and then a fountain that
Speaker: That's making all the noise in the world as if a thousand squirters were making a Japanese bukkake film.
Speaker: It was not good, but we did it.
Speaker: We did it to show support, to show that we're out there because I can't be out there every single day picketing.
Speaker: I just can't, but I like to go when I can.
Speaker: I want to hold my sign up and I'll do comedy anywhere.
Speaker: That's the truth.
Speaker: is when they said comedy show, I was like, I'm in.
Speaker: I've done comedy out of the back of a pickup truck at the DMV, a music festival on Sunday morning on top of a school bus at 9 a.m.
Speaker: when I had been up all night.
Speaker: Ugh.
Speaker: I had a comedy on Zoom.
Speaker: Zoom, when I didn't know who was listening or who was watching because most people had their screens turned off.
Speaker: I was basically just yelling into my computer while my wife, my very patient wife, sat in the other room until finally we had to get a bigger apartment because it was just brutal.
Speaker: My energy is not meant for one person.
Speaker: It's supposed to be distributed amongst thousands of people a week.
Speaker: And it was being funneled directly into my wife.
Speaker: She didn't deserve that.
Speaker: She was praying for death from COVID every single day.
Speaker: I've done comedy in rehab centers.
Speaker: True story.
Speaker: I once showed up to do comedy at a drug rehab.
Speaker: And when I walked up to the reception desk, they asked if I was checking in.
Speaker: I said, no, I'm doing a comedy show.
Speaker: They said, are you sure you don't want to check in?
Speaker: I was like, yes, I'm just going to perform for actual drug addicts that have real problems.
Speaker: I'm good at doing drugs, everybody.
Speaker: Very, very good.
Speaker: I have a positive mental attitude.
Speaker: I don't need drugs.
Speaker: To enjoy things, just to enhance them, as Otto on The Simpsons once said.
Speaker: I once did comedy in a center for deaf people.
Speaker: They were all deaf.
Speaker: We didn't even have a sign language interpreter.
Speaker: I mean, they told us to speak slowly and they could read lips.
Speaker: They were laughing sometimes, maybe because I was just being an animated cartoon.
Speaker: But whatever it was, I did it.
Speaker: That's why we did comedy at the picket lines as well, because we never know who's listening and showing up is important.
Speaker: They need bodies there.
Speaker: People need to drive by and see that we are striking people that are going into the studios, the millionaires that are going in those studios that are not actually doing the work.
Speaker: It's us that are doing the work.
Speaker: The writers, the actors, the teamsters, the gaffers, all of those people are doing the work.
Speaker: So showing up is important.
Speaker: Think about this.
Speaker: What are you willing to fight for in your life?
Speaker: Housing?
Speaker: Health care?
Speaker: Food prices are outrageous.
Speaker: An age limit on driving.
Speaker: Because if you're over 75 and you're behind the wheel, holy shit, I would rather the blind people be driving cars than have an old person back there.
Speaker: But as the wealth gap increases exponentially and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the banks are buying houses, aren't you willing to fight for that?
Speaker: Because this is when revolutions happen.
Speaker: We're not quite there yet.
Speaker: That's what I've learned.
Speaker: We're not quite starving enough to do a revolution, but we'll get there in the next few years.
Speaker: As the planet warms up, we all make less money and we don't have places to live or food to eat.
Speaker: People are going to panic and people are going to fight.
Speaker: And the rich people, sure, they can pay a few people to hold us off, but they don't have enough.
Speaker: They do not have enough people because there are way more people on our side.
Speaker: There's a reason they're called the 1%.
Speaker: That means we have 99%, everyone. 99%.
Speaker: Now, look, I hope this ends soon.
Speaker: I know you do too.
Speaker: We want TV to come back.
Speaker: I want to go back to work, to not booking auditions.
Speaker: If you ask my agent, I've been on strike since 2019.
Speaker: That was the last time I booked anything that was in the union.
Speaker: But I need the opportunity to be able to have it.
Speaker: So when you see these people, honk your horn.
Speaker: Be in solidarity.
Speaker: Don't say, oh, these actors, they just need more money.
Speaker: These writers don't get enough.
Speaker: Right now, we don't.
Speaker: You're exactly right when you say that, even sarcastically.
Speaker: Be as facetious as you want.
Speaker: We're not making a lot of money.
Speaker: Not to what you would think, especially not when they're selling shows and we're not getting residual checks.
Speaker: Sure, one day on a TV show might get you $800.
Speaker: After taxes, put that down to $500.
Speaker: After the 10% agency fee, put that down to $450.
Speaker: Maybe you h ave a lawyer or a manager.
Speaker: Take another 10% to 15% out of that.
Speaker: Suddenly you're left with about $300.
Speaker: And I book less than one of those a year.
Speaker: It's not how I make all my money, but I need the opportunity to be there.
Speaker: Because for a lot of people, it is how they make their money.
Speaker: Those writing jobs, those acting jobs,
Speaker: are what keep them going and what feed their families.
Speaker: So that's why we're all here, everyone.
Speaker: That's why we're all out there striking right now.
Speaker: If this was happening in your industry, whatever it is, if you were being treated as unfairly as we are, you would completely want to fight back and baby get your fucking machete out and
Speaker: Get ready to stand your ground in a positive way.
Speaker: No, you know, I'm not saying when somebody is wearing a hoodie, so you shoot them.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Not saying that at all.
Speaker: But come see me, everybody.
Speaker: I'm out here doing this podcast.
Speaker: People are on strike against this podcast, probably because people
Speaker: You know, it doesn't get the listenership that I feel it should, but you're here.
Speaker: And that's all that matters.
Speaker: It is growing little by little.
Speaker: And if you're listening to it and it's helping you or entertaining you, inspiring you, educating you, whatever it's doing.
Speaker: I'm just glad you're here.
Speaker: But go to HooperComedy.com and see me on the road at Hooper Hairpuff on all social media.
Speaker: I've been going super viral on Reddit.
Speaker: Shows have been selling out on the road.
Speaker: And that is an amazing feeling right now.
Speaker: Because I know that when this strike ends and we actually reach a deal with the AMPTP, I'm going to be able to work.
Speaker: And people are going to want me to work just like you do.
Speaker: So thank you very much.
Speaker: This podcast is free and I'm proud to give it to you.
Speaker: I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.
Speaker: Now strike, strike, strike, strike.
Speaker: I love you.
