A Modern Black List
I am a WGA member and wish to be anonymous.
My email isn’t real as I don’t want to accidentally give up an IP address and end up on a modern Black List.
I have a few stories that illustrate the hostility to ‘non-diverse’ writers that may be of interest:
1. Writers hired on comic book shows are told it’s a POSITIVE that they are unfamiliar with the original comic book and not a fan of the existing IP because they want to do a “modern new take on the material relevant to today.”
2. Writers are asked (a) Why this story today? How is it relevant politically today to the existing narrative they’re pushing on our culture? and (b) Why are you the person to tell it? “Because I have talent and wrote it” is NOT a valid answer. What is a valid answer is, “Because I’m a member of this aggrieved group or class and only we can tell our own story.
3. This leads to a “heads we win; tails you lose game” where if you don’t include diverse characters, you’re dinged for having an all-white/non-diverse cast — regardless of the time or place of the story or historical accuracy — and if you do have a diverse case (race / gender) then you are guilty of “cultural appropriation.” This means that unless you are, for example, African-American, you are not allowed to tell a story about an African-American character. Or disabled or LGBTQI2+. Unless you ARE that specific subgroup, you can’t write it.
4. There’s a bias toward the ‘two-fer’ or ‘three-fer’ hire — being gay, for example, “isn’t enough” now. You have to be gay / African-American / Latinx / undocumented / unhoused / differently-abled. Then, on the DEI scorecard, they have a 2x or 3x positive score for the hire.
5. To give you an idea of how competitive things are, for Only Murders in the Building there was word a staff position was available. This is the lowest-rung writing position. They received 450 scripts as writing samples for this ONE job. A manager told me these jobs would ‘typically go to a BIPOC writer,’ but the show decided not to hire anyone or to go in another direction.
5. The WGA has a diversity program where the Guild pays for the diversity hire’s salary. Most of these writers aren’t picked up after the ‘free ride’ expires. Many of these writers, hired only for diversity purposes, feel obligated to push stories that reflect the specific box they checked. So a transgender writer will be pitching stories exclusively about that experience.
“…folks are on eggshells for fear of offending DEI standards – which are forever shifting.”
Now, I’m in favor of diversity in general, especially for stories where it makes sense. There was a notable show about the deaf community that, amazingly, didn’t have a single deaf writer on the writing staff. Instead, they relied on ‘consultants.’ That likely reduced the authenticity, and they lost out on many unique deaf stories. This was shown by the recent excellent film Coda. We want original, authentic, and diverse stories, but they can’t just check boxes. They must tell a story about a protagonist who overcomes obstacles, pursues goals – internal and external – and has an arc to growth.
Having people who aren’t fans of the IP (Star Wars, comic books, etc.) results in a product that has no respect to the existing fans. Then, when fans complain they are insulted as “toxic.”
What company would make a product that insults the consumers? It’s insane.
What’s also not being discussed is the antisemitism behind much of the push for ‘diversity.’ Jews are classified as “whites” and, thus, not a minority (despite being 2% of the population and historically victims of mistreatment and genocide). The mantra is “male and pale is stale.” Out with the old order and in with the new.
Anyone who questions the new orthodoxy will, of course, be denounced as “not promoting a diverse workspace” or – worse – “racist.”
The system encourages “crybulllies” — those who complain of oppression as a means of moving up the ladder. Push out someone higher up the chain and move up. When John Lasseter was forced out (for allegedly unrequested hugging — yes, HUGGING), it was asked, “Can we get a woman to run this place now?”
This creates an incentive system for complaining about slights, perceived slights, or “microaggressions,” and once these are documented by HR… some ‘corrective action’ must be taken. Training, reprimand, and the person who complained now can’t be fired, or it’d be retaliatory.
Writers rooms have historically been a freewheeling place for spitballing ideas and jokes. Now, folks are on eggshells for fear of offending DEI standards – which are forever shifting.
The Oscar diversity standards have made a number of films ineligible to qualify for Best Picture. No glaring omissions this year, but a film such as Dunkirk would not be eligible as there are just too many white people in it…
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Thanks Alan and Chris for delivering us the investigative journalism the trades have desperately failed in. Also thank you as well for your humor and informative/entertaining content pertaining to movies. Filmthreat has become a recurring highlight for me.
I have two questions. First, Why are white males paying to be a member of WGA if they are going to be discriminated against, it’s like they are paying for the privilege to cut their own throats. . Second, why aren’t white males filing discrimination lawsuits against the WGA, the last time I checked it’s illegal to base hiring decisions on race or sex.
What was the answer when you flipped it and asked why Blacks and Latinos stayed members during all the decades including this one in which we were discriminated against? For me, the answer is simple. Helen n Al Levitt. Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were murdered, yes. But you have to keep fighting for what you think is right. As you know from a prior post, I was attacked in the WGA building, shoved and locked in a room 15 feet from the board room with the assailant blocking the door and members ignoring my calls for help.
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Gee, and you are surprised this is happening? I am a conservative writer of nonfiction and fiction. I wrote Senator Harry Reid’s biography, of which the movie Casino if a small subset. I was told by literary agents not to bother submitting it because it was too controversial and wouldn’t be picked up by the liberal publishing universe.
My magnum opus, I’ve worked on for 30 years, predicted a Covid scenario and AI wars plus a civil war over wokeness. It has no chance unless I go Indy.
How is this legal? I thought hiring by race and gender…Especially on a scale this size….Was pretty much illegal.
The Free Press ran an article in January of 2022 called “Hollywood’s New Rules: The old boys club is dead. But a new one—with its own litmus tests and landmines—is rapidly replacing it. ‘This is all going to end in a giant class-action…”. I personally believe that massive class-action lawsuits are indeed are coming, which is going help rid Hollywood of this cancerous DEI.
If an 18 year old white heterosexual male from the mid-west with no connections to anyone in the entertainment industry whatsoever decided that he wanted pursue a career as filmmaker, I would advise him against it. Not because of lack of effort, talent or persistence, but because he would be denied any chance at making a career for himself in this new age of Hollywood. His work would go unread, un-watched and rejected before it would ever be judged on the merits or quality of the work itself. This also applies to the independent film world just as much, as financiers and distributors have also become just as guilty in participating with DEI.
The safest check box you can lie about is non-binary. If they accuse you of lying, just say to them “prove that I’m not non-binary.” No one can prove that they ARE non-binary. You could also lie about your race. It’s not like they’ll ask you to take an ancestry test.
This doesn’t seem isolated to the WGA. It feels like a form of communism has spread industry-wide. Using their counter-productive exemption, SAG allows producers to pay the actors less money if a percentage of cast falls under DEI. The only incentive in that seems to be to wipe out Caucasians from the zeitgeist of American stories, cinema, and culture. And this corporate idea of redesigning famous IP characters to form a new world looks awfully familiar to all those historical statues and monuments being removed and wiped out of existence. All of the above are communist constructs. I think Nerdrotic hit a target when he points out members are afraid of their own unions. And to think this is not affecting streaming and distribution yet is shortsighted.
I was dragged into a side room where the WGA board met, held captive, and harassed by a top WGA male exec. There was one female staffer present. Finally, he let me go and I ran from the building. The WGA Board of Directors blacklisted me because the guy was more important to negotiations than I was. He had me banned from WGA meetings to prevent me from talking to anyone. Because we were in the middle of negotiations, the board’s silence re the attack was more important than me. He recently retired rich.
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Male and pale is stale. And, on average, 30% of your audience.
I keep coming back to this too.
Making money can smooth over a lot of problems and they were able to coast for a while during the height of Marvel.
I just feel the bills are finally coming due and eventually they will have to make DRASTIC changes or risk completely sinking the ship
These letters are revealing of the cognitive dissonance of these writers. Almost to a one these writers proclaim being pro-diversity, progressive, and liberal–yet they somehow can’t connect the dots between that ideology and their own displacement in the industry. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the culture war trenches understands the lunacy of the progressive cause and that it could (and does) only result in the disenfranchisement of the majority. “What did you think decolonization meant?” goes the refrain on twitter. “It’s like we’re supposed to just shut up and go away.” says one writer, and yes, that is precisely what the ascendant diverse coterie desires. They wish you starved, silenced, and consigned to the redacted annals of TV history. Had these writers, for a moment, considered themselves as having a collective interests in preventing the toxic DEI ideology from gaining traction the damage wrought might not have been so catastrophic. Make no mistake, the diversity commissars simply want ‘non-diverse” people to be utterly purged. The liberal, progressive, writers have handed them the keys to accomplish this.
Funny how, the powerful and power hungry in the entertainment industry, have so much in common with the Nazi Party. It must be a natural flow of those with no, to low self esteem, emotionally damaged egos, craving, needing/wanting attention from the world, desire power (especially power over others) above all else, have zero spiritual development, no relationship with their Creator, and are suffering from various mental illnesses, especially those related to gender dysphoria, to find themselves in goosestep with fascist ideals. Liberalism/Progressivism is a gateway drug to Communist/Fascist addiction, and those drugs have killed billions.
Female, gay, and Brown brings sales down
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