Male and Pale is Stale: Responses to an Open Letter to the WGA  Image

Male and Pale is Stale: Responses to an Open Letter to the WGA 

By Chris Gore | February 1, 2024

Trouble in Other Film Unions

A couple months back I took the stage on a film union gathering and criticized the union on not mentioning the terrible far-left decisions made (mainly about tax policies in this case). I seemed to have surprised them as they panicked a bit, and I don’t think they were expecting someone with my skin color to out them like that. One young blue-haired woman on the boards only response to me was “what a conservative” stance I have. I did, however, get some feedback from them, most of it total BS, but they did say they respected my views and changes needed to be made. Now I got to hear from a colleague that they added my critique to the agenda of the yearly union meeting coming up this week but they have completely either misunderstood, or more likely tried to find a loophole in their call to action for change.

Attached are the screen grabs from some of the various emails I received regarding “Self-Identification” surveys and “Member Census” and the real kicker, “J.E.D.I. training”. These were very consistent throughout 2023, beginning in January. 

Personally, I haven’t participated in any of them.

“…the least we can do is make them feel ashamed by calling out this insincerity that divides us and diminishes the arts.”

These are the ones I still had in my email, others I’ve probably deleted. But they mentioned them pretty regularly in the weekly ADG Newsletter. 

 I also received surveys from individual studios after finishing a job. They’d send it along with my time card, looking to cash in on these Tax incentives to prove how “diverse” they were being. 

The ADG is made up of ART DIRECTORS, GRAPHIC ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS, MATTE ARTISTS, MODEL MAKERS, PRODUCTION DESIGNERS, SCENIC ARTISTS, SET DESIGNERS,

AND TITLE ARTISTS. That includes storyboard artists and concept artists. It’s connected to IATSE, and it’s nationwide. 

This corporate and political approach isn’t art. Film used to be an art form. At least by shining a light on this ignorant approach to producing film, comic books, and other mediums, maybe the least we can do is make them feel ashamed by calling out this insincerity that divides us and diminishes the arts.

Yeah, it’s industry-wide. It’s culturally wide! I saw it starting in 2014 when I started storyboarding. And in no way am I under the impression it’s only happening to white males.

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  1. … [Trackback]

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  2. […] by the principles of diversity/inclusion/equity. Ace of Spades linked to a post on a website called Film Threat, lamenting the difficulties of writers for TV shows; no cushy writing gigs on a diminishing number […]

  3. Shaun says:

    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.

  4. Lee Smith says:

    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.

    • Blacklisted and Bullied says:

      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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  6. Daxton Brown says:

    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.

  7. Biku says:

    How is this legal? I thought hiring by race and gender…Especially on a scale this size….Was pretty much illegal.

    • Ed says:

      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.

  8. Ed says:

    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.

  9. Matt says:

    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.

  10. Man With A Camera says:

    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.

  11. Blacklisted and Bullied says:

    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.

  12. My Homepage says:

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  13. Truffy says:

    Male and pale is stale. And, on average, 30% of your audience.

    • Bloat McQueen says:

      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

  14. Herm says:

    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.

  15. BubbaZanetti says:

    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.

  16. EnoughDEI says:

    Female, gay, and Brown brings sales down

  17. […] an email sent to Film Threat, the anonymous WGA member shared five points that confirm nearly all theories about why the Marvel […]

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