Ten days have passed since the Screen Actors Guild of America launched a general strike on July 13. In addition to the strike of the Screenwriters Guild of America, which has lasted for some time, the double strike in Hollywood, which has happened once in decades, has dealt a huge blow to the American film and television creation industry, and its impact is also expanding day by day.
On July 21, local time, the Los Angeles City Government announced that it would impose a fine of US$250 on Universal Pictures for illegally cutting down trees. Although the low amount has attracted a lot of criticism, it has temporarily brought an end to the so-called "tree-cutting gate" that has been hustle and bustle for many days.
The origin of this event goes back to July 14. On the same day, a large number of actors and screenwriters came to the headquarters of Universal Pictures on Barham Boulevard (Barham Boulevard) in Los Angeles as planned to protest. They accidentally discovered that the dense street trees that had been erected on both sides of the road had been pruned in advance, so that these actors and screenwriters had to march and demonstrate against the scorching sun. This obviously artificially added a lot of difficulty to the strike.
It was confirmed that these street trees were indeed pruned overnight by gardeners commissioned by Universal Pictures. As a result, representatives of Hollywood actors and screenwriters, who were filled with righteous indignation, quickly found the media to complain, questioning that Universal's detrimental move was deliberately to hinder the strike, and the nature was quite bad. After being fermented by social media, the matter quickly heated up and became the so-called "tree-cutting gate", which further destroyed the image of the Hollywood film company, which was already denounced as greedy by the outside world because of the failure of the negotiation.
Soon, Universal Pictures gave a public statement, indicating that this was only part of their "annual landscaping project" and was not intended to cause trouble for strike activists. "Our company cooperates with licensed gardeners to trim these street trees at this time of year to reduce the potential danger when the typhoon season comes." Universal Pictures wrote in an official statement issued to the media. "At the same time, we fully recognize the demonstration rights enjoyed by the Screenwriters Union and Screen Actors Union. We are currently working hard to make remedies and provide them with shade facilities. During this period, we will continue to communicate frankly with labor leaders at the demonstration site and maintain cooperation."
At the same time, the Los Angeles Municipal Department also acted quickly to investigate the "tree-cutting door" problem. Soon, the Los Angeles Accounting Department, which is in charge of the city's financial and auditing affairs, gave its findings: no matter in the recent past or in the past three years, the relevant department has never issued a pruning permit for street trees in this area. In other words, what Universal Pictures has done has violated the law, and it is an illegal tree felling. However, since Universal Pictures is only a first-time offender, it only imposed a minimum fine of $250.
It is reported that, as a rule, the street trees in Los Angeles are generally under the unified responsibility of the city government agencies. It is quite rare for private individuals or companies to find someone to trim trees by themselves. However, the laws punishing similar behavior have not been updated or amended for decades, which is why the punishment is so light. At present, Universal Pictures has erected many sunshade tents along Balam Boulevard, and also equipped them with cooling spray, hoping to calm down the anger of strikers and the bad reputation.
In the past week, Los Angeles has experienced high temperatures, with daytime temperatures generally reaching around 34 degrees Celsius. Even so, members of the Screenwriters Union and Screen Actors Union still persisted in their strikes, hoping to force the employers to return to the negotiating table and meet the various demands put forward by the laborers.
However, judging from the current situation, there is really a big gap between the two parties on key issues such as the distribution of works in the later stage. It seems that there is no hope of reaching a consensus in the short term. Even industry insiders have predicted that this catastrophic Hollywood strike is likely to be delayed until the end of this year before it can be resolved. Right now, there are too many film and television projects that have been canceled or forced to stop filming due to strikes. Even the originally scheduled opening film "Challengers" at this year's Venice Film Festival, due to the temporary adjustment of its schedule by the producers Amazon Pictures and MGM, has been confirmed to be temporarily withdrawn and replaced by "Commandante" directed by Edo Aldo de Angelis.
"Challenger" is directed by Italian director Luca Guadagnino. Post-production has been completed in April this year. MGM originally arranged for the film to be officially released in September this year. The world premiere will be the opening film of the 80th Venice Film Festival. According to the practice in recent years, the Hollywood films that will appear at the Venice Film Festival have the same intention as Sima Zhao's intention to impact the next Oscars season.
"Challenger" stills
But with the arrival of the American Screen Actors Guild strike, all actors, including the heroine Zendaya, can no longer conduct any form of promotional activities for the film-including offline and online. This finally made the producer decide to postpone its schedule to April next year, which is tantamount to missing both this year's Venice Film Festival and the following awards season, which can be described as a considerable loss. It is said that director Luca Guadagnino himself is quite dissatisfied with this approach.
However, such misfortune will certainly not only befall the movie "Challenger". As we all know, the Venice, Telluride, Toronto and other film festivals that open successively every autumn have already become the outpost of the annual Oscar awards season. This year, the Venice Film Festival will be held on August 30 and will end on September 9; the Toronto Film Festival will be held from September 7 to September 17; and the 4-day Telluride Film Festival will start on September 1 in between. Originally, various production crews in Hollywood would travel to Italy, the United States, and Canada with their new films, attend various red carpet ceremonies, cheer for their new films, increase media exposure, and pave the way for a full release in the future. But this year, all of this is doomed to come to naught. The three film festivals that have just bid farewell to the impact of the three-year epidemic have to face the nightmare of lack of celebrities. Even the Tokyo Film Festival (October 23-November 1), which is far away in Asia, was supposed to announce the closing film this week, but because major Hollywood filmmakers were busy adjusting their release plans, they were forced to press the film list and announce it later.
