On the afternoon of May 9 local time, the Writers Guild of America voted through a membership vote to support the union board's proposal to expel two members. It is believed that during the 2023 Writers Guild strike, the two ignored the union's orders and collective interests and secretly continued to write scripts, becoming "labor scabs" in the eyes of their peers.
One of them is Roma Roth, who was born in 1968. She is from Canada and started her career as an assistant producer. She has been a screenwriter for more than ten years, mainly writing TV movies and TV series. The series "Sullivan's Crossing", a co-production of Canada's CTV and the American CW channel, is her more famous main work. This time she became the target of public criticism because she continued to modify the script of the series despite the ban during the strike.
Roma Ross, screenwriter of "Sullivan's Crossing", was fired by the union for changing the script during the strike.
Another is Edward Drake, an Australian-born screenwriter who has been in the industry for more than a decade and has written films with IMDb ratings of only 3 or 4 out of 10, including The Hunt and Detective Knight, which starred Bruce Willis before he retired due to illness.
Edward Drake (right) and Bruce Willis
According to the Writers Guild, the two had dared to defy the world and act as scabs during the 148-day strike, so they had to be removed as a warning to others. Both of them were dissatisfied with the decision and appealed, which led to the need for the Writers Guild members to participate in an online vote last week, and the result was that a slight majority supported the board's decision to remove them.
Drake said that he made minor adjustments to the script as a director.
However, Edward Drake also has his own explanation. His latest work is the independent film "Guns Up" which will be released on May 15. He is both the screenwriter and director. According to him, when the incident happened, he was actually making minor adjustments to the script of the film as a director. It was not a revision of the script at all, and there was no misconduct.
It is reported that Drake wrote in his appeal: "This is really a terrible torture. For several months, I have been living in the shadow of fear of the guillotine." He even said that there was another person who helped to modify the script at the time. Although that person was not a member of the Writers Guild, the union still forced him to reveal the person's name. After being rejected, the union decided to kill him. The final vote was 769 votes to 652, and Drake was completely expelled.
Similarly, Roma Ross, who ultimately received a vote of 778 to 639, also insisted that she was only supervising the work of the writers' room as a producer at the time and did not directly modify the script. She also argued that according to the charter, the result of violating the rules should be a fine, not expulsion, and criticized the Writers Guild Board of Directors for "sending mass emails before the collective vote, unfairly affecting the appeal process that should have been fair."
Expulsion from the union is the most severe punishment for the Writers Guild of America. In addition to the two above, Julie Bush, the screenwriter of the well-known American TV series "Sons of Anarchy", and Tim Doyle, a senior screenwriter who has participated in the creation of TV series such as "The Big Bang Theory" and "Perfect Eight", were also named and condemned.
Julie Bush, the screenwriter of the American TV series "Sons of Anarchy", has been suspended from the union for one year.
The former's problem was that she participated in revising a TV script during the strike, but she argued that she had consulted the lawyer of the Writers Guild at the time and that the revision did not involve any monetary compensation. In the end, the board of directors decided to suspend her membership in the union for one year and prohibit her from holding or running for a union position in the future. Similarly, this punishment was passed by a narrow margin in the membership vote (745 votes to 686 votes). Julie Bush has said that she will file a lawsuit with the US Department of Labor and thanked her colleagues who voted in her favor.
Tim Doyle is a typical example of being convicted for his words: On August 9, 2023, when the strike was in full swing, he posted a black-and-white picture of a man hanged from a tree in a Facebook group with nearly 2,000 members, with the caption "My tree is ready!" According to him, he just wanted to make a joke at the time to express his desire to hang himself after the strike. However, this picture reminded some African-American screenwriters of the racial discrimination of lynching black people by white Americans in the early years, so the incident was exposed on social media, and Doyle became the target of public criticism.
Afterwards, he also apologized solemnly. The adjudication committee, composed of five volunteer screenwriters responsible for adjudicating violations, recommended that he be internally reprimanded and given educational training on racial diversity, and that the punishment not be made public. However, the union's board of directors rejected this suggestion and decided instead to criticize him publicly. In this regard, Doyle's lawyer believed that the union had exceeded its authority to regulate members' comments on social media. In a collective vote last week, the punishment ultimately failed to pass (915 votes to 557) and ended in revocation. It is believed that many screenwriter colleagues have privately stood up for him.
The punishment for Tim Doyle, the screenwriter of the American TV series "The Big Bang Theory", was not approved.
In Hollywood, the union has far-reaching influence. The vast majority of film productions will follow the union's requirements and hire members of various industry unions. Once you lose your membership in the Writers Guild, it means it will be difficult to get contracts for mainstream film and television works. At most, you can only cooperate with a very small number of informal independent film and television companies, and your livelihood may become a problem. Therefore, in the past, the Writers Guild rarely made harsh decisions to expel members. This time, Rob Forman, who spoke on behalf of the union's board of directors, also publicly admitted: "Such a vote will make the majority of screenwriters deeply uneasy, but we must work together to hold these screenwriters accountable for violating union regulations because they abandoned their colleagues and hurt the union during the strike."
On July 28, 2023, local time, in Los Angeles, the United States, actress Jane Fonda spoke at the joint strike event of the Hollywood Actors and Writers Guild. Visual China Photo
