Cartoonishly Evil CEO Is 'Very Disturbed' Screenwriters and Actors Expect to Be Paid Fairly for Their Work
Disney's Bob Iger took time away from a billionaires' conference to complain about how Hollywood's striking unions are being unrealistic
This past week, Disney CEO Bob Iger took time away from literally rubbing elbows with billionaires at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho to remind the Hollywood industry that the people running it are cartoonish, mustache-twirling villains.
“It’s very disturbing to me,” he said of the Writers Guild of America strike with a level of tone deafness that could only be possible at this point in the labor dispute if he was completely isolated from normal people by a phalanx of yes people or, say, a resort full of billionaires.
“We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID which is ongoing, it’s not completely back,” he explained, leaving out the fact that he makes tens of millions of dollars every year to blame other people for Disney’s failures and arbitrarily declares films and TV series losses before they ever have a chance to turn a profit - which is somehow legal in the US tax code because America likes corporations more than building bridges.
“This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption,” Iger went on, apparently suggesting writers (and actors) should wait a few years for record profits to become even more, you know, record before they complained about being unfairly exploited by their employers.
“I understand any labor organization’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver,” he added, conveniently leaving out that he’s in the middle of building a new super-yacht (to replace his last one) during these hard times.
“We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the Directors Guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business,” he then pointed out, no doubt laughing inside at how the DGA got played by him and his buddies.
“We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors,” he added, every word here likely delivered in his head like Ivan Drago warned Rocky Balboa he would break him.
“It will have a very, very damaging effect on the whole business, and unfortunately, there’s huge collateral damage in the industry to people who are supportive services,” Iger then compassionately argued on behalf of the little person, leaving out the fact that Disney pays many of its park employees so poorly they must live in their cars.
“It’s a shame, it is really a shame,” he concluded before scampering off to rejoin his billionaire party.
Disney, it should be noted, is just one member of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that it was recently revealed is determined to break the WGA’s resolve by dragging the strike out long enough for its membership to start losing their apartments and houses — all to teach screenwriters a painful, but necessary lesson about who’s really in charge in Hollywood.
This is an irony apparently lost on the AMPTP, as its member companies currently can’t produce anything because every writer and actor in Hollywood refuses to work until the value of their labor is properly recognized and rewarded in a new contract.
Iger calling the targets of the AMPTP plot and their demands to be paid fairly for their work “very disturbing” and unrealistic is insulting and, frankly, delusional, the studio’s equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal “let them eat cake” blunder. Actor Ron Perlman had some pretty dramatic thoughts about this on Instagram — apparently directed at Iger — that involved solutions the French would appreciate and which these CEOs would be worried about if they gave a damn about history or anything else besides driving up their stock prices:
We know who said that and where he fucking lives. There's a lot of ways to lose your house.
You wish that on people, you wish that families starve while you're making 27 fucking million dollars a year for creating nothing. Be careful, motherfucker. Be really careful because that's the kind of shit that stirs shit up. Peace out.
Perlman’s Instagram video — which got “quite heated”, as he later described it (un/intentional pun?) — has since been deleted, but I like filmmaker Joe Russo’s response to the actor’s growled rage that many of us understand even if we aren’t actually suggesting armed revolution against our disconnected CEO overlords:
You can read more about the WGA strike here:
The WGA Is on Strike — Here’s Why We’ll Win
Why AI Is the Most Important Issue in the Writers' Strike
The Tragedy of Howard Rodman Sr. (or: Why the Writers Guild Is on Strike)
The Secret Weapon Helping the Writers Guild Win This Strike
The WGA Strike in Photographs: A 'People's History' by J.W. Hendricks
A Matter of Survival: How the WGA Is Trying to Save Feature Screenwriters
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He's literally a Disney villain
Me: reading the line about “rage that many of us understand even if we aren’t actually suggesting armed revolution against our disconnected CEO overlords” while doodling ideas for a “KILL BILL(ionaires)” t-shirt😈