Jessie Gender's Identiteaze

[olivermoss]

When SAG-AFTRA announced they'd allow productions to go forward that complied with their rules I had discussions a few places about how this is awesome and proves their points, not that they should need proving to anyone capable of basic math, but that hopefully the exceptions would go to some truly indie media. When it was announced it was only A24 and some fundie bullshit that was greenlit.

Sadly, Jesse Gender's upcoming short film has had to call off production to SAG-AFTRA not being organized enough to give a waiver to a Nebula micro-budget short.

I have a lot of sympathy for what SAG is dealing with right now. We all like jokes making fun of bureaucrats in shows and movies, but in reality keeping track of details and getting stuff done is hard and not everyone is suited to it. They do not have the staff for this.

Also, the influencer messaging has been a mess for reasons that are not their fault. The reason why being an influencer is such a viable job or side hustle for so many is that even with regulations put into place over the past few years it is still a massive loophole is a lot of rules and regulations in the US and the UK. It is very hard to bop those who need to be bopped without collateral damage. (Speaking of which, I Like Turtles kid is dead to me for doing paid promo for the upcoming TMNT movie. He's been trying to monetize being a meme his whole life, but this is a new low.)

Still, the point of unions and these strikes is for the established, well paid people to protect the smaller and marginalized creators and workers. This is why The Rock made a historic donation to SAG. Keeping crew working, protecting indie creators, this is everything that the strike should be protecting and they have messed up. A Nebula Short whose cast and crew roster is mostly minorities should be a slam dunk.

To be clear, I don't think they as an org meant to screw over a truly indie project. It sounds like a combination of chaos and maybe some overworked people deciding to not take them seriously, make them low priority when they should have been high priority in this specific situation. Hopefully, this gets resolved but for now their cast has crew has been released to be able to take other jobs and that is a HUGE thing to happen to any production.

And the whole 'we expect you to support us but we don't support you' feels she describes in the video, man I feel that in my soul.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I feel so bad for Jesse. She's almost in tears over the video, and it just sounds like a Kafkaesque nightmare of paperwork (or that form filing montage in Jupiter Ascending, except they don't get the form in the end.) I admittedly, as a union person, spent a lot of that video thinking, "Yeah, that sounds like a big union."

I hope she's able to get her approvals quickly!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's very understandable but they need to fix this asap.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to screw over an indie project, or at least it definitely doesn't sound like it... but I also think it was a big misstep on their part. I do hope that they can sort it out. I can only imagine the amount of nonsense they're dealing with, but at the same time... the strikes are necessary and deserve support because of how important the livelihoods AND creative works of the people in question are... doing things that harm a small production and negatively impacts both livelihood and viability of a creative project... looks shitty.

[olivermoss]

They have widespread support based on stated values, and this screw up goes against those values so for everyone involved I hope it's as fixed as it can be soon. Releasing scheduled actors and crew is a big deal. Even if this is fixed monday, the production took a hit.

She supports the strikes and will still be picketing up in LA, but yeah... the whole giving support because it's right but not getting support thing sucks.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah. This definitely undercuts the values they're in support of, which just plain looks bad. And that IS a really shitty feeling - like, we're trying to (and do!) support the strikes because they ARE the right thing, and they ARE important... but *saying* they support their smaller creators/are doing this BECAUSE those smaller creators/actors need support... then failing to provide support in this instance is shit!