Entertainment
What's in the new IATSE deal? Wage increases, AI rules and more
The crew members union IATSE released a summary over the weekend of its new tentative agreement with the top Hollywood studios, including terms related to pay, pension and health benefits, working conditions, streaming residuals and artificial intelligence.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers arrived at a resolution Tuesday on the Hollywood Basic Agreement, which spans three years and covers some 50,000 craftspeople primarily based in the Los Angeles area.
In a memo to members, the union said it would release an abridged version of the deal, followed by a full copy of the document that workers can review before participating in a contract ratification vote.
Here’s a summary of the seven-page summary (which can be viewed here in its entirety).
Pay
The deal contains wage increases of 7%, 4% and 3.5% spaced out over the three-year term.
It also stipulates that hourly workers are entitled to triple pay whenever a workday exceeds 15 hours and that on-call employees qualify for double pay on the seventh consecutive workday.
Both of these overtime provisions are part of an effort by the union to discourage employers from requiring crew members to spend an excessive number of hours on set. Below-the-line workers have long complained about marathon shooting schedules sometimes exceeding 12, 14 or even 20 hours in a single day.
This issue received extra attention following the death of studio grip Rico Priem, who suffered cardiac dysfunction while driving home at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday after working back-to-back,14-hour overnight shifts. When Priem died, IATSE and the AMPTP paused their negotiations, and the union put out a statement declaring its “renewed commitment” to improving crew members’ working conditions.
In the same vein, employers would be required to pay double time when rest and/or meal periods are skipped.
Other gains in this area include a travel allowance for those required to work outside a certain radius and a bump in severance pay.
Artificial intelligence
The deal mandates that “no employee is required to provide AI prompts in any manner that would result in the displacement of any covered employee,” according to a memo issued Tuesday by the union.
Establishing AI regulations has become a top priority for the entertainment unions in recent years as anxiety about the technology encroaching on creatives’ jobs has intensified.
Any time employers plan to implement AI behind the scenes, they would be required to negotiate with the union how the technology might affect crew members working on the production — with “very limited exceptions.”
Crew members who voluntarily use their own AI programs as a tool in their work (employer permitting) would be entitled to a negotiable “kit rental fee” for their technological contributions to a project.
Once the contract is ratified, a committee would be formed to create AI training programs educating craftspeople on how to use the technology.
The agreement also states that employers must obtain consent from individual crew members before scanning them for AI purposes. Notably, consent forms must include language clarifying that “signing is not a condition of employment” — an added layer of protection that was controversially absent from the actors’ new contract with the AMPTP.
As technology evolves, the union would have the option to request quarterly and biannual meetings with entertainment companies to revisit AI guidelines throughout the course of the contract.
Pension and health benefits
The union was able to secure more than $700 million for its pension and health plans, funded in part by payments from employers, travel-only days and an updated streaming residual system.
The deal further ensures that covered workers will have uninterrupted access to health and pension services for the remainder of the plan year. Additionally, those who recorded at least 65 hours of work last year will receive a year’s worth of credit toward their pension plan to “account for the reduction in employment in 2023.”
Looking forward to the future, the deal states that crew members’ contingent pension benefit will increase to 15% from 10% at the start of 2027. At the same time and rate, a bonus contribution will be made retroactively to cover the period from 2024 to 2027.
As for the health plan, studios are required under the new deal to contribute an added amount of at least $1.09 for each hour worked or guaranteed in the first year of the agreement. Extra payments apply to companies that meet certain qualifications in the second and third years of the term.
The deal also recommends that trustees of the Motion Picture Industry launch a 401(k) plan funded by voluntary contributions from workers.
While the new contract is in effect, healthcare coverage costs, benefits and prescription drug co-payments will remain fixed for members and their dependents.
Streaming residuals
A variety of new streaming residuals have been created as part of the contract to help fund the union’s pension and health plans.
Collectively, the residuals cover programs that play on streaming services, TV and basic cable.
Bonus pension residuals will also be distributed depending on how well shows perform on their respective streaming platforms.
Working conditions
As part of the effort to prevent accidents involving crew members driving home late, call sheets would now include contact information for the person coordinating rides and rooms for workers.
Producers would also be required to purchase up front and reserve temporary lodging for employees for the entirety of their post-work rest period or until they are needed back on set. Additionally, producers would be responsible for providing rides, as well as secure parking for the entirety of an employee’s overnight stay.
The summary does not specify under what conditions — such as consecutive hours worked or distance traveled — the accommodations would apply.
Time off
For the first time in IATSE’s history, the tentative deal recognizes Juneteenth as a holiday, and employees will not be required to work on June 19 starting in 2025.
To account for lost employment opportunities in 2023, only 40 days of work during that period would be needed to qualify for a year’s worth of vacation-time accrual, instead of the standard 100 days.
The contract would also increase the maximum amount of accrued sick days to 10 from six.
NEW YORK (OSV News) – Though it comes across as somewhat unfocused, the animated comedy “Despicable Me 4” (Universal) retains much of the charm that has characterized the whole series of films to which it belongs. It’s an agreeable piece of fun that’s suitable for all but the very youngest.
This latest chapter in the adventures of Gru (voice of Steve Carell), the would-be supervillain whose heart of gold long ago turned him into a loving dad and a crimefighter, opens with him assisting in the arrest and imprisonment of French criminal Maxime Le Mal (voice of Will Ferrell). Le Mal vows vengeance on Gru’s family and manages to escape in short order.
With Le Mal on the loose, Gru and the clan — Kristen Wiig voices his sensible wife, Lucy — have to go into hiding and assume false identities. But Poppy (voice of Joey King), the daughter of their preppy, country club patronizing new neighbors, the Prescotts (voices of Stephen Colbert and Chloe Fineman), discovers their secret and uses it to blackmail Gru.
While the comic chaos wrought by Gru’s trademark Twinkie-shaped minions continues to evoke laughs, director Chris Renaud’s addition to a franchise he helped to establish goes down too many plot paths at once. Some of the details of the story — Le Mal’s goal is to kidnap infant Gru Jr., for instance — also seem a bit challenging for kids.
Genuinely objectionable ingredients are kept out of the mix. And there’s a morally interesting, though underdeveloped, subplot about the refusal of one of Gru’s adopted daughters to use the pseudonym she’s been given on the grounds that it would constitute lying.
Yet scenes of danger, a touch of potty humor and a minion mooning may give the parents of the littlest moviegoers pause.
The film contains characters in peril, a flash of nonhuman rear nudity and a scatological sight gag. The OSV News classification is A-I — general patronage. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
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3. The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley (William Morrow: $30) Twists abound in this locked-room murder mystery.
4. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster: $29) A fusion of genres and ideas that’s part time-travel romance and part spy thriller.
5. Funny Story by Emily Henry (Berkley: $29) Two opposites with the wrong thing in common connect.
6. Sandwich by Catherine Newman (Harper: $27) The story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch and learning to let go.
7. Table for Two by Amor Towles (Viking: $32) A collection of stories from the author of “The Lincoln Highway.”
8. All Fours by Miranda July (Riverhead Books: $29) A woman upends her domestic life in this irreverent and tender novel.
9. Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo (Doubleday: $30) A long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.
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(Credits: Far Out / A24)
Mia Goth has reprised her widely beloved role of Maxine Minx in MaXXXine, the third instalment of Ti West‘s X film series, previously comprised of 2022’s X and its prequel Pearl. Modern scream queen Goth is joined by an impressive cast, including Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon.
Such a roster of actors and musicians proves the kind of reputation West has earned in recent years and shows the increasing calibre of entertainment figures wanting to work with him. The real question, though, is whether the films themselves stand up to those performing in them. Three movies into his 2020s era, West has largely been revealed as a director who knows how to make a horror films look fun and flashy even if they lack originality.
MaXXXine takes place six years after the events of X as Goth’s character has left behind the “Texas porn star massacre” of the first movie to find her fame and fortune in Hollywood. Initially making her way as an adult entertainment actor, Maxine eventually finds herself making a ‘proper’ film; well, at least a dodgy horror B-movie by the name of ‘The Puritan II’, directed by Elizabeth Debicki’s domineering filmmaker, Elizabeth Bender.
At the same time, 1985 Los Angeles is suffering the crimes of notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, dubbed in the media the ‘Night Stalker’, who appears to be targeting Maxine’s stripper and porn star buddies as his victims. MaXXXine’s Hollywood is generously doused in all the nostalgic expectations of the most excessive decade of the 20th century with neon lights on every corner, shitty horror movie rental stores (including one owned by Moses Sumney’s Leon) and a groovy soundtrack comprised of ZZ Top and, of course, Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’.
Narratively and aesthetically somewhat typical, then, but where MaXXXine excels the most is in its many moments of self-aware homage. At one point, our hero Maxine is chased to the Bates Motel (from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho) on the Universal studio lot by Kevin Bacon’s seedy private eye John Labat, while a later moment sees Lily Collins’ dodgy-accented Molly Bennett have her mouth splattered with blood by Bender in a scene likely paying respect to Andrzej Zulawski’s horror classic Possession and its iconic Isabelle Adjani performance.
In addition, West seems to have fun positing the notion that horror movies in the latter part of the 1980s were deemed B at best, toying with the idea that they could never be taken seriously. Judging from the popularity of his X series, though, such a belief has been proven wrong ten times over. Still, there are a handful of issues with MaXXXine, as well as with the films that preceded it, that prevent admittance to the canon of horror greatness.
One of the film’s most engaging and genuinely exciting moments is when Maxine’s past finally catches up with her, and a motive for the entire series, which had been starkly missing (whether supernatural, religious or just downright maniacal), is finally revealed. However, by the time this antagonism finally arrives, one can’t help but feel that it’s somewhat too late and that West has only managed to deliver a pastiche of the horror world’s past with a 1980s gloss rather than provide an effort of originality or even one that genuinely feels scary.
Sure, there are some brilliantly gory set pieces, including the splattering of a man in a car crusher and the decimation of an even more unfortunate gentleman’s genitals (let’s not forget that the X series is undoubtedly feminist in tone). Still, such standout moments do not guarantee a good horror movie and West’s most recent entry seems to suffer from a lack of an overall haunting spectre or suchlike. MaXXXine is exciting, flashy, funny, sassy, self-aware and incredibly sexy, but it fails to be anything more than the sum of its parts: a neon-lit homage to the horrible history of Hollywood horror rather than a fear-inducing glimpse into the genre’s future.
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