Dispatches From The Picket Lines, Day 32: A Congresswoman Joins The Fray Outside Sony, Chris Keyser Pickets Disney, David Milch Hits Fox – Plus Bagels From Snoop & Dre

Spike Lee was not on the speakers list at a rally Thursday morning for striking film and television writers outside City Hall in New York. But one of the Brooklyn-born filmmaker’s best-loved movies, 1989’s Do the Right Thing, kept cropping up as local elected officials took turns calling for studio executives to resume negotiations with the Writers Guild of America and help end a strike now in its eighth week.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of two-part series about the writers strike crossing the 50-day mark.

It was a busy day on the L.A.-area WGA picket lines, with a visit from some Abbott Elementary folks, support from unionized teachers and nurses, and dancers getting their hula on for Pacific Islander Day.

EXCLUSIVE: Paradigm on Friday announced its signing of Umbrelic Entertainment, the L.A. and Detroit-based film finance and production company founded and operated by Thomas Zambeck and Brian Katz. Umbrelic will be repped within Paradigm’s Content Group department by Nick LoPiccolo and Babacar Diene.

It’s safe to say that today’s picket line at Warner Bros in Burbank drew a little more attention than some other days. That’s because newly unionized strippers from North Hollywood turned out to support striking WGA writers — and they brought a pole along.

The head of the country’s largest labor union joined striking Writers Guild film and television writers at a rally on Monday outside the New York City offices of streaming giant Amazon and said the writers’ cause has the support of workers from across unionized labor. 

Frankie Muniz, now 37, played the title character Malcolm in the sitcom. The role earned him an Emmy Award nomination and two Golden Globe Award nominations. The actor - whose other credits include films like Agent Cody Banks (2003) - has more recently pursued a career in the car racing industry and was once in the band Kingsfoil.

A day of picketing the set of the Starz/Lionsgate series BMF in Atlanta turned dangerous for WGA writers Brian Egeston and Gabriel Alejandro Garza. Egeston claimed in a series of tweets Thursday afternoon, accompanied by photos, that BMF line producer Ian Woolf, driving an SUV, pointed the vehicle at Egeston “as though it were a weapon and slammed the breaks within six feet of writers.”

The day after New York-based pickets were canceled for the week because of smoke, the gathering at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles was a bit smaller on Thursday, with less than 50 people gathering in support of the WGA strike.

The day that SAG-AFTRA began its talks with Hollywood studios over its own film and TV contract with a strike authorization in hand, picketing Writers Guild members on Wednesday hit up Disney and Warner Bros in Burbank.

Apple may have entered the virtual reality arena earlier today with the unveiling of a new platform and headset, launched with the help of Disney boss Bob Iger, but in the real world it spent the day being targeted by writers.

In a defiant clarion call for continued solidarity and endurance as the Writers Guild’s strike enters its second month, WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser says in a new video that the guild’s fight for a fair contract is not one that’s being fought for writers alone, but for the entire labor movement.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Chris Keyser, the co-chair of the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee, said in a video message Friday that the WGA is prepared to fight alone if necessary. Keyser said that the guild, which has been on strike since May 2, is “girded by an alliance” with SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America. But he promised that even if both guilds reach an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers this month, “We will fight on.” “Any deal that puts this town back to work runs straight through the WGA and there is no way around us,” Keyser said. “We are strong enough — we have always been strong enough — to get the deal we need with writer power alone.”

It was Pride and Drag Queen picket day in Los Angeles, where around 300 people hit up Warner Bros. Discovery to highlight their issues as the strike marches into its second month.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In a symbolic rebuke of Netflix’s top executives, company shareholders voted against approving the compensation packages of leaders including co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. At the streamer’s June 1 annual shareholders meeting, investors failed to approve the proposed exec pay packages for 2023. But the vote was a non-binding “say on pay” measure, meaning Netflix’s board can disregard the result. The vote came after the WGA had urged investors to vote against Netflix’s exec compensation measures in a letter Tuesday. “While investors have long taken issue with Netflix’s executive pay, the compensation structure is more egregious against the backdrop of the strike,” WGA West president Meredith Stiehm wrote in the letter to Netflix shareholders.

1.5% of companies who asked shareholders to weigh in on executive compensation packages having rejected the pay proposals this year. The rejection comes just days after WGA West President Meredith Stiehm sent an open letter to Netflix and Comcast shareholders calling on them to reject the pay packages in the impending vote.“Netflix’s content pipeline has been blocked, with dozens of projects that were in development or ordered to series as of May 1st unable to move forward until WGA negotiations conclude,” Stiehm wrote in the letter to Netflix shareholders.

As one of Reality TV’s royal family crossed the line, striking film and television writers joined forces on Wednesday in New York City with another group of culture workers involved in a pay dispute: musicians. 

The leaders of the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and the Teamsters have issued a “joint statement of solidarity” with the Directors Guild in its final scheduled week of contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, saying that they “stand alongside our sisters, brothers, and kin in the DGA in their pursuit of a fair contract.” Their statement comes on the 30th day of the ongoing WGA strike and 21 days after the DGA began its contract talks with the AMPTP.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In its heyday, “ER” would keep about 75 background actors on hand per episode to be called up as needed to fill out scenes in hospital corridors and whatnot. On Tuesday, about 75 “ER” alumni filled the sidewalks outside the show’s old studio on Olive Avenue in Burbank. Writers, actors and crew members who worked on the beloved NBC drama series rallied behind the Writers Guild of America on Day 29 of the strike called against Hollywood’s major employers. Many of those who gathered for the “ER” reunion-themed picket on the day after the Memorial Day holiday weekend were emotional about what “ER” represented in their professional careers. It’s an apt symbol for the WGA strike because “ER” is the kind of long-running scripted series that television networks don’t seem to make anymore.

The writers strike has entered its fifth week and is about to enter its second month and shows no sign of abating.