© Celine Sparks, 2023
It’s a swing and a miss, and that’s strike 2! The first strike was the one where the writers in Hollywood decided they were tired of staying up all night writing when they could be doing something better. I had this same realization during a term paper in graduate school.
So the writers decided it would be more fun to carry signs down the street in scorching California temperatures. And this way, they wouldn’t have to be concerned about how much the pay and the benefits are because where I’m from, people walking the streets don’t usually get either one of those.
Strike 2 happened this week. The actors in Hollywood decided to join the writers. I didn’t read all the details, but if I were an actor in Hollywood, I would go on strike too, and these would be the reasons.
There’s always a camera in your face. I have noticed on one of the very cutting edge shows I watch, Perry Mason, that the camera angle is often so close to the actor that you can view a pretty decent mile up his nostril. And if this nose belonged to you, the Hollywood actor, wouldn’t you want to picket? (Could not resist. I tried.)
You have to live in a house with other people who really aren’t your flesh and blood family, and they are all pretty stupid, too. Like 30 minutes of every week of your life, they get you into some kind of mess you think you can’t get out of. If it weren’t for minutes 27-30, you’d be doomed every time.
People laugh at you out of nowhere. Crowds of boisterous people. And you pretty much have to stop talking until they’re through. Who are they and where are they? They’re not in the house. Are they in the closet? I say go on strike until someone finds them and shuts them up.
You don’t make enough money. How can you possibly be expected to buy an island, an Italian sports car you can’t pronounce, a designer dress with more zeros on the price tag than I had in Physics homework, and a diamond necklace with more carats than Bugs Bunny went through in his lifetime, and still have money at the end of the week for groceries on this kind of salary?
I mean, I can’t help but be a little more excited about this whole thing than I am upset. I don’t know if they’re being paid enough to make movies or not, but there’s some I would pay them not to make. We’ve had enough sequels of Daddy Day Care and something about a Matrix. I don’t know if the writers are underpaid; I just know if the plot gets any more riveting in some of these things, I could possibly jump in my sleep. I’ve kind of been enjoying the uptick in game shows.
So there’s that. But there’s also this excitement that comes from the idea that If you don’t want the job, Sis, get out of the way. There are about six billion people on the planet that would sign on the line of a bad contract before you could blink your expensive eyelash job.
I mean we’ve got it going on over here. Experience. Talent. Desire.
We’ve strutted in burlap tutu’s in front of cardboard palaces. We’ve performed two-hour, all-royalties-paid plays for our grandmothers and aunts to thunderous standing ovations, and only had to call for line once. I personally have stood in a chorus of elves hammering out toys with our fists and hands, and for the sake of the theatre, I put my chewing gum in my armpit because my mother told me she would whip me if I got on stage with it in my mouth.
We’re ready.
What makes you think your job is so secure that you can’t be replaced with the millions of us who have dreamed of being on the screen since we were inspired by Marsha Brady and Keith Partridge? We’ve been singing into a hairbrush, doing toothpaste commercials in the mirror, and recreating famous scenes in the frame of a broken box fan since we were twelve.
So dear Hollywood, if you can get someone to write the movie, I’ll come and star in it even if you do aim a camera up my nostril. If it’s clean enough. The movie I mean; not my nostril. But neither one of them usually is.
And for me, that’s strike three.
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