SAG, AFTRA Bosses Bravely Unite For Common Cause Of Walking to San Pedro

Mere days after the meltdown of their negotiating partnership in upcoming labor talks with film and TV producers, SAG president Alan Rosenberg and AFTRA boss Ron Morgan appeared at a press conference Tuesday to proclaim their unity in the face of looming crisis — at least when it comes to walking 25 miles from Hancock Park to San Pedro:

[The pair] appeared at a news conference to build awareness for the "March From Hollywood to the Docks" that will start April 15 next to the La Brea Tar Pits and conclude two days later with a rally at the Port of Los Angeles.

Breaking Down The SAG / AFTRA Squabble

There's nothing inherently sexy about the ongoing labor disputes between producers and writers, producers and directors, producers and actors and whatever other banal kerfuffles you care to conjure. But the SAG/AFTRA square-off pitting actors against producers and themselves is quite a tentpole-ready disaster in the making, setting up a showdown that could torch yet another slate of projects on Hollywood's horizon:

In the wake of Saturday's decision by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to ditch its longstanding bargaining partnership with SAG on the feature-primetime contract, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers held off Monday on deciding which union it will sit down with first.

Upfronts, Peacocks And Low-Grossers

· Good news, advertisers, entertainment journalists, and fans of overblown montages of new shows that will likely be canceled before December: The upfronts are back on! The networks may continue them in some modified form, but it seems as if they're planning on maintaining the most crucial part of the tradition: free booze. [Variety]
· This year's five Best Picture nominees have earned just $295 million at the box office (and Juno is responsible for about $120 mil of that), putting the group on pace to be the second-lowest grossing crop of Academy honorees in two decades. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, especially if you haven't seen No Country or There Will Be Blood yet. [THR]
· Ellen Page and Cillian Murphy will star in Peacock, in which Murphy will play a small town guy with a multiple personality disorder that leads him to live life as both a man and his wife, and Page the "struggling young mother" who touches off a domestic dispute between the two sides of his fractured psyche. Disclosure: a friend of ours co-wrote this script, and it's fucking brilliant. We're not even going to be objective about this on our last day. [Variety]

Trekkies Rip Off Rubber Vulcan Ears In Disgust Following Announcement of Five Month 'Star Trek' Release Delay

· Paramount breaks the hearts of the millions of Trekkies who thought they'd be spending Christmas at the multiplex with Kirk, Spock and Uhura, delaying their J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek from this December 25 until May 8, 2009 in hopes that they can wring more money from the franchise during the summer blockbuster season. Also, DreamWorks is moving Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder from this July 11 to August 15, a change that Stiller's fans will endure without complaint. [Variety]
· We knew that Tom Cruise parody video was going to put some sizzle back into his career: Jerry O'Connell joins the cast of indie romantic comedy Baby on Board, which will also includes Heather Graham, John Corbett and Ian Ziering. [THR]

Clooney, De Niro, Hanks And Streep Tell SAG, Studios It's Time To Start Talking

Yesterday, Variety reported that several Big Name Actors were about to kick off a public campaign to shame convince SAG's leadership and the studios to pick up a phone and arrange the kind of pleasant little rap session with moguls like News Corps' Peter Chernin, Disney's Bob Iger and CBS's Les "Negotiations Are Fun! Let's Do One Every Week at My Place! I'll Even Spring for the Bagels!" Moonves that helped to end the writers strike, hoping that getting a jump on things before their Guild's contract expires at the end of June might help to avoid another one of those mildly inconvenient, 100-day shutdowns of the industry that seem wildly passé at this point. The first of these exhortations are appearing in the trades today, with the initial installment authored by George Clooney, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, a line-up so laden with Oscar hardware that Hollywood has no choice but to take notice of their plea.

Producer Surnow Leaves '24,' Tired Of Thinking Up Ways For Jack Bauer To Violate The Geneva Convention

· 24 co-creator/primetime-torture advocate Joel Surnow is leaving the series to follow his muse, having previously ceded day-to-day control of the show to fellow executive producer Howard Gordon. Surnow explains his decision to officially pass on Jack Bauer's interrogation-speeding belt-sander to his colleagues: "I've done seven years, almost eight years at the same place with the same great group of people. During the strike I started thinking about different things I'd like to do independently, and decided it was time to see if there were other opportunities I wanted to pursue." [Variety]
· Hoping to pressure SAG leaders into opening negotiations with the studios long before the June 30th expiration of their contract, "several top stars" may launch a public campaign in hopes of preempting a second industry-crippling work stoppage, possibly in the form of a series of "Don't Be Fucking Crazy. No One Wants Another Strike For At Least Three Years" ads in the trades featuring actors like George Clooney, Ben Affleck and Teri Hatcher hugging moguls such as Peter Chernin and Les Moonves. [Variety]

The Strike Is Over! Look Busy!

'Lost' Showrunners On Strike So Long Even They Can't Remember What's Going On With Their Series

Today's LAT picks the strike-weary brains of four TV showrunners who are returning to work after three weeks of agonizing about the fates of their series, storylines they were forced to abandon, and early-draft scripts they may soon need to rush into production, hoping to illustrate the back-to-work chaos facing a town scrambling to pick up where it left off in early November. My Name is Earl's Greg Garcia, for example, is publicly promising that anyone who fritters away their precious time with unproductive chatter about which agency's picket line snacks were the most delicious (the debate, of course, begins and ends with CAA's baby-filled scones) risks an immediate shitcanning. ("[T]hat's all I've heard about for the last three months. And now it's over. I'm not going to sit and listen to them talk about it now. If you say the word 'strike' and you're not talking about bowling, you're fired.") Meanwhile, Lost's Damon Lindelof frets that his staff's been laid off for so long that they may have lost their already seemingly tenuous grasp on what the hell is going on with their magical, polar-bear-and-smoke-monster-infested island:

Little Richard, Tina Turner Fail To Save Grammys From Nielsen Disappointment

· Network executives are trying to make sense of the brave, new, post-strike world they suddenly find themselves in, either taking this unprecedented opportunity to blow up their development system, or shrugging it off as a "blip" and going back to the old, comfortable ways of doing business (i.e., throwing a bunch of money at talent and pilots). Also, tough decisions need to be made about which series should be rushed back into production to finish up this abbreviated season, which should be put off until the fall, and which should be put out of their misery after losing their momentum. [Variety]
· Unsurprisingly, utterly fearless NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman (motto: "Let's do stuff!") is seizing the chance to shake things up inside the Peacock Family by shuffling around some executives and eliminating its largely vestigial current series department. [THR]

The Strike Is Over! On Wednesday! Let There Be Rejoicing! But Not Too Much!

With word arriving over the weekend that Saturday night's WGA Scribeapalooza II: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off event at the Shrine Auditorium sent TV showrunners back to work today and will return everyone else to their jobs on Wednesday pending the outcome of a strike-ending vote to be counted tomorrow night, Hollywood can safely upgrade its feelings of Cautious Optimism to full-blown This Waking Three-Month Nightmare Is Finally Over Euphoria.

Is Exiting MTV President Norman Leaping Into Oprah's Embrace?

· Possibly sandwiched between the theoretically imminent end of the writers strike and a potential June 30 walkout by SAG, studios are rushing to get their high-profile projects into production during that slim window of opportunity, hoping to get enough movies in the can to fill out their late 2009 release schedules. Still on the studios' limbo lists due to deadline-rushed scripts: Angels & Demons, Thomas Crown Affair 2, Fame, The Grind and Death Wish. [Variety]
· After 17 wildly successful years helping to narcotize the youth of America with TRL, The Grind and 72-hour Real World/Road Rules Challenge marathons, MTV president Christina Norman unexpectedly steps down from her post, possibly to join forces with Oprah on the new OWN cable network that will eventually make everyone involved incredibly wealthy. [THR]

Michael Eisner Unilaterally Declares Writers Strike Over

Defying both the media blackout and the current spirit of Cautious Optimism keeping the industry from throwing a premature Everybody's Going Back to Work! Parade on Hollywood Boulevard before a new WGA contract is signed, former Disney boss and current trading-card magnate Michael Eisner declared an end to the writers strike earlier this afternoon on CNBC's Fast Money:

"It's over," Eisner said. "They made the deal, they shook hands on the deal. It's going on Saturday to the writers in general."

Desperate Academy Begs WGA For Oscar Answers

· Anxious that the Oscars are approaching and he still has no real idea of whether or the WGA—obviously a little preoccupied with their own issues—intends to grant a waiver for their awards ceremony, Academy president Sid Ganis begs the Guild for answers so that complicated logistical issues can be resolved. "We're running out time! [desperate punctuation ours]," wails Ganis, pleading for the sweet release of either a simple "yes" or "no." [Variety]
· Following his reported Monday dismissal from CAA for allegedly getting caught with his hand too far into Oprah's network cookie jar, reality TV agent Michael Camacho lands at UTA after "competitive and aggressive courting" by other agencies who believe that the controversy just proves he's an impish go-getter who might have gotten a little carried away during that recent Death Star misadventure. [THR]

CAA Abducts Barbie, Adds Her To Evil Hollywood Harem

· Mattel joins fellow toy manufacturer Hasbro in leaping into CAA's embrace, turning over brands like American Girl, Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price to the agency for potentially lucrative Hollywood exploitation. First order of business: attaching artificially smooth client Nicole Kidman to a live-action Barbie project by convincing her that another round of full-body laser resurfacing should erase any concerns about being far too old for the part. [Variety]
· The show will go on! cries Academy president Sid Ganis, reassuring the nominees assembled at yesterday's Oscar luncheon that they'll get the recognition they deserve whether or not the strike is resolved by the end of February. "The Oscar exists to shine the brightest possible light on you and your work, and it would be such a terrible shame, through no fault of yours and no fault of ours, if the current conditions prevented us from shining that brightest possible light." [THR]

Cautious OptimismWatch, Day 2: WGA Trying Not To Get Excited Until A Contract Is In Hand

On this second day of the New Era of Cautious Optimism ushered in by Friday's "informal" bargaining session between Writers Guild negotiators and studio CEOs—when WGA West president Patric Verrone's repeated striking of Disney's Bob Iger with a foam EncounterBat™ led to a critical, tearful breakthrough on the matter of streaming video payments— the LAT reports that the Guild's West Coast board has "reacted favorably to the outlines of a pending agreement" between the warring factions. Still, they refuse to uncork the Moët until everything they've fought for is actually in contract form and put to a vote that could—dare we say it? yes, we will dare—happen as early as this weekend:

The Strike Is Over! Or Over In A Week! Or Everyone's Being Set Up For Another Crushing Letdown!

'Moment Of Truth' To Gently Scandalize America 13 More Times

· After two high-rated (but Idol-boosted) episodes of The Moment of Truth, Fox picks up 13 more episodes of their lie-detecting semi-sensation. Evil mastermind Mike Darnell renews his promise to fix the show's pacing problems, and claims that even though these first two episodes have largely failed to shock, they've still been effective enough to induce a number of planned contestants to drop out. [THR]
· Sounding a characteristically gloomy note on the State of the Strike on Day 89, Var points out that even though the WGA and AMPTP have been engaged in informal talks, no date has been picked for the start of formal bargaining, say that "some" worry that the strike will drag on long enough for SAG to walk out in July and "stay out at least into the fall" with the scribes, and claim there's a "tacit deadline" to make some progress before CEOs storm out of negotiations again. Hear that, writers? Doomsday clocks are ticking everywhere, so better take whatever deal's on on the table, whether or not it's a good one! [Variety]