The Hollywood Reporter
One day after The Hollywood Reporter published an examination of a private equity giant’s obstinacy about picketing at its studio lot amid the ongoing actors and writers strike, the company has relented, according to a protest leader.
“We have won a huge victory in the battle of Radford because of the article that came out yesterday,” Writers Guild of America strike captain Audra Whipple announced on Friday to assembled picketers at the Radford Studio Center in a speech made along Colfax Avenue.
Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA officials have alleged they’d been unfairly relegated by the 55-acre property’s owner, Hackman Capital Partners, to a rear entrance of the facility, along a dangerously busy thoroughfare with no shade in the midst of a heat wave. The former chair of the National Labor Relations Board suggested to THR that the unions might have a substantive case if they filed a grievance with the agency. (They had made veiled legal threats in statements to THR.)
Hackman is not itself party to the strike, although Radford Studio Center’s major production tenants include Paramount/CBS and Apple, which are members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the association whose failed talks with the guilds has prompted the walkouts.
“Within an hour of that article coming out, the studio suddenly wanted to get on the phone very urgently, and they wanted to let us know ‘Oh, well, we would love to have you picket on Radford,’” Whipple explained, referring to to Radford Avenue, the tree-lined front entrance of the lot. “So, starting on Monday, this picket line will be moving to Radford Avenue. We will have an observer here [on Colfax Avenue] because this will turn into a neutral gate, and we’re gonna finally be picketing in the fucking shade!”
Whipple continued: “We are in the middle of an enormous labor action, a kind of war, if you will — although I’m a pacifist. I want to tell you about one of the battles in this experience. You all know it well. You’ve all been toiling out in this heat for 88 days… You’ve all been suffering near heat stroke for 88 days, you’ve all been standing over here on this tiny sidewalk nearly getting hit by cars for 88 days. You’ve all been in this fucking driveway when cars have come through and not stopped and almost hit us, for 88 days.”
Hackman, whose other major film and television production holdings include Silvercup Studios in Long Island City and Second Line Stages in New Orleans, didn’t explain to THR why it had constrained the picketers to a remote boundary of its lot. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA, which had not formally sent out members due to its safety concerns about the site, had threatened legal action. The firm didn’t immediately respond to THR’s request for comment about its turnabout.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
