The behind-the-scenes fallout of the Hollywood writers' strike
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LOS ANGELES — The company that rents mortuary props also offers real autopsies, so the Hollywood writers’ strike won’t faze its owners. But the man who designs exact replica airport sets is not so lucky. Neither are the couple who furnish period pieces with antique typewriters and precisely patinated uniforms. Nor the movie poster printers.
Since the Writers Guild of America announced its strike last week, the work stoppage has had a sudden, profound impact on the entertainment industry. But overlooked in the dispute between the union’s 11,500 screenwriters and the major studios is the toll it could take on the wider economy — especially in Los Angeles, which remains, in part, a company town.
There is a constellation of wacky, ultra-niche and utterly ordinary businesses that orbit Hollywood, relying on film and television productions to pay the bills in an increasingly expensive region. This symbiotic ecosystem includes set designers and prop creators, drivers and chefs, lighting experts and gardeners. If writers are the architects of the Hollywood dreamscape, these specialists are the builders.
While many business owners and workers say they support the WGA, which is fighting for better pay and staffing guarantees, the strike is already hurting them. Many are still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, and they described the strike as the second blow of a one-two punch. Companies have begun laying people off and slashing expenses, cutting costs in an effort to survive until a deal is brokered.
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“We’re in survival mode,” said Talaat Captan, the founder and CEO of Air Hollywood, which bills itself as the world’s largest aviation-themed film studio. “During covid, we had government help. Here, we just have God’s help. We could go out of business if they don’t come to the table.”
During the last WGA work stoppage, which lasted 100 days in 2007 and 2008, California’s economy lost $2.1 billion and nearly 38,000 jobs, according to a report from the Milken Institute. Another estimate found the businesses that service the industry lost more than $980 million.
This year, as both sides navigate the streaming era, they remain far apart, with no end in sight. Analysts are predicting the strike could exceed three months, which would bring “bothersome and even dire” consequences to the entertainment world, reported Moody’s Investors Service.
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For some here, the bothersome and dire ripple effects have already arrived.
Air Hollywood’s warehouse turned airport terminal in the valley city of Santa Clarita overlooks Six Flags Magic Mountain and typically hosts at least two shoots per week. “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood,” “Bridesmaids” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” have filmed scenes here, preferring the business’s replica planes, gates and security checkpoints to the permitting nightmare that comes with working in actual airports.
But late last week, there was no cast or crew milling about Gate C34, which still advertised an on-time flight to New York. Instead, a small team of employees were working their last shift before being laid off, doing the tidying they hadn’t had time for when business was booming.
“It’s like covid: Boom, the bottom just drops out,” said Holly Morris, the company’s chief operating officer. “It’s like somebody flipped a switch, and the phone just stopped ringing. It’s like deja vu.”
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Like many businesses during the pandemic, Air Hollywood relied on funds from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program to get by. Now the company will have to weather the turbulence of another work stoppage without any aid. And the situation could turn more desperate if media companies cannot renew labor contracts with actor and director unions, turning one strike into three later this summer.
For Pam Elyea, who runs the prop house History For Hire with her husband, Jim, the losses are already piling up. There’s rent — $43,000 per month for 33,000 square feet in North Hollywood — utilities, salary and health insurance for staff. They stand to lose six-figure sums every month the strike goes on.
If it lasts a while, the couple could blow through the money they had saved for a down payment on a new building. Well-meaning friends have tried to be helpful, but Elyea and her husband chuckle at suggestions that they could simply “pivot” their business. They can’t just start doing birthday parties, she said.
“Who’s going to rent this?” Elyea said, pointing to an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape player. “Sometimes you can’t pivot. You’re so in that divot, that’s just where you’re going to be.”
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The History For Hire warehouse is a labyrinthine menagerie of props from famous productions such as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Platoon” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and its staff are brimming with hyper-specific institutional knowledge. Lauren Stewart, a shop technician and baseball specialist, restores baseball gloves from the early 20th century, and she can name the decade a mitt was made at a glance.
“People cannot understand the amount of work that goes into this,” Stewart said. “Everyone who works here has this very niche, very important knowledge.”
But a prolonged strike could threaten the long-term future of some prop houses, especially those that are smaller and family-run, Elyea said. She and her husband are in their 70s, and they’re not alone: Many independent Hollywood prop rental companies started in the 1970s and ’80s, and their owners are getting older. The pandemic, paired with a long strike, could push them into retirement and their inventory to auction, Elyea fears.
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“The strike, and covid, just makes everybody tired and weary,” she said. “How much can you bear?”
Down the street, at the Earl Hays Press, owner Keith Hernandez was asking that very question. Opened in 1915, Earl Hays Press is a local legend, specializing in just about every printed prop imaginable — newspapers to license plates, beer bottle labels to cigarette packs. The business has outlasted immense change, but the past few years have been brutal. The strike, which shrunk his work from more than 100 accounts to three, has Hernandez questioning his future in the industry, even as he supports the writers’ cause.
“If it goes to the six-months mark, we’ll potentially have to shut our doors after 108 years,” Hernandez said. “I am for the strike, I understand it. But sometimes people don’t understand the bigger picture of how many people it’s going to affect.”
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To survive, Hernandez is digging through the company’s archive, looking for items he can sell. On the list so far: 100-year-old theater posters and props from “Back to the Future,” “Ghostbusters” and “Caddyshack.”
“We’re part of Hollywood history,” he said. “But once we’re gone, we’re gone, and the history of Earl Hays goes with it. So if we have to close doors, it’s going to hit hard.”
Some companies have built-in alternative revenue sources. One prop house, Morgue Prop Rentals, loans out embalming tables and body bags to crime dramas and is an offshoot of a private autopsy business — a strike-proof line of work.
Steve Arklin, who runs the sprawling movie ranch known as Rancho Deluxe, said he’s counting on commercial shoots and music videos, which are not covered by the WGA strike, to keep busy, along with hosting private events.
“You can’t just rely on one thing,” said Arklin, whose picturesque mountaintop property has been the backdrop for scenes in “Westworld” and “Iron Man 3.”
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Still, even some businesses that have built a diverse clientele are seeing their work dry up. Bischoff’s Taxidermy was founded in 1922 and has evolved since the days it stuffed Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger. The company now specializes in custom animatronics and has a profitable side business doing pet preservation and cloning.
But Bischoff’s owner, Ace Alexander, said the taxidermy rental market, which is driven by film and television, is frozen. He has not had to lay off full-time employees, but he has cut back on contract workers.
“Like always, it’s the little ones who get screwed over,” he said.
It’s not just the eccentrically specific Hollywood businesses that are hurting. Warehouse workers, tailors and food service companies have also been affected. Dine With 9 Catering, which overwhelmingly worked with film and TV productions, began marketing toward private parties and corporate events several months ago, when word of a potential strike first circulated.
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But they haven’t been able to bring in enough jobs to replace all the canceled orders, and owner Paige Simmons says she’ll probably have to lay off employees — many of whom are aspiring actors, like she once was. Now, with a legion of other local catering companies desperately looking for work, the competition for the jobs that remain is fierce.
“Everybody’s competing for these little crumbs left on the table,” Simmons said. “Let’s just pray it doesn't last that long. If it does, it’s going to get really dicey out here.”
Just as the caterers don’t know when they’ll be back in the kitchen, Captan, of Air Hollywood, can’t predict when productions will come back to his sets. Last week, his team was doing maintenance on the company’s AutoPlane, a 53-foot semi-truck that transforms into a camera-ready replica of an airplane’s interior.
Captan invented and patented the contraption, which cost more than half a million dollars and has crisscrossed the continent for film and TV shoots, a point of immense pride. He ticked through the productions that the machine has appeared in, but trailed off.
“We stopped thinking about these things because we’d been so busy,” Captan said.
No more.
As the crew closed the truck, stowing away seats and overhead luggage containers, Captan looked on. “Is your flight on time? Are you sitting first class?” he joked, nodding at the mock plane. But his smile faded. He knew the aircraft might be parked there for some time.
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Source: The Washington Post
