This is why I never want to be a director

The DGA deal is done and the reaction around town seems to be set on Cautiously Optimistic.

My personal reaction? Hideously depressing.

The headlines are all reading like the DGA has gotten a super fantabulous deal, citing 80% increases on this and 50% increases on that. Well, guess what? An 80% increase on 0.3% is still a crappy crappy deal. Not to mention that those headlines don't take into account caveats such as "We get to not pay you anything for the first 17 days that we stream a show on which you poured out your heart and soul." Uh, dudes, when do you think people want to watch new TV? Right after it comes out, or, like, 18 days later? I'm not a lawyer, a WGA member, or a greedy corporate whore, but the whole internet residual end of this DGA deal smells like ripe old cheese to me.

Plus, I'm so damn exhausted by the language that the news media uses in this strike. In The Daily News today (I know, it's a rag, but they won't stop delivering it to my house, even though I've asked them nicely – with pleases and thank yous just like my Mom taught me)... ahem. Anyway, in The Daily News today they say this:

Hollywood directors reached a tentative contract deal Thursday with studios, a development that could turn up the pressure on striking writers to settle their two-month-old walkout that has idled production on dozens of TV shows.

Like there was no pressure before now to try and settle the strike. Like the writers have just been sitting around enjoying a happy fun fun holiday at the expense of all the below-the-liners in Hollywood. 

Um, hello, but how are the WGA supposed to end the strike when the AMPTP refuses to even discuss a contract? I suppose if the WGA leaders were to go to the AMPTP leaders and offer up their first-born children, sign a blood oath, and agree to scrub Nick Counter's Italian marble floors twice a week using only their own personal toothbrushes dipped in Anthrax-laced floor cleaner, they just might be able to end the strike. C'mon folks, and I say this in capital letters just to relieve some of my bottled up anger --

THE BLOODY STRIKE IS NOT THE BLOODY WGA'S BLOODY FAULT.

This is good vs evil, this is St. George and the Dragon, this is James and the Giant Peach. Uh, no, perhaps not that last one. 

The multi-billion dollar companies who own the studios are not going to go broke by giving the writers 1% of anything. Hell, they could give the writers 1% of everything and it would still be like you or me losing 20 bucks on the way to the cinema. But they won't. Why? Because they have the money and therefore they have the power and they can do whatever the hell they like. 

If the WGA folds now, on highly unfavorable terms, then the last two months might as well have never happened. But they did happen and it has hurt a hell of a lot of people. So shouldn't it all have been for something?