In a moment of historic upheaval in Hollywood, screenwriter and labor activist Alex O’Keefe (The Bear) believes he can turn the tide. The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May 2nd. Actors represented by SAG-AFTRA joined the fight earlier this month.
We begin by discussing the WGA’s key demands (7:30), O’Keefe’s experience inside writers’ rooms (13:12), the pushback from the studios thus far (17:01), how the divisive ‘interim agreements’ recently issued by SAG-AFTRA (27:40) stem from a checkered history of union organizing in Hollywood (29:13), and why O’Keefe believes this cross-union solidarity is unprecedented (33:29).
On the back-half, we walk through his origin story in Florida (35:40), his background in politics and speechwriting (44:57), the inspired words of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (50:50) and how they’ve shaped O’Keefe’s vision for the future of his industry (1:02:44).
Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm standing Forgo SOO. Welcome to the show.
Today.
I'm joined by screenwriter and labor activist Alex O'Keeffe. As you've probably seen in the news, the Writers Guild of America, which represents writers in film, television, and radio, went on strike against the producers back in May. Since then, O'Keefe has emerged as a leading voice in this fight against the studios, or more specifically, the AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Formerly a staff writer on the hit show The Bear, O'Keefe has been outspoken about the union's demands for increased wages, stronger protections against the development of artificial intelligence, and most importantly, residuals which have all but vanished in this era of streaming. But this isn't just a Hollywood story. Since the pandemic began back in twenty twenty, the US has seen an uptick in union activity. The National Labor Relations Board saw two thousand, five hundred and ten union representations petitions filed in fiscal year twenty twenty two, a fifty three percent increase over the previous year. That includes more than two hundred and fifty Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize, along with workers at Amazon Warehouses and Joe's. In fact, a recent Gallup poll reported that seventy one percent of Americans currently approve of labor unions, which is the highest rate recorded on this measure since nineteen sixty five. And yet, despite this resurgence, we're far from the heyday of organizing. NPR reports that only one and ten American workers are now in a union, down from nearly one in three workers back in the nineteen fifties. This striking disconnect between widespread public support and waning union jobs feels fitting for twenty twenty three, which has been full of confusion and contradictions, especially in the film industry, which just had its fourth biggest opening weekend in its history with the releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer. As David Simms writes in The Atlantic, the two films are diametrically different, all tour driven works that doubled their individual expected crosses, and yet with actor and writer strikes ongoing studios seem almost hell bent on dashing any chance at real industry momentum. A crisis isn't just brewing, Simms writes, it's here, and so here we are together. SAG and the WGA are at a real impass at this moment, with little signs that the AMPTP are open to coming back to the negotiating table. But our guest today, Alex O'Keefe, believes he's uniquely qualified to help turn the tide. He was formerly a community organizer for Obama, a speechwriter for Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and a campaign director for the.
Green New Deal.
He's also twenty nine years old. We discussed some of his origin story in this conversation, along with the finer points of the strike, the checkered history of union organizing in Hollywood, and a whole lot more. This is Alex O'Keeffe. Alex O'Keeffe, Hey, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
How are you feeling.
I'm feeling as good as you can when you're unemployed, with no idea when you're going to make your next paycheck. So pretty good. The power and the energy in the picket line keeps me up.
Were you on the picket line this morning?
Not this morning? No, I was preparing for this, you were, well, I was just you know, shaving my face, so I don't look like a haggard man crawling out of a strike depression. That's why I'm also wearing a hat. I couldn't go with the barber, so just a couple of days outside the barber, I look like I just escaped a mentality.
All you're really escaping is to picket line right now? Are you a morning picketer or you an early afternoon.
Usually early afternoon because in part it's such a social engagement. It's not like being in a writer's room or being in a Hollywood space. There's no hierarchies on it, so anyone can talk to anybody. And I'm meeting so many people from multiple generations. But it can't take it out of you to talk about your career, your fears again and again and again. But also I find so much solidarity on the line.
Well, let's talk about your career and fears.
Okay, let's do it. That's what we're here for.
Why do we start at the beginning of this? Your union, The Writer's Guild of America, which has roughly eleven thousand and five INNRE members, went on strike May second over ongoing labor disputes with the AMPTP that's the Alliance of Motion picture and television producers. That alliance includes traditional studios like Paramount and Disney, networks like ABC and CBS, streaming services like Netflix and Apple Go. So, for those unfamiliar, what are the most pressing demands your union has been making that have so far not been agreed to by the producers.
Well, I think you see the same thing across the entire economy. You know, they call Hollywood the dream factory, and like any factory, there's an assembly line, and to make more money, the assembly line has to go faster and faster and faster, while the workers have less input in how the factory is run, and overlords watch us all and just kind of dictate without any democratic engagement. That's the overall thing. The technology has advanced so rapidly since the last strike fifteen years ago, when I was much younger.
I think you just started high school.
Yeah, I think I was in high school. So I was just like, where's my SNL. I had no idea why they were on strike. But streaming has come and it's given everyone the ability to watch anything at any point in time and repeat it no matter what. Now it used to be before streaming that if your episode of television was repeated, you would get a percentage and a share in the success of your show. So if you wrote for Everybody Loves Raymond, you know you could build a family off the success of your show. So you put some risk run through reruns, and now the reruns are unlimited. Because the technology has progressed faster than our contract has or our labor power has. We've really been left out totally of the success and the boom of streaming. So now if you make a streaming show like I did with The Bear on FX EFFX on Hulu, you don't really see a real share in the success of a breakout hit like The Bear writers on Avid Elementary, which is a network show on ABC, but reruns on Hulu are getting just sense on the dollar for the success of their show. Now we also are looking at this new doom of technology AI artificial intelligence, in this ever present effort to speed up efficiencies. These tech companies and not really movie companies anymore. They don't really care about making movies. They care about efficiencies. They are trying to replace human beings with machines. So they're trying to replace writers with machines or trying to replace actors with machines. And because they already own the copyright of all of our work, which was a concession made in a labor fight before I was born, they own the copyright of every script that's ever been produced. Pretty much. They can feed those scripts into a check chept like artificial intelligence device and start producing new episodes of Friends without even using the original writers. That's a big fear. And while we don't think that machines can replace the soulful art that we create, we also know that the execus don't really care about making soulful art. They care about making content as fast as possible that satisfy certain demographics at certain points of time, hit certain beats for international audiences, and can be fed into an algorithm to produce more content like that. You might like this if you like that. So, because tech has taken over Hollywood, workers are rushing to catch up, and our only power really is our labor movement.
You said the technology has outpaced your current contract. Yeah, what are you trying to specifically negotiate in this new contract that would keep you level with the advancements and technology.
A big thing is residuals. Residuals is sharing the success of your work. So we want to have residuals that are comparative to network residuals, the residuals that were expected and part of the standard for decades in this business. So we want to increase the amount that we get from the reruns and the unlimited play of our shows and movies. We want to make it so AI can never be credited for writing a script. It could be used as a tool possibly, but we will not allow it to replace us. Those are the big ones, but it goes much deeper. One of the big issues is a mini room. You saw this with Elon Musk. Let's downsize Twitter. Just keep like twenty percent of the workforce and they're going to work all day at all a night to replace the labor power of a larger workforce that was just downsized.
Yeah, but they have that new logo.
You see what happens when billionaires start meddling in business. They do not understand. They have no creative instincts whatsoever. That was their big, oh my god feature. Yeah, is replacing the one nice part of the one friendly part that no one had an issue with. The bird which was that Little Blue Bird. Yeah, with a giant dystopian X that looks like it's just from a kid's TV show of an evil corporation. They've become a satire of themselves and they bring the same logic or lack thereof, to Hollywood. So they have downsized Hollywood. I mean, they've laid off so many diversity, equity and inclusion chiefs and departments across their business. But one of the biggest issues that we've seen and it's affected my career, is the rise of many rooms. So basically, before a show gets greenlit, they will bring writers together in a room to write the entire season of TV before or even gets out. Even The Bear was originally a mini room. These mini rooms are usually underfunded and we work very hard, and you get cut out of the process immediately once it's over. So writers are not being brought to set, and young writers are not getting that opportunity for mentorship and education to one day become showrunners.
So that means in your case, yeah, you worked on the first season of The Bear. You write on the show via zoom during the pandemic for nine weeks. Yeah, for those nine weeks you were paid forty three thousand dollars. That sounds like a lot for a little more than two months of work, And yet you've said that figure is deeply misleading.
Yeah, how so well, listen, when I got that job, it was a lifesaver to have any kind of job. And then all of a sudden, an FX show wants to employ me. Can you start tomorrow? My manager called me, said they can offer forty six thousand dollars in the room and got cut early. Like I said, so it was less than forty six thousand dollars. And when he told me that amount of money, my eyes started vibrating.
I was like, oh my god.
I've never heard of making that kind of money. And then of course you multiply it. Okay, that's nine weeks. You multiply that fifty two weeks in the year.
Oh my god, I'll be rich.
But of course that money's not all yours, as my manager quickly explained to me, you're managing your agent. Your representatives will get twenty percent, maybe more. Your union will get one point five percent, maybe more. I was working in New York. I had to pay New York state taxes. By the end, you barely make much money at all, but it's supposed to be this kind of probationary role. A staff writer. You get your star, you don't get much money, but you get paid basically like an intern. And of course, if you've made that kind of money the whole year wouldn't really be a problem. But with a lot of staff writers, you're held in exclusive contracts in case, oh, we want to write a second season while we're filming the first season, so you cannot always go on and work on something else, and getting that second gig is always the biggest hurdle. So yeah, if you could get paid or be paid on retainer all year for being a staff writer or any kind of work, it'd be good money. But unfortunately that's not how the business works. There's a lot of ups and downs, and that's why we have the residual model for writers of big shows to be able to continue living in between seasons. You would get a percentage of the success that would hold you over. It wouldn't be you know, hundreds of some people would be hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it would at least be enough to continue living between seasons.
Towards the end of your time on the show. You received a phone call from an executive producer on The Bear who said to you, I'm so sorry, this is your first writer's room experience, but it's not usually like this. She's suggesting that your experience was a typical. How does your time on The Bear different from what she's suggesting is the typical writer's room experience.
Well, I think there's positives and negatives. My showner's on The Bear or Masters of the Craft. So it's very atypical to work on a show that's as high quality, fast paced, stressful and deep as The Bear, and it's traumatic, it's triggering, it pulls things out of you.
What do you mean by that?
The whole time I was working on The Bear, I was really suffering. It fell often like I was just a new employee at the restaurant the Original Beef. I was throwing an apron and said start cooking. But the thing that my showrunner was trying to explain to me is that you get brought into a room, but you're not invested in. You can't come to set, you can't even get flown to the writer's room. That's really abnormal. Because she was trained in the kinds of rooms where there's a showrunner that is expected to pass to torch on to the next generation to teach them how to be showrunners. But it's very hard to do that when all we can do is zoom. But I told her listen, I'm just happy to be here. I mean, this is amazing. I wish I was getting paid more. I wish this or wish that, but I'm extremely grateful. This is not a personal tragedy my first season on the Bear. It represents what young writers are up against. Just like with journalism, our career is going extinct just as we're breaking through. So it's very difficult to get a foothold to establish your voice when all the structures around you are burning down.
Well, it's funny as you're saying that, you're in some ways echoing the sentiments of CEO Bob Iger, who, when asked about the strike, had this to say.
Well, I think it's very disturbing to me. You know, we've talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenge that we're facing and the recovery from COVID, which is ongoing. It's not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption. I understand any any labor organization's desire to work on the behalf of its members to get the most compensation, to be compensated fairly based on the value that they delivered. We managed as an industry to negotiate a very good deal with the Director's Guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to the great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we'd like to do the same thing with the actors. There's a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic, and they are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing that is quite frankly, very disruptive. I know they're not.
So the first part of that statement is that there are disruptive forces in the industry. Yeah, the same forces you just alluded to. You both are on the same page that this is a precarious moment to be making work in Hollywood. It's just the second half of what he says that seems to be very far away from where the union is coming from.
Well, you also can hear tweedledee of birds in the background if you are watching the clip. He's sitting in designer clothes at a palatial estate called a Billionaire Camp, summer camp for billionaires in Sun Valley. If you just zoom out a little bit, you would see private jets. So he's the one who's living in La la land. He's so inoculated from the pain that his success and his personal wealth brings everyone that works for him. I respect what Bob Iger has built with Disney. I mean, it's pretty hard to deny that they have built an institution, an empire. I'm from Orlando, Florida, so I really know the vice script that Disney has on IP and on the minds of so many people. But to call us unrealistic. When I was working for Bob Iger, you know, because the Bear is owned by FX, which is owned by Disney, I was working for him, making him lots of money. And while I was working on the Bear, I was making below the poverty line. We are only on strike because we've lived these harsh realities for years. Many of us come from the working class or from poverty. I believe that what we're asking for is very realistic. We're asking for nothing even visionary. We're asking for the same standards given to writers of the past generation to be given to new writers, and that's too much for these people, even though he's making half a billion dollars every five years.
In fact, the research supports what you're saying, because if we go back to the last time both the writers and the actors struck at the same time, it was nineteen sixty.
Yeah.
Obviously, as people know, the actors joined the fight earlier this month. But much of the industry has changed in the sixty three years since that dual strike, and yet not a whole lot on the surface is very different. Here's a report from the Associated Press in nineteen sixty. This is Bob Thomas. Having survived a perilous movie decade. The movie industry now faces nineteen sixty with the threat of a strike that could shutter the studios. The prize the money to be earned from release of post nineteen forty eight move movies to television. So far, the two talent guilds are remaining firm. They feel they deserve a share of the proceeds from the feature they helped create. Sounding familiar, isn't it. Yeah, The studios are equally firm. Spuroscorus, President of the twentieth Century Fox organization last week predicted a battle to the death if the writers and actors continue their demands. We need this money, he said. Most films nowadays lose money. The studios must get revenue wherever they can. If the guilds don't back down, the studios would be closed for a reassessment and readjustment. You could effectively swap the names of Bob and Spiro's.
And then what happened after that? Did all the studios closed down because they paid the writers and actors?
The studios did not close down. I can tell you what happens after, but we'll get to that later. If they're side of the negotiating table, the producer side, if it sounds effectively the same sixty three years later, what's different on the union side? That makes you think this is a fight that you can win that previous generations have not been able to win.
Yeah, it's funny. That strike was actually led by Ronald Reagan, who was an actor who later became president and became a president who broke the labor movement by breaking the air traffic controllers strike during his presidency. There used to be a culture in America of strike ready organization, strike ready labor unions, and this thread of a strike allowed us to win larger contracts, not just in Hollywood, but across the entire labor force. After Ronald Reagan's presidency, strikes became very unpopular and it kind of forfeited our biggest weapon against the one percent, which is our ability to withhold labor. Now, what is different about then and now is this cataclysmic trauma that every living being on the entire earth has lived through, which is the pandemic of COVID nineteen. I don't have to tell you that the pandemic forced pretty much every single human being to rethink our values, to understand our own mortality, to take our needs more seriously. And during the pandemic, that's when we started seeing an upsurge of a new labor movement. There was a larger strike wave since a great depression during the pandemic because workers had to fight to win their ppe. At the same time, Hollywood kept churning out content and streaming got more profitable than ever because everyone was home watching the same television. So Hollywood and the entertainment industry became critical infrastructure to maintain America during this breaking point. If we didn't have TV and movies satisfying us at that time. I don't know what would have happened to America. I think Colombo every day exactly. I mean, that's all we had. And I think that's the same thing with ups workers, Amazon workers. These essential workers kept society running. The writer's strike and the actors strike is the tip of the spear of a larger labor movement that's more powerful than it's been since the New Deal era. Across Los Angeles workers are on strike. You unit here, the hotel workers are on strike. We got Medieval times workers on strike. We have strippers on strike.
I don't have that two shirt.
Yeah it's a great T shirt. You gotta get the T shirt. I'll get you one if you want it. But we are seeing a labor movement that is more powerful than probably any other movement and the last couple of years. And I've been a movement leader in the last decade. But what's different about this movement is that there's a true literal threat to power. It's not just we're picking up protest signs and we're picketing in front of a politician hoping the politician will pass a law. This is economic power that we're welding. The writers create million millions of dollars for the Los Angeles economy, for the New York economy, for the US economy, for the global economy, culture's critical infrastructure, and one of America's greatest exports. If you remove that, it does start to wreck havoc across many industries. It's not a lot of money what the writers and the actors are asking for in the grand scheme of things. It's one Hollywood blockbuster worth of money. But what they worry about is all the collateral costs. If they pay the writers, they have to pay their actors. If they pay the actors, they have to pay the directors. If they pay the directors, they have to pay the crew, the teamsters. And if they pay all of us, who are at the heart of a culture industry, who have a huge megaphone that the rest of the world can hear, they might have to start paying workers across the entire world what they're due.
I want to focus on Hollywood for a second. These companies are obviously bigger than ever before. Yeah, they're buying each other up, turning into these monopolies, and these conglomerates but Rich Greenfield over at CNBC reported that Netflix made six point five billion dollars last year excluding interests, taxes, and non cash charges, while the newer services at Disney Paramount and NBCUniversal lost more than eight billion. These partners in the AMPTP coalition, it's been reported over and over again that they actually have less to do with how each make their money than ever. Yeah, from a negotiating perspective, would the guild consider making individual deals with someone like a Sony and start breaking apart what is an increasingly weekend coalition?
Well, Netflix has only been part.
Of since twenty twenty one.
Since twenty twenty one, so it's a new partner, and it's really like this suicide pack that Netflix has signed with the rest of the streamers, because Netflix is their entire business model is about becoming the monopoly of all entertainment. So Netflix has dragged many of these historic Hollywood streamers and studios into a losing battle that they cannot win. Netflix has already established itself in global territories. Netflix is a tech company first, so their algorithm is going to be so much more advanced than what Peacock can do. So they are burning down the rest of the economy and largely using this strike in their favor to disrupt other competitors. Now, I can't speak on behalf of WGA whether we would break up the AMPTP, but I can say personally, I think that's a great idea. I think that these companies have very very different business models and they cannot coexist, and they have to realize that in capitalism, Netflix is incentivized to destroy them and destroy all of their jobs and eat it all up. What we've seen recently is sag After has made interim agreements with a twenty four independent studios that pay what sag After is asking of these big studios. I think we could see more and more of that. WGA has not given any such interim agreements, But what we could see next year is a summer of independent movies because of the only things being produced right now independent movies. As much as we can break up the monopolies, it'll be better for all entertainment. That's what happened after nineteen sixty, after the last duel strike, there was a huge Supreme Court case, the United States versus Paramount, that broke up the big studios, and that gave space for the American new wave of Easy Rider or Bonnie and Clyde, of Scorsese and Lucas. It gave space for this new wave of independent auteurs that pushed the limits of what film could be.
So you're in favor of the actors offering interim agreements with these companies.
I'm not part of zag after so I try not to criticize the moves of a guild that I don't fully understand.
Right, but there's two unions that are working to create power and solidarity. Do you think that in any way undercuts your value at the negotiating table.
It could possibly undercut the value at the negotiating table. It's a gambit. So, speaking as a consumer of the art, I think it's great. Speaking as a worker on strike, I want a total strike. I want everyone to be in the same boat because that creates solidarity.
This disagreement and approach again has roots in nineteen sixty. Here's a report in Variety.
Man, you do their research. I love this. I love that.
March third, nineteen sixty. The headline reads, Actors Writers vary on India's Writers Guild is refusing to sign contracts with any indie releasing through a major studio, regardless of whether the studio has or has not ownership or profit participation in the picture involved. The Actors Guild, on the other hand, has not set such a hard and fast policy and may in some cases sign an indie where a major release is involved. The difference in approach is primarily philosophical. Variety Rights Writers' Guild feels and allowing major releases regardless of the financial participation, weakens their strike effort. As long as majors are able to furnish pictures the theaters, they're continuing in business and are not being sufficiently disabled by the strike. The guild feels. Actors, on the other hand, are working from a strategic point of view and are willing to make such deals for the sake of their psychological effect, as well as the fact that in some cases under discussion, the independent companies involved are owned all or in part by their own members. Yea, this was in nineteen sixty sixty three years later, I see no difference. Yeah, I guess I'm proposing this to you as how do you hold power when parts of different unions are temporarily forfeiting it to these companies?
Interesting question? About whether or not the interim agreements are a good idea. Ultimately, in a union, our priority is not creating a new independent scene, right Our priority is making sure our workers get paid as much as possible and what they are valued and get the benefits that we deserve. Sag Aftra said, you know, some of their members might have production companies, some of their members might have preexisting deals. I think that the only power we have in this world, truly, and the greatest psychological power, if that's what we're talking about, is the power to withhold our labor and remind our bosses who actually creates all the value. So recently, Netflix had an earnings report that said, hey, because we've laid off so many people and we've cut down on labor costs because we're not paying anyone to make new content, we have billions of dollars in free cash flow.
There was also the password crackdown.
Password crackdown, and they raise rates on everybody. They say, hey, we're making more money than ever. Wall Street did not reward them because, for one, there's still this idea that there is a limit to how much they can expand their subscriber growth, and there's this idea that if you cut off the pipeline of new production, that will slowly destroy your supply chain. And with writing especially, that disruption is delayed, but it's still going to be there. So if I was running all the unions, I would say everyone's on strike, and I would certainly not make these interim agreements so early on in the strike. But I understand sag After is its own guild with its own independent incentives, and we cannot expect to have this lockstep solidarity. This level of solidarity between the guilds is relatively new in Hollywood. What I would like to see beyond this contract fight is that we don't just mobilize every three years for contract fights, but we build cross union solidarity and working groups so you can be more in touch with what effective strategies are. Because I would say probably most people in zach Aftra don't even know that in nineteen sixty this same strategy was used. But I would say, in retrospect, look at what came out of that strike. That Shrike is known for creating the profit sharing model, which in most unions and most workforces, the idea of sharing in the profit of your work is beyond even debate. You get what you get when you work that job, and whether or not your product sells well or not, you usually don't get a percentage of it. We got pension and healthcare from that, and that strike is known for creating and creating space for the new independent movement that has allowed our art form to evolve. So you know, I've worked in politics and movement. Everyone wants to win or lose. You know, was this good or bad? And often the answer is in between. Maybe it was right for the Writer's guildt to not do those interim agreements because the nature our work is different. It's easier to stockpile our scripts, so if we made interim agreements, they could just have more scripts to stockpile so they could extend the strike. While actors, their labor is more direct. They have to be in front of the camera, so you cannot stockpile performances.
Now.
Of course, sag Aftra is fighting right now the AI regulation to make sure that these companies are unable to stockpile it performances because that's what they want. They want to be able to basically scan every actor and be able to reuse them and reuse their likeness for whatever performance, or create new performances. So all of these different labor forces have their own needs and their own leverage points. If sag After believes that's a leverage point, I'm excited to see the independent cinema they produce, but I hope that it does not diminish the leverage for me to get a living wage for my work.
I'm excited to watch it too. We'll right back with screenwriter and activist Alex O'Keefe. Holding the line is hard. Yeah, the history of labor unions in America has bored that out over and over and over again. But you know, on the subject of solidarity, I want to understand where that all comes from for you, because you're born in the early nineties, come of age in the early two thousands, raised by a single mother who you've said instilled a discipline of solidarity. I know you're on strike, but if you were to write the description of the scene that was your upbringing, what would those first few sentences sound like.
You know, I've seen a lot of hard times, and I've walked through the valley. My mom worked so many different jobs at hotels and serving. Just like the bear would watch friends die at the job, you know, heart attacks because they were so overworked, and I've seen so much pain that's completely unnecessary. And an image comes to me every time I think about this of walking around my neighborhood in Gotha, Florida, and there'd be this one car that I would always stop and I'd be so heard and sad, and you know, I was impoverished, and I knew that there was these huge structures and now there was a system that was holding me in this place. There were these cops I would patrol my neighborhood that would pick me up for no reason. There was you know, Confederate flag toating dudes who would start fights, and there was all these structures, this chaos of Florida that I lived through, and I would look at that face of that poor young black boring. You know, it's so cliche if you are not actively living that life, but I would try to memorize that face because I told myself, this is not going to be in vain. I'm going to get out of this. But when I get out of this, I don't want to forget that so many people are always going to be stuck in that reality unless I change that reality.
You know, your brother Ben Yeah once wrote that we had a lot of struggles growing up, and we've succeeded in spite of so many obstacles that stood in our way. What specifically were those obstacles for you?
My father was an alcoholic who, you know, like so many black men, got caught up in stuff like crack and caught up in the legal system, and there was no security. It was always chaos. And in that chaos you learn how to survive, you learn how to persevere, you learn how to be creative. But there was never any kind of guiding light besides my mother. She always just taught me that you have to believe in people. You have to believe in the humanity and in the light and the soul that each person holds, and try to fight for people. And my mom's the type of person that would you know, come home. She'd be fired from a job because she stood up for her coworkers and there was no union, but it was the principle of the matter. I try not to get caught up in the whole tragic backstory. It was hard. It was really hard to live in a world where there was no Obama at that point, there was no woke media that people are fighting against now. It was a white world that I was living in. It was a rich man's world that I was living in. And there these forces changing my life that I had no control over. Their hurricanes hitting Florida every year. That would destroy the roof of our house, and there'd be a hole in the ceiling, and every year that hole would get bigger with every hurricane, and at first it would be a drip, drip, drip, and then I'd come home from school some days and the whole house would be flooded because we couldn't afford to fix that hole. You know, my mom would teach us just to ignore the hole, just to keep living life, because we could not change that. But I've always been somebody that I cannot look away from this hole that is broken open in our society, a hole that so many people fall into. And it's given me empathy because no matter what success I get, I'd never see myself as that person. You know, when I was at the Bear Premiere, I was wearing my Thames and a hoodie and sweatpants, which was probably a bad idea because everyone else was in gown and suits and everything. Because I just saw myself as that same country bumpkin, barefoot, walkering around Florida. I never thought that I would be here at all. But this is a good way for me to break in. I'm breaking in by speaking about the power of workers, speaking from my heart about what I really care about. This is what she raised me to do. She raised me to be a champion for other people, and she's proud of me. So, you know, you win awards, all that sort of thing, it doesn't matter half as much as your mother's love.
You know. A few minutes ago you said I don't like to get caught up in the darker elements of my upbringing. And it was the first time in our hour together that you seem to be a little bit at a loss for words, and you were looking off, seemingly thinking about something. That was some image that I think came to mind, and I wondered what exactly that was.
Man, that's getting deep.
I'm wrong, you can say them.
No, you're definitely not wrong. I think it's always easier for me to talk about and fight for others than to fight for myself, and to hold the hurt of others than to hold my own hurt. But there was a lot of mental health issues growing up with my mom. And it's so hard being a single mother in the South and being poor. And I look back and you know, some years she'd make fourteen thousand dollars a year. I'm here complaining. I'm making, you know, forty three thousand dollars for a couple of weeks of work. And I understand how many people would hear that and say, oh my god, that forty three thousand. Like I said, there were no unions in Florida, so we just really suffered. And sometimes it would really break my mom, and she would turn into a different person. And it's so hard to see the people you love be poisoned by the fear and the stress of American life. And there would be times that she would just for days be caught in an episode of severe mental health issues. I mean, I really try not to hold on to spite. I was really poor before this strike and my friend was driving me home. I was teaching some kids out in Watts, California. My friend was driving me home. He was like, aren't you pissed that? Like he worked all this way to get into Hollywood, and like, you don't even get a percentage of your success, and you know you're expected to buy this suit and go to the award show and all this sort of thing. And I said, you know, not really like I guess, like I've seen so much darkness and I felt like Icarus during my first year in Hollywood, and I wasn't really prepared for it. I really wasn't prepared to work on The Bear. I wasn't ready for the success I got, and it kind of destroyed me. It destroyed my mental health. How so I found myself just fraying at the edges, and you know, I wasn't capable of going on the Bear got caught up for a second season, and I just could not do that, you know, I just couldn't.
What do you mean?
It felt like psychosis that all of a sudden, you know, someone told me that writing is like managed schizophrenia. You know, you hear these characters, Karmi's talking to Sydney, all this sort of thing. It's living in your head. The stress of the kitchen of the Bear was kind of in my head and I definitely needed a pause from it. And I felt like I'd flown so high, only like Iicaris, only to fall back to Earth. But my friend told me, you know what, if you could write a new story that Icarus realizes he didn't need the wings and that he could walk on his own two feet with his people, And I think that's what I'm doing right now. You know, I would have loved to keep working on the Bear. I worked on another project instead. I went slower, and maybe it was ultimately a bad idea. The Bear season two is so amazing. I love that team so much. But for me, it just was not anything that was recognizable to the life that I've lived for most of my life. And now I'm walking with the people of America, with the workers of America, and I'm marching in this now I'm doing an interview about it. So it seems like the right path, even though it's not necessarily the straight path up.
You know, I hear you, Alex, I do, but I almost want to push back on your behalf for a second, because the person you're describing it may be the person you see in the mirror when you wake up, but the person I've researched is very different from the young teenager that made endless YouTube videos with his friends that harassed his fellow classmates to like their Facebook posts. He did a lot of research, daw, I've watched about ten of them. I should get residuals for having to watch that. Some of them were really terrible. All of them were filled with joy and humor and heart and all the things that make up any good artist. That teenager then took his video editing abilities and parlayed it into political work, first for Senator Warren, then for Ed Markey.
That's true.
There's a little bit of a.
Discrepancy between the person you've been demonstrated through actions and the person you feel you are in this conversation with me. Yeah, yeah, how do you make sense of that gap?
I have a hard time making sense of it. Yeah, with Warren. You know, I have never talked about this stuff publicly, so it's kind of it's kind of interesting to talk about some processing in real time. Since I was a kid, I knew that there were like two ways to get out of poverty. One was like becoming a basketball star. And I really suck at basketball. I can't dribble for shit.
I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, you won't be invited to our basketball.
Oh my god, it would have been you know, I was never trying to be MJ. But maybe the guy on the end of the bench who does dances every time someone makes a three pointer. I could get that kind of role for a couple of million bucks a year.
You know those players are also good too.
Yeah, they're good too. It's just not the best. You know, if you look at a resume, you only see success. But to get to those points, you have to take such great risk and leap into the unknown and fall fall a very long time, which you have, which I have. But then there's being these moments that I've climbed up to prominence, and I've met with Warren and she liked my stuff and made a speech. He went viral and built movements. You know, I built the Green New Deal movement with the Sunrise movement. I can't explain it. I just see myself as somebody who is in touch with my own soul that understands that this body's just a vessel for a limited time on Earth, and I try to stay connected to something, maybe cosmic, some voice that tells me where to go. I don't know how I'm here in front of you. How this kid who walked barefoot is now has marched into the nation's capital and given words to the senators, has put words into the mouths of characters who made hit TV shows, and is now a leader for this Hollywood labor movement. I don't understand any of it. I really, it doesn't make any sense to me. I just know I'm here. I just try to focus. I'm here, I'm present, I'm looking at you. You're another human being. Your life is just as complex as mine. And if I get too caught up and how I'm here, why I'm doing this, I think it kind of creates a certain level of narcissism. And I think my gift is to listen to people far more than I'm doing right now because it's an interview. But I'm an organizer. I've gone around this country and I've heard people share their heart stories, stories from their soul, share who they really are, what they really care about, what future they want to see. And if you've heard that enough, you are not just you. You're so many people that you're holding, that you're carrying, that you're speaking for. And that's all I am. I'm Alex o'keef, that's my name, But beyond that, I'm all the love and the belief and the faith and the militant optimism that I've seen in this world.
Now that you've made it through all that you've described, and you're here in this present moment where there is a historic strike and there is a potential for a new kind of industry. Yeah, you have decided to run for a seat on the WGA West board, pledging that as a leader of this story union.
You're right.
I will meet you in the valley. I will risk my career for you. I will say things no one in Hollywood is allowed to say. Well, the floor is yours if you want to deliver your stump speech.
The question coming out of this strike is how do we turn this moment into a movement? And I think if you look at my history, I've been able to do that somehow, some way, every single time. It's very abnormal for someone of my relatively low rank in Hollywood, a staff writer of one season of a television show, to run for any position of leadership. And I would have not planned to run for such a position if it wasn't for every time every time I go on the picket line, people pushed me to There's something they see in me which I think is courage, and courage is usually in short supply in this business. Everyone runs scared. I won the WJ West Award. I had no money, negative bank account. But what was really special is I got to meet my screenwriting hero, Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Eternal Sunshine The Spotless Mind. He was winning the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Guild, and he gave this really rousing speech manifesto really and.
I think a speech so good that perhaps we should take a listen to it. Wow, you have this pulled out there.
It is twenty years ago.
I'm in the back of an auditorium watching a seminar called how to Pitch. One by one, supplicants approach a microphone at the foot of the stage, on which sits a panel of experts, producers, executives, ETC's no writers. The first student of the pitch speaks, voice shaking. We open on a barge in the middle of Stop you've lost me already. Students of the pitch too, voice shaking. Young man falls from the sky into no. No, Jesus, come on, and so it goes. These nervous young people step up to be shot down. Sadistic I think payback for the way the panelists were once treated. I think garbage. I think training. I think we writers are trained by the business. We are trained to believe what we do is secondary to what they do. We are trained to do the bidding of people who are motivated not by curiosity but by protecting their jobs, and we lose sight of what our work is. It is not to contribute to their fortunes or our own. It is not to please them, or critics, or even the audiences who have also been trained. Our work is to reflect the world, say what is true in the face of so much lying. The world is beautiful, The world is impossibly complicated, and we have the opportunity to explore that. If we give that up for the carrot, then we might as well be the executives because we have become their minions. I have dropped the ball, wasted years seeking the approval of people with money. Don't get trapped in their world of box office numbers. You don't work for them. You don't work for the world of box office numbers. You work for the world. Don't worry about how to pitch. Don't pitch, be nervous, be vulnerable, Just make your story honest and tell it. They've tricked us into thinking we can't do it without them, but the truth is they cannot do anything of value without us. Thank you for this award. I'm so grateful for the opportunity it's afforded me to reflect on what it is that's important to me about the work that we do. Thank you.
Yeah. Our work is to reflect the world, say what is true in the face of so much lying. And I was crying listening to that speech. I was at my lowest. I looked better than I've ever looked before. I looked like a million bucks. I knew I had to look like a million bucks to say I deserve to be here.
You were crying now watching it, Yeah, I had to.
It brings up a lot to think.
You were holding it back because I was in the room.
Yeah, you know, trying to keep it professional, but it means crying is not unprofessional. You're right, You're right, And that's the culture I want to change in Hollywood. But I became a master of political optics for many politicians and movements. And when you become a master at optics, you see how much is false about our world, about the people who run our world, how much is just pure pr And I've become so sickened by the lying. I feel like everyone's lying to each other and to ourselves, lying about the pain that we're holding. I cannot operate in a world like that. I have to operate in truth. I after the award show, there was Charlie Kaufman and Jordan Peel and the Daniels. They are all talking to each other, and I was just standing a couple of steps away looking at probably if you ask me my heroes in film working right now, it'd be those cats. And the Daniels came up to me and congratulated me, and then I got the time to speak to Charlie Kaufman. I showed him the award and I said, you know, Eternal Sunshine, that was the first screenplay I ever read, and you know, he was a classic nervous writer. But what he told me, the only advice he gave me is just tell the truth. He looked in my eyes, he could say, I can tell that you are truthful person. He said, just don't lose that, because I lost that for so many years, and I thought it would bring me more success, and I think it would have had just as many failures if I just stay true to who I was and what I cared about. And that was really the moment I decided that I'm going to speak out for this strike. Because everyone at that award show was a WJ award show, was talking about do you think we're going to go on strike? Do you think we're going to go on strike? That was the moment that I said, you know, let me try to have a different kind of career and I just tell the truth about this industry that produces all culture. I say, who's actually running it? I organize my fellow workers to reshape it. And most people believed I was completely delusional say this. I know my manager thought I had gone off the deep end of revolution in Hollywood. And now we are in week twelve of this strike, and I've heard workers from across the world reach out to me ask me, how are you doing this? How can I unionize my workplace? To me, maybe I won't ever work in Hollywood again. Well, what's important to me is that when I had the power, when I had that torch, when I had that megaphone, I did something that other people wouldn't do. And I'm really trying to change the structures of Hollywood. I want to smash the monopolies that rule Hollywood. Six corporations own ninety percent of the media, and what do they do with that power? They replicate their own power. They keep people on the one percent powerful, and they keep us all on the ninety nine percent struggling in poverty. And I think artists have a very special, important responsibility for that struggle.
Pretty good speech.
I wasn't even really trying to give a speech.
You know, as we go, you've alluded to these six corporations that own ninety percent of the media. In that speech we just heard, Kaufman makes explicit reference to them. You've described the fighter that you are, But I want to sit with the fight itself because this industry is increasingly run by tech titans, thinking about Apple, Amazon, Netflix that you have said have very little interest in the art form. In private conversations I've had with members of SAG and the WGA, there's an overwhelming sense that the people at the top of this industry, unlike in years past, unlike in seven eight, unlike in nineteen sixty, that these people have little to no respect for the delicate artist ecosystem that they preside over. Essentially, these are tech people, not film people. How then do you begin negotiating with figureheads that are largely disinterested in the form itself? How do you come back to the negotiating table when the people on the other side of it are not even sure there should be a table that call as Bob Ager has film and television potentially not core to their company, how do you bring them back? And how do you get out of this?
They have utterly failed the PR war, I mean, we've destroyed them in the PR war. Investors actually came out and said that they kind of see all these CEOs as idiots. They believe they're failing miserably, and they're angry.
That was in the Ankler.
That was in the Ankler recently, and investors are siding with the unions, which is not usually the case, but they understand that this was seen as a white collar career, not a middle class career. And the more you degrade the workforce, the more you degrade your product. And I think that consciousness is just starting to awaken. But I'm not a WJ leader at this point on the board of directors, I'm not in the negotiating committee. So I cannot say what is going to break them, but I do know what they fear the most. What they fear the most is a working class population that knows their power and is willing to shut down the economy until they get what they deserve. My goal is to unite the labor movement and make the Writers Guild the tip of the spear for the labor movement to mobilize the greatest storytellers. There's nothing radical about this contract. It's just trying to get basic compensations so people don't live below the poverty line while working on giant TV shows. Oftentimes, in labor you have to go through a period of strikes, which are very painful to go through. In order to establish a long period of labor peace, I believe we have to stay strike ready as a union. We have to build our capacity for strikes. We have to go on strike and collaboration with other unions across the country. That is what we have to move towards if we ever want to be able to stop this endless backslide into fascism and capitalist rule. If we want to have a democracy of people like you and I, workers, regular people instead of a democracy of just ten guys at the top. We have to democratize our workplaces and it cannot stop with me getting a six picture deal with Disney Plus. At the end of this, it has to be every worker in America unified.
Plainly, do you think the WGA has ever won one of these deals?
No? No, I think that nineteen sixty was the most visionary contract win we ever got. But we've also never waged a strike in this media age, and I think that's what's very different. In past strikes, you would never hear from a writer like myself, a staff writer, sharing their story. But now we have the access to social media that we can build a narrative more powerful than anything at the multi million dollar pr firms that I'm sure they're using can build. So we can wage a narrative war that can hopefully bring them back to the table. But this is a hard time. They've told us publicly that their strategy is to starve us out. Their strategy is to explicitly push this strike so long that writers like myself, precarious young writers have to lose their homes, have to lose their apartments.
The quote was in Deadline from one studio executive. The endgame is to allow things to drag out until union members start losing their apartments and losing their homes. Another insider called this approach a cruel but necessary evil. Yeah.
When they are admitting that they are evil, I mean, where do you go from there in a negotiation the people who are running the largest corporations believe that they're evil. Is necessary. We have to wage a revolution of values in this country and in every country to say that no evil is not necessary. We have to build a better future, a vision that makes sense to people, a vision that is accessible, a vision which we all share the wealth that we create. It's not impossible. It is possible.
I say what you mean by militant optimism that you called it earlier. Yeah, to close, at the beginning of this talk, I quoted from a nineteen sixty report from the AP And you asked me, mostly as a joke, but you asked me, and what happened next? Did the studios actually close? What really happened next? And I told you that I would tell you what happened, and I will. The actors and the writers made serious concessions. The same was true in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, It's true in twenty seventeen. That's why there was no strike. Each time, it typically came back to an uptick in minimums, some extra money to pension plan, some improvement on residuals, mild mild protection against newfangled technologies. But in each instance the unions did relent. And so I'm asking you, because you have seemed and sounded pretty intractable on your demands, do you really believe you're going to break the historical cycle. I think that this is a new generation. There's a new wave in Hollywood, and this is a wave of change makers in cycle breakers like they've never seen before. This is a wave of young people who marched in twenty twenty against the state, against the police, and yeah, we didn't win. Then if you look at the history of movements, then MLKA was a failure. You know, he was trying to build the poor People's campaign and he was killed before he could finish his vision. If you look at most movements in a small period of time, you would say, wow, there's never been success. You know, America was built by the one percent for the one percent. But this story is still unwritten.
We do not know the future. This future is something that we always create. That's why I have militant optimism. Is it likely that we will win? Is it likely that we will get everything that we want? No, it's not likely. But it's also not likely that this kid from Florida who walked around barefoot would write for Senators, build the Green New Deal movement and send in front of you Emmy nominated a WGA winner. So will we win?
We have to.
Will we win everything in this contract? Probably not. But this is the beginning of a movement. And we have never seen a Hollywood movement like the one that I am building. The one that I'm building alongside my fellow workers in the WGA, alongside actors, alongside truck drivers, alongside teachers and hospital workers. What I am trying to organize and mobilize my fellow writers to do is to imagine a better world, to write that better world, to put it into our art. And it is planting seeds in the minds of so many and so whatever contract we get this year, that is not the end of this story. You know, I'm only twenty nine years old. This is my second year in the business. My first year was the Bear. My second year is a strike, get ready for my third year. That's all I can tell you. I don't even know what's going to happen. If you truly believe in a better world, that better world can come. It's not inevitable. It takes labor. But we are the workers. The new world will be born from our bricks. We have the ability to build the world that we've always wanted to live in. It starts with the mind, it starts with the soul, it starts with the belief that something new is possible under the sun.
Well, then I think it's true. You've certainly lived a life of making the impossible possible. And I hope that your new story that you're telling of a better world or more just world. I hope it's the one that wins out. And I have to imagine if it's ever going to change, it's going to.
Be because of people like you.
So I thank you for that. Thank you, I thank you for the fight. Appreciate it, alex Okaife solidarity forever.
I wish you luck. And that's our show.
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. If you want to go above and beyond. Sharing the show on social media with the friend really is the best way for new listeners to find the podcast. I want to give a special thanks this week to the Academy Library and of course our guest Alex O'Keefe. To learn more about his work or how to support the WGA will include resources in our show notes at talk easypod dot com. For more conversations like this one, I'd recommend Sarah Silverman, John Burnhal, Congressman Maxwell Frost, Sarah Nelson, Delores Werta, Asted Herndon, Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, and Anita Hill. To hear those and more Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easy pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs that come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with the inimitable fran Liebowitz, you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop. As always, Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jenni sa Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlyn Dryden. Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our assistant editors are Clarice Gavara and c J. Mitchell. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by Christian Chenoy. Photographs today are by Julius Chew. Video and graphics are by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. I'd also like to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Schnars, Kerri Brody, David Glover, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Isabella Navarez, Kira Posey, Tera Machado, Maya Knig, Jason Gambrel, Justine lang Lee, Tom Malotte, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso, Thank you for listening to talk. Easy to see you back here next Sunday with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so on.