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University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson Suggested citation: Curtin, Michael and Sanson, Kevin (eds.). Voices of labor: creativity, craft, and conflict in global Hollywood. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017 DOI: https://doi. org/10.1525/luminos.26 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Curtin, Michael, editor. | Sanson, Kevin, editor. Title: Voices of labor : creativity, craft, and conflict in global Hollywood / Michael Curtin, Kevin Sanson. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016053357 (print) | LCCN 2016056134 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520295438 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520968196 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture industry—Employees—Interviews. | Motion picture industry—California—Los Angeles. | Mass media and globalization. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.L28 C87 2017 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.L28 (ebook) | DDC 384/.80979494—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053357 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii 1. Listening to Labor 1 by Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson Company Town 18 2. Editors’ Introduction 18 3. Mara Brock Akil, showrunner 22 4. Tom Schulman, screenwriter 33 5. Allison Anders, director 45 6. Lauren Polizzi, art director 56 7. Mary Jane Fort, costume designer 68 8. Anonymous, makeup artist 80 9. Stephen Lighthill, cinematographer 90 10. Calvin Starnes, grip 100 11. Steve Nelson, sound recordist 113 12. Rob Matsuda, musician 126 Global Machine 136 13. Editors’ Introduction 136 14. Anonymous, studio production executive 140 vi Contents 15. David Minkowski, service producer 146 16. Adam Goodman, service producer 158 17. Stephen Burt, production manager 169 18. Belle Doyle, location manager 179 19. Wesley Hagan, location manager 190 Fringe City 200 20. Editors’ Introduction 200 21. Scott Ross, VFX manager 204 22. Dave Rand, VFX artist 215 23. Mariana Acuña-Acosta, VFX artist 226 24. Daniel Lay, VFX artist 238 25. Steve Kaplan, union official 250 26. Dusty Kelly, union official 261 Appendix: Interview Schedule 273 Acknowledgments Over the past few years, globalization and corporate conglomeration have been signature concerns of the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Mellichamp Global Dynamics Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Our multifaceted endeavors have been generously supported by the inspiring philanthropy of Marcy Carsey, Dick Wolf, and Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp. One of them once told us, “It’s actually easier to make money than to give it away. You have to find the right people and then give them room to run.” Hopefully, we were the right people and ran in the right direction. We owe a great deal of thanks to friends and colleagues at the Carsey-Wolf Center. David Marshall, Melvin Oliver, John Majewski, Constance Penley, and Ronald E. Rice have provided enthusiastic encouragement throughout this project’s life cycle. Sheila Sullivan, Natalie Fawcett, and Alyson Aaris are an incredible trio whose resilient administrative support is matched only by their unwavering friendship. We especially want to thank some of our closest collaborators at the Media In- dustries Project. Jennifer Holt and Karen Petruska have been key allies throughout this project, and our ideas are much richer because of them. Likewise, we never conducted an interview without first studying the detailed research dossiers pre- pared by John Vanderhoef and Juan Llamas-Rodriguez. Thank you for keeping us from embarrassing ourselves. And thank you too, John, for a range of editorial contributions to the final product. We also want to recognize our collaborators at the University of California Press and the Luminos open-access platform: Raina Polivka, Mary Francis, Aimée Goggins, Paige MacKay and Francisco Reinking. Thanks to Erin Lennon, Rebecca vii viii Acknowledgments Epstein, and Lindsey Westbrook for copyediting support, and to Lorena Thomp- kins for transcription services. Most of all, we are grateful to the screen media workers who took time from their very busy schedules to lend their voices to this endeavor. We learned a great deal about their creativity, craftsmanship, and professionalism. They also helped us understand the very significant changes that have taken place in the media in- dustries over the last thirty years. Hopefully, readers will follow their accounts carefully and take seriously the complexities they reveal about conglomeration and globalization in the entertainment industry. We dedicate this book to the labor, creativity, and craft behind these voices in motion picture industries around the world. 1 Listening to Labor Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson At a time when anyone can be a producer, creator, or YouTube performer, we nev- ertheless spend more hours watching professionally produced feature films and television programs than ever before. We are also awash in media coverage of movie premieres, television finales, celebrity gossip, box office data, TV ratings, and social media metrics. Although some critics contend that we are currently experiencing a dramatic democratization of media forms, audiences remain en- amored with “traditional” mass media and the seemingly creative and enchant- ing environs of Hollywood. Indeed, peeking behind the screen is a foundational component of entertainment news and variety shows, featuring interviews with marquee talent who offer insights about the artistic choices and backstage antics that have shaped some of our favorite entertainments. We may live in an era in- creasingly dominated by do-it-yourself media, but our fascination with top-line talent endures. Behind the glitz and glamour, however, offscreen workers invest untold hours crafting scripts, designing costumes, and rigging sets. They also conjure up mes- merizing special effects and manage the mind-boggling logistics of production. Much of their work is organized according to industrial principles that econo- mize at every step in a sprawling creative process, constantly seeking efficiencies and accelerating workflows. Although strategic decisions are made on studio lots in Southern California, the labor process now extends across a vast network of production hubs in the United States, Canada, and Europe, among other locales. Indeed, Hollywood now employs a global mode of production run by massive media conglomerates that mobilize hundreds, sometimes thousands, of workers for each feature film or television series. Yet these workers and their labor remain 1 2 Chapter 1 largely invisible to the general audience. In fact, this has been a signal character- istic of Hollywood style for more than a hundred years: everything that matters happens on-screen, not off. Consequently, when it comes to movies and television, the voices heard most often are those belonging to talent and corporate executives. Those we hear least are the voices of labor, and it’s that silence that we aim to re- dress in the following collection of interviews. Of course this void isn’t unique to Hollywood or to the United States. In most parts of the world and in most industries, expressions of pride, aspiration, or frus- tration from laborers about their working lives are rarely the subject of much at- tention. It was therefore striking that WCFL, a pioneer of early radio, sought to overcome this deficit when it took to the airwaves in 1926 as the “Voice of Labor.” Inspired and funded by a federation of Chicago labor unions, the station thrived in the face of intense adversity before succumbing to commercial pressures and a right-wing political backlash during the late 1940s.1 Interestingly, Studs Terkel—an activist actor, author, and raconteur who was blacklisted during the “red scare”— embraced this legacy when he joined another Chicago radio station and launched one of the most legendary careers in American broadcasting. He did so by lis- tening, and listening intently, to everyday stories about jobs, lifestyles, and enter- tainment but also about racism, housing, and migration. His radio interlocutors proved so eloquent that during the late 1950s a national publisher encouraged him to edit and publish transcripts of his conversations, which led to a string of books, some of them best-sellers, one of them a Pulitzer Prize winner. Most beguiling was a 1974 book with a simple title, Working, and a deceptively mundane