Nich’s Counter Punch (P.O.W.!)
Written by Nicholas Counter
Written by Nicholas Counter
November 12
In order to continue our public smiley face, my AMPTP colleagues have put the muzzle on me. I know you can tell that the choleric statements I’m making in the press is just a mild facsimile of a shadow of the strong feelings I’m keeping inside. So, on the free advice of counsel (who would be worth much less if he were writing a "written" opinion), I’m starting this non-video diary blog thing because I can say what I feel in that writing is so easy you don’t need a whiny millionaire writer to do it. Here I can take those gloves off and not have to speak through rose colored glasses. Okay, then, as they say in the movies,
"Fade INT."
"Fade INT."
On a date that will ever live in Famy, the commie writers walked off their cushy jobs one week ago, shouting the slogan, "Pencils down!" Well, the laugh of the joke is on them. Movies and TV shows don’t need pencils . . . haven’t they heard of typewriters? See that’s the thing about writers. The thing is they don’t know things. So, I say to them, go ahead and put your pencils down. We’ll put our foot down and break your pencils and then that will be that’s that.
November 19
I just had to laugh – even if it was in a "that’s not so funny" way – about the way those fictional writers keep saying, and by the way, it helps if you read this sentence that’s about to come up with kind of scrunching your nose up so that it sounds like what writers sounds like when they’re complaining which is pretty much all the time or more, "If the producers agreed to all our demands, it would only cost them $200 million dollars." Only? (slanted writing mine) Let me give you an example that why only is not only the wrong adjeverbative to use, it’s also wrong. $200 million dollars over an imaginary 3-year contract would work out to be $100 million dollars a year (rounding the $200,000,000 off to $300,000,000 to eliminate fractions) that it would cost us. Disney or ABC (one of which owns the other, I forget which, but it doesn’t matter), one of the proudest and cutest names in the business thanks to Mickey and Donald and Uncle Walt (who liked unions about as much as he liked Jews) would have to saddle for their share around $8 million dollars a year which works out, for argument’s sake to close to $10 million dollars, which accounting for inflation might even be more. Now, let’s also say that someone has to pay for that, but who? Not the stockholders, they’ve already been pretty well fucked. The executives? Don’t make me laugh! Okay, take Robert Iger who hovers at the top at Disney. Well, last year, he only made about $52 million dollars, but, and here’s the something or other, if you subtract his stock options, he only made $22 million dollars! Let me spell that out for you: $-2-2-m-i-l-l-i-o-n-$. If you take what the grubby gluttonous writers want out of his salary, that would only leave him (okay, wait, let’s round his salary up to $20 million less the $10 million writers’ extortion . . . Jesus, I’m getting dizzy!) with a paltry $10 million dollars a year. I ask you, how is he supposed to live on that?! So, it’s clear that when the dust clears, it leaves only the writers to pay for the writers’ raises. And you want to ask those greedy little bastards? In which case, I’m forced to say to you, "Good luck!"
November 25
One of the best-kept, little-known open secrets in the industry is that Walgreen’s is a great place to buy popular DVDs at bargain prices, which is why I recently found myself there on an otherwise beautiful Saturday afternoon yesterday. I wanted to get a copy of the vastly underrated thriller Basic Instinct 2, sequel to the eponymous Basic Instinct 1, and not just to check into how fifteen years of inflation affected Sharon Stone’s priceless money shot.
I just had to laugh – even if it was in a "that’s not so funny" way – about the way those fictional writers keep saying, and by the way, it helps if you read this sentence that’s about to come up with kind of scrunching your nose up so that it sounds like what writers sounds like when they’re complaining which is pretty much all the time or more, "If the producers agreed to all our demands, it would only cost them $200 million dollars." Only? (slanted writing mine) Let me give you an example that why only is not only the wrong adjeverbative to use, it’s also wrong. $200 million dollars over an imaginary 3-year contract would work out to be $100 million dollars a year (rounding the $200,000,000 off to $300,000,000 to eliminate fractions) that it would cost us. Disney or ABC (one of which owns the other, I forget which, but it doesn’t matter), one of the proudest and cutest names in the business thanks to Mickey and Donald and Uncle Walt (who liked unions about as much as he liked Jews) would have to saddle for their share around $8 million dollars a year which works out, for argument’s sake to close to $10 million dollars, which accounting for inflation might even be more. Now, let’s also say that someone has to pay for that, but who? Not the stockholders, they’ve already been pretty well fucked. The executives? Don’t make me laugh! Okay, take Robert Iger who hovers at the top at Disney. Well, last year, he only made about $52 million dollars, but, and here’s the something or other, if you subtract his stock options, he only made $22 million dollars! Let me spell that out for you: $-2-2-m-i-l-l-i-o-n-$. If you take what the grubby gluttonous writers want out of his salary, that would only leave him (okay, wait, let’s round his salary up to $20 million less the $10 million writers’ extortion . . . Jesus, I’m getting dizzy!) with a paltry $10 million dollars a year. I ask you, how is he supposed to live on that?! So, it’s clear that when the dust clears, it leaves only the writers to pay for the writers’ raises. And you want to ask those greedy little bastards? In which case, I’m forced to say to you, "Good luck!"
November 25
One of the best-kept, little-known open secrets in the industry is that Walgreen’s is a great place to buy popular DVDs at bargain prices, which is why I recently found myself there on an otherwise beautiful Saturday afternoon yesterday. I wanted to get a copy of the vastly underrated thriller Basic Instinct 2, sequel to the eponymous Basic Instinct 1, and not just to check into how fifteen years of inflation affected Sharon Stone’s priceless money shot.
There it was and I was exciting to buy it for 5¢ less than the $20 dollars it would cost me at another place when my hand (the one that was caressing the anti-piracy shrink-wrapped wrapping) just froze when I realized that 3¢ of my money was going to the sniveling writers – that’s almost the entire amount I was otherwise saving. You can argue to the cows come home how much the writers were responsible for the success of the movie (but not with the writers who you wouldn’t want to argue with if it meant talking to them), but whatever you say to who, the scoundrels Barish, Bean, and Eszterhas are each making a penny on each and every DVD sold! Let me just say that needless to say I almost didn’t buy it. Finally, I felt I had to because the studio, in a nonexistent instance of an error, didn’t send out screeners of this modern masterpiece (if they had, I could have gotten one of my many DGA friends to burn a copy for me). The point is, I was steaming.
Just to see how much steaming I could do, I decided to walk around Walgreen’s and see what the Scribes of Frankenstein (ha, ha, ha. I made that up!!!) could buy with their ill gotten gains. At first glance through the entire store, not much, but then I didn’t have to look far (only approximately about 2 feet to be exact) to see a display of these giant Snickers bars. And when I say "giant," I mean BIG. I mean just one of them will last you through both parts of the Basic Instinct trilogy. And guess what they cost? Come on, just guess! No, not three bucks . . . ready? $1.29!!! That’s a lot of chocolate, nuts, caramel, and creamy nougat for just $1.29. Anyway, the point is that at $3.00, the writers would only have to sell a hundred DVDs to be able to share one of these giant Snickers. Not so bad, you say, but what about at Walgreen’s? The math is a little harder due to dealing with decimals, but it still comes out to only 43 DVDs for the writers to each get a third of the biggest Snickers I think I’ve ever seen. Small wonder you don’t need to wonder why AMPTP will continue to fight for our rights.
