As strike rages on, Conan, Kimmel pressured to work
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Jimmy Kimmel
STRUCK DUMB – WATCH YOUR MOUTH: “This is going to be a little bit loose tonight because I’m a member of the writers’ guild and I’m on strike,” said Jimmy Kimmel in lieu of a written monologue at the top of Sunday night’s American Music Awards. “So I’m on strike. It may not look like it but I’m striking right now in my heart.” Roger Catlin, TV critic for the Hartford Courant, described the comedian and late night chat host faking fights and trying to get audience members to dance – anything to avoid telling something that might sound like a pre-written joke or any other product of a member of the Writers Guild of America.
“It was worse on the presenters,” observed Catlin, “who were often left to say just ‘the nominations are’ and rip open the envelope (and some of them couldn’t even do that very well).”
Things are getting weird fast with the Hollywood writers’ strike moving into its third week, and while the big question is just when late night hosts like Kimmel will return to the air without written monologues, the first cry of “scab!” has been apparently leveled against daytime talk host Ellen DeGeneres, who left her show for just one day before being told to return to work or be in breach of contract.
She cut the opening monologue from her first show back, but started the show the next day with what the comedienne’s representatives are calling an ad-libbed routine, done without any contributions by striking writers – including herself, a WGA member, like virtually every other talk show host working today.
The WGA East charged DeGeneres with performing “struck work,” according to a story in the Los Angeles Times business section, while her representatives begged to disagree. “”Ellen continues to comply with the strike rules and the terms of the WGA MBA, while at the same time honor her contractual obligation as a host through AFTRA and honor her contractual obligations to deliver original episodes to 220 stations,” read the statement, which added that the star’s decision to return was done with the jobs of 135 staff and crew members in mind.
This is no small consideration, as 50 production staff of Saturday Night Live were put on what Variety is calling an “unpaid hiatus” last Friday – one of those euphemisms that actually amplifies instead of diminishes the painful fact of being fired for something you didn’t do.
Second-string late night hosts Kimmel and Conan O’Brien are being pressured to get back to work by their networks, according to a story in the New York Post, and are more likely to do so than David Letterman or Jay Leno as “both late-night hosts are more beholden to their networks” – which means that their chances of getting Leno and Letterman’s jobs one day depend on playing nice right now. NBC has apparently suggested that they’ll air O’Brien’s show in Leno’s 11:30pm slot if he produces new shows, a sort of brief, early promotion for O’Brien, who’s supposed to take over Leno’s show in 2009. If this happens, Leno will probably start bringing steaks instead of donuts to writers on the Hollywood picket line.
