The AMPTP walked away from the table.

From AP:

"With SAG's continued adherence to unreasonable demands in both new and traditional media, continuing negotiations at this time does not make sense," the producers said in a statement.

The guild responded in a statement by saying the producers' decision to end talks after 18 days was unfortunate.

Nikki Finke puts it like this:

A favorite negotiating tactic of Nick Counter's is to repeatedly offer nothing new until each guild is forced to negotiate against itself by continually reducing its demands. This is exactly what was done here. Already, just in three weeks' time, SAG has softened its proposals: for instance, it's agreed not to double residuals from DVD sales, instead asking for what would effectively be a 15% hike in DVD pay, as well as scaled back its 50% pay increase for guest stars on TV shows.

How incompetent do you have to be to cause two major strikes within a few months time? Incompetent enough to work for the government. Err...run the government.

The complete list is here.

Most notable (ahem) and only feature writer is John Ridley, writer of Three Kings and U-Turn.

The word is the SAG backed off doubling DVD residuals and now looks to be asking for only a 15% increase. And they also caved on pay for guest stars - take that barely working actors!

This is an anonymous quote on HollywoodReporter.com regarding the guest star pay:

"That's still on the table," one source said. "There's still not a whole lot that's off the table."

Great. Looks like we'll find out if there will be a strike around the same time we'll find out who's going to head the Democratic ticket. Grr cliffhangers.

It's been two weeks with SAG and nothing. AFTRA is sitting down next week. But here's the good news from the LAT:

Since negotiations began this month, the atmosphere has been cordial, in contrast to the rancorous negotiations between studios and writers.

We offer it's because they're acting.

After the 1988 writer's strike the studios were inundated with original screenplays that writer's got to while on strike.

According to a report today in Variety, this time it didn't happen:

Feature development execs were bracing for a deluge of feature spec scripts to flood the market after the 100-day writers strike wrapped in mid-February. But the storm, if it's brewing at all, has yet to hit, so the majors are chasing after books and magazine articles harder than they have in years.

Why is this? Well we asked NCIS writer and producer Steve Binder that question and he gave us this answer:

i do have some theories as to why the script deluge never happened (having just found out from you it never happened):

1) we were picketing (see #3) - it was incredibly tiring, especially at the beginning -- who the fuck had energy left over to write?

2) but we were still writing -- emails, youtube videos, websites, comments in blogs -- who the fuck had energy left over to write something dramatic?

3) we were united -- the AMPTP were so fucking wrong on this it wasn't funny (from the writer's POV, at least) - thus we, the writers, were united like never before -- who the fuck would want to write for these guys?

4) the AMPTP, being soooo fucking wrong on this, possibly left us with a feeling that this really couldn't go on that long (and it actually didn't) -- thus, who would want to start something they couldn't finish? (like a TV writer starting a feature spec or pilot and then just having to drop it when they had to go balls-to-the-walls after the strike to get back on track)

5) my guess is a lot of feature writers kept on doing what they were doing -- working on the job they had or the spec they were writing -- so when the strike ended, things started back up like normal. if these guys weren't writing, the material coming in shouldn't have been "light" it should have been zero.

but mostly 1,2,3.

And then added:

and let people know they can watch reruns of the latest episodes of ncis for 17 days without the writer seeing a fucking dime -- in violation of a 100 years of creator-royalty precedent.

That's here.

Any other theories? Send them over!

Feel that chill in the air this morning?

That was chief negotiator Doug Allen and president Alan Rosenberg sitting down with AMPTP's chief, Nick Counter at their headquarters in Sherman Oaks.

SAG wants residuals on new media and more of a cut of the DVD/home video revenue. Deja vu? Re-run? Impending doom? Maybe.

LAT did a piece. Hollywood Reporter did one. Variety ditto.

NY Times did the only story focusing on Alan Rosenberg making him out to be a fist-pumping militant:

"Aside from my family, I have two great loves in my life: acting and the fight for social justice," he said. "Oh yes, we are very serious."

and

The son of a swing-era musician, Mr. Rosenberg was a war protester in the 1960s, at one point joining the Black Panthers.

Which leads us to conclude that he's no Reagan.

Sharon Waxman is following this story over at her blog:

Forget the Pellicano trial. The documents emerging in another case in downtown L.A. raise serious questions of dubious dealings between Hollywood's labor unions and the studios, on the eve of negotiations over a new contract.

A lawsuit brought last fall against the Screen Actors Guild by actor

Ken Osmond, a member of the guild who played Eddie Haskell on "Leave it to Beaver" in the 1950s, has revealed the existence of a secret 2002 agreement between the studios and the guild, granting the major studios half of the money collected abroad on behalf of actors from the sale of DVDs, blank VHS tapes and cable transmissions. Half!

European governments levy taxes on such sales, and allot this money to writers, directors and actors. But SAG, just like the directors guild and the writers guild, has generously chosen to share this money with the studios.

All tips and comments are welcomed at her site WaxWorld.

WGA members on both coasts voted for the new contract. 93.6 percent of 4,060 votes cast voted in favor--and they'll have until 2011 to regret it.

Harlan Ellison rips the proposed WGA contract into tiny little pieces, lights the shreds on fire and then uses a grenade launcher to send the glowing ashes back to Guild leadership. Summing up? He's pissed:

THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A SHIT DEAL. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse's asses who kept mumbling "lessgo bac'ta work' over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer. But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla shit clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.

Here's Ellison ranting earlier:

He's dreamy. Frothing, but dreamy.