In the 2008 Special Issue of the Screen Actors Guild magazine SCREEN ACTOR,
on the last page under the heading SNAP SHOT,  there is a photograph from 1963 of Stan Laurel receiving the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award from Charlton Heston.

Heston, who was then SAG’s 2nd Vice President, and Dana Andrews,  SAG’s President  in 1963, had driven out to Laurel’s home in Santa Monica to give him the award.

Being 1963,  they didn’t have to worry about traffic.

Heston would himself become SAG’s president in 1966 and remain so until 1971,  the year in which he would receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

But,  now,  in the present,   traffic is always a factor driving out to Santa Monica,  and the Screen Actors Guild can not locate the estates of these distinguished actors,  or,  even,  come  up with a wild guess as towho might,  in some way,  be related to Charlton Heston.

Although their films have not disappeared but,  in fact,  remain very much a part of the world’s language  – Stan Laurel’s comedies with Oliver Hardy, Dana Andrews work in such films as THE  OXBOW INCIDENT,   LAURA,  and THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES,  and Charlton Heston as BEN HUR,  as Moses in THE TEN COMMANDENTS,  and as the heroes of PLANET OF THE APES,  55 DAYS AT PEKING and TOUCH OF EVIL –  and are still pulling in revenue all over the world,  it is because of SAG’s secret agreements with the AMPTP,  IFTA,  and banks in the Netherlands,  that it is to SAG’s benefit to consider the possibility that these men only existed on film,  and didn’t live real lives,  or ever have real families.

In a recent campaign mailing from a candidate for the SAG board,  there was the claim that board members on that candidate’s slate “have over 170 years of SAG Board experience and have spent countless hours negotiating SAG contracts and serving on SAG committees.”

Then,  surely,  one of them could go on the record about what SAG calls "foreign royalties."

But invoking “over 170 years of SAG Board experience and countless hours negotiating SAG contracts” does not,  however,  mean to imply that any such board member is foreign royalties-literate and knows the details of or even knows of the SAG/AMPTP Foreign Levy Agreement.

____________________

Although,  for many many years now,  there have been SAG representatives, paid generously from our dues to focus on neighboring rights,  to address amendments to foreign copyright laws,  which designate performers as co-authors of audiovisual works,  and to attend intellectual property conferences around the world,  there has never been,  in eighteen years,  a single report to us of their activities,  not one mention ever of what they are doing in our name. Not a single sentence on sag.org or in HOLLYWOOD CALL SHEET or SCREEN ACTOR.   No disclosure whatsoever.    We don’t even know their names. Why? Because they have been systematically chipping away at rights that we have never been told we have. 

QUIZ QUESTION:  Could any of you name the international organization of which a paid SAG Senior Advisor is  Vice President,  representing SAG?

I didn’t think so.

We are currently in negotiations with the AMPTP but what kind of real negotiations can we ever have with the AMPTP if there is a secret agreement, negotiated and,  several times,  renegotiated during the last 18 years,  in which the monies we are fighting for,  already ours under the Berne Convention,  are being diverted to the AMPTP.

Here,  from the
NOTICE OF REMOVAL OF ACTION UNDER 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)
filed by  LATHAM & WATKINS LLP
                 EmestJ. Getto (Bar No. 55662)
                 Daniel Scott Schecter (Bar No. 171472)
                 Attorneys for Defendant Screen Actors Guild, Inc. on           
                                                   FILED                                
                                                   CLERK, US DISTRICT COURT
                                                   OCT 30 2007  
is evidence of the SAG/AMPTP Foreign Levy Agreement:   

At all relevant times, SAG has had a collective bargaining relationship with numerous theatrical motion picture and television production companies (collectively "Companies"). These Companies are employers in an industry affecting commerce within the meaning of § 2(2) and (6) of the LMRA, 29 U.S.C. § 152(2) and (6). SAG and the Companies negotiate and are parties to industry-wide col1ective bargaining agreements prescribing the wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment for employees, including performers, in the theatrical motion picture and television industries.

On October 1, 1992, SAG and the Companies entered into an agreement ("Foreign Levy Agreement").

Let me share with you what the lawyers being paid very richly from our dues to represent SAG in the current lawsuit  [which allegedly calls into question the secret SAG/AMPTP agreement] have to say about us and that secret SAG/AMPTP collectively bargained agreement.

Here from the record in federal and state court:

SAG members authorize SAG to claim foreign levy monies on their behalf and further authorize SAG to retain the net proceeds of such claims.

‘net proceeds,’  you ask.   Yes.  Net proceeds.   And,  yes,  why would you authorize SAG to keep your money?   Why would I?

Not a single one of us ever authorized SAG to collect our monies that flow from our rights under the Berne Convention,  and not a single one of us ever authorized SAG to keep for itself what it scored.

It is, my friends, is it not,  just a stinking lie.

In solidarity,

     Eric Hughes.

TONIGHT:  THE EVIDENCE CONTINUES