Interview with former SAG President Richard Masur
January 28, 2009 by Lance Carter
Blog Stage has an interview with former SAG president Richard Masur.
It’s a good, timely interview regarding the recent ousting of Doug Allen and the state of SAG.
The firing of Doug [Allen] seems to be a pretty aggressive and antagonistic move. How can SAG stop the cycle of recrimination and retribution?
I would like to disagree with your characterization of the move. It is a culmination of months and months of patient requests, exhortations and, finally, demands that a change be made and that sanity be returned to the organization, which began with the September election of 19 people to the Hollywood board of directors. Doug Allen has never acknowledged that a shift happened and Alan Rosenberg has never [acknowledged it], and Anne-Marie Johnson—the quote unquote vice president from Hollywood who is supposed to be representing all of Hollywood and not just Membership First—has never acknowledged that a shift took place. Quietly and with tremendous patience requests have been made to change course, to get sane, to come up with a solution for what’s been going on and repeatedly these requests have been denied, ignored, or just thrown out. Finally, when this group of people was no longer willing to sit there and remain silent and remain patient, they went into this board meeting and said, ‘Now we must take action.’ Power was abused, rules were broken, and I believe the law was broken. This is a moderate response, which is a culmination of months of patience and thoughtful attention to handle a difficult situation. To describe it as confrontational and aggressive— If we wanted to be aggressive, we would have walked at the October plenary and we would have fired this guy, which we had the votes to do, we would have changed the committee, which we had the votes to do, but we didn’t.
Dana Kaminski on Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 11:15 am
There’s nothing “moderate” about accepting no pay for work. Nothing “moderate” about trying to convince people to accept poverty. Just because they are doing something they love.
Acting, for the love of it , is part of the deal, inherently. But not to get decent money, for doing it, is inhumane. Unjust.
I’m not sure how Richard Mazur is speaking “for the people”. He hasn’t a clue how real actors, who work for the money, and don’t have his star billing, could feel–and he obviously is unaware of the struggles.
It isn’t “hardline” to insist that actors get paid. It’s logic. It’s just.
When SAG members nominate actors because they “recognize them”, they aren’t always electing those who know about who they are representing. Mr Mazur hasn’t been in touch for years.
When he was president of SAG, he destroyed so much that we all are still suffering from and which we never will recover: health care was easily accessible/earnable; dues was far lower…he damaged so much that was solidly available to members for years, and was part of an actor’s survival.
He is clueless. He does love the power. And being the mouthpiece.
Just because this guy writes to every available place a whole “I’m right” article, doesn’t make him right. He appears in charge. That’s because he is acting, and convincingly. HE is not in charge!
Do you recognize him from Television? Good. Recognize him also as the guy who is not interested in decent pay for most actors, when they get work. (He makes far above scale, and the “contracts” will not hurt his income at all.)
Recognize him for the blustering arrogant scene-stealer that he is, and then turn around and back your real SAG President, who is not backing down, no matter what kind of attacks.
Stand behind your own REAL President, because that way, when you do work, you will get paid for it.