What do a Manager and Agent think of the state of SAG?

Very differently it turns out.

Bruce Smith, manager and president of Omnipop Talent Group, compares the Rosenberg led SAG to the Bush administration. Hm… I don’t think he’s putting membership first. (Get it? I got a million of ‘em folks!)

I’ve met Tony Martinez, the agent they interviewed in the article, several times in an always futile effort for him to sign me to his agency, GVA. He was always nice and had informative things to say. He even has a great book you all should read, An Agent Tells All.

After reading this article, it makes want want to get back in his office again.

Backstage has all here.

Back Stage: Membership First still has almost 48 percent of the vote. What happens if it regains power? How does the business weather this back-and-forth situation?

Smith: I just keep looking at the Alan Rosenberg–led SAG, and it has such strange echoes of the George Bush administration. They refused to apologize for mistakes, and they seem to have backed themselves into a corner, and they want to pull their membership into a corner with them, as if that will somehow get them out. It will not get them out. The corner they’re in is the corner they’re in… . I feel that with Unite for Strength, there is no turning back [and that the so-called moderate view will prevail]. As small as that majority is, it’s the power of the voters that matters.

Martinez: I think it’s a shame the way this industry has demonized Alan Rosenberg and Doug Allen [SAG's recently fired national executive director]. These two men are the victims of bad timing and a divided membership. Everything they’re holding out for is crucial to the survival of the middle-class actor. Years from now, when we’re stuck in the mother of all strikes, everyone’s going to look back at Rosenberg and Allen in a very different light.