The Highs And (Mostly) Lows Of Hollywood’s Union Crisis

This article is not about Hasbin Hotel, because if it was…let’s just say I’d be talking as a Christian more than a critic, especially the Devil’s new and wacky backstory. However, the above video did inspire some other thoughts due to why it exists.

Hasbin Hotel started, like most shows, as a pilot, this one airing on YouTube. Creator  Vivienne “Vizziepop” Medrano managed to get the show sponsored by A24, who got it on Amazon Prime Video. There was one change…actually a few changes from what I hear, but the one that matters here is that the entire voice cast had to be replaced. Why? It’s been suggested that A24 or Vizziepop herself wanted more Broadway performers and the like, the voice of the first character in the video stating so in the description of the video, which is hosted on his channel, but unions are also the chief suspect. The original voice cast were not part of a union, but A24 is one of those production companies who really like keeping their union pals happy, and so it could have at least been a factor, despite upset fans that the cast they already liked were replaced.

To their credit, the actors have been supportive, creating this song when they learned about the replacement but not releasing it until the show hit Amazon Prime and the A24 app. It’s a thank you to the fans who supported them and how much they enjoyed performing for the pilot and possibly even working with each other. YouTube animators don’t get to have their VAs in the same room like professional productions. They’re a class act in this regard, making their absence even worse (said the critic who hasn’t seen it because of religion and frankly this wouldn’t be my taste in shows anyway), but that’s Hollywood and the Hollywood machine.

It was the discussion of the unions that inspired this article, since it was the video being talked about in Literature Devil’s “Morning Nonsense” podcast that I first saw it, and unions were considered the party at fault. Even if this wasn’t the reason for the cast change, it indirectly brought the topic up, so I decided to just work it in, because I wouldn’t be discussing this at all either way otherwise. Unions are a part of our lives, for good and for bad. As of late in entertainment…it’s been mostly bad.

Let me preface this by saying I do not have an issue with unions as a general rule. Workers do need a way to rally against abuse by their bosses, especially in potentially dangerous lines of work. I’m not going to turn this into some diatribe for or against unions as a whole, though I do take issue with union leadership in many of the larger unions. I remember an animation forum years ago whose members complained about how little the unions did for them when they were having issues. I do take issue with unions forcing people to join them, which you need to do to work in radio. I’m sure these unions, who tend to skew politically left, are thrilled that even talk show hosts who tend to skew right have to pay them to have a job at many stations. This kind of thing makes union leaders seem more like the mob bosses that used unions against businesses…or perhaps the so-called “robber barons” they were created to push back against.

(Also, someone needs to explain to me why the United AUTO Workers are unionizing hotels, but this isn’t the blog for that discussion. I’m just venting.)

On the other hand, Disney FX people who are overworked thanks to poor decisions by Disney’s various absorptions, mostly Marvel Studios, deciding to unionize makes perfect sense. I have no issue with workers at a given business deciding to unionize for that business, but local unions are better than national unions in knowing the needs of local workers or particular job fields, and working with local managers and branches…which isn’t easy when you’re talking about the entire industry under one or two (or at least one or two extremely powerful) unions. It’s easy for fans to believe that unions demanding their workers being used for Hasbin Hotel, versus ununionized workers who either can’t afford the fees or don’t like the restrictions I’ll be talking about in a moment, were responsible for the full cast change. I don’t know if any of them are part of a union, but while acting and writing unions claim to be helping, they’ve actually caused some serious issues for their members…and for questionable results.

You decide which one is the studio exec and which one is the union boss.

For one thing, if you’re part of a union, you are not allowed to take part in a non-union project. It could be your dream job, a tribute to something you worked on before, or just something you really want to do. A good response should be “fine, but if you take that job and they @#%^ you over, we aren’t helping you” and be that. Nope. You will get in trouble with the union if you take the gig. Some performers worked under aliases on certain projects. This is why none of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles voice cast appeared in the 2003 Turtles crossover Turtles Forever but did work in the first Nickelodeon Turtles crossover episodes (they already had Rob Paulsen, Raphael in the 80s show and Donatello in the 2012 series). The 4Kids show was not done under a union, but the Nickelodeon show was. This allowed them to get the big stars like JB Smoove, Mark Hamill, and Clancy Brown.  Turtles Forever needed sound-a-likes.

It was also why some of the Power Ranger actors didn’t reprise their roles until Nickelodeon and later Hasbro came along. The Saban and Disney versions (or at least the Saban shows) weren’t union. Austin St. John, Walter Jones, and Thuy Trang are said to have left the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers because they wanted to join a union to further their careers. They would not have been allowed to be on the show. I can understand the reverse: a union getting mad that a non-union performers was on a union-tied show. They want to protect their workers and make sure their membership gets work. Again, this is why it’s so easy to believe the union theory when it comes to Hasbin Hotel. Unions protecting their membership and getting them work is part of the reason they exist. Go outside the union and they’ll crucify you, rather than just let you deal with your fate. And the unions have a lock on many of the larger studios and production companies, so you’re limited in who you can hire or sign up for because of those unions both if you are or aren’t a member or associate.

Then of course there was the big event here in 2024 where one union stopped striking just so another could start striking, and continue to shut down the Hollywood system. There was a big rush for networks to scramble. Any television network with ties to a streaming service started airing formerly streaming-only shows. CBS actually went to the UK for more episode of their sitcom Ghosts by airing episode of the original UK series, and upped their gameshow count since it didn’t need actors or union writers. (I wish Loteria Loca had gotten more love. That show was so fun.) We can thank similar writer’s strikes in the past for the rise of reality television. Even the current round of strikes backfired as many television and streaming broadcasters cut back their episode count and canceled shows that weren’t doing as well in order to save money.

That’s when the unions do anything at all except collect union dues. I mentioned the animation unions earlier. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation Of Television And Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA…what, did they do a merger?) has no problem with video games using AI voice actors. Voluntary? Sure, but considering the two strikes were in part over the use of AI for writers and potentially as replacement for the actors, that seems rather strange to me. Meanwhile, voice actress Grey Delisle-Griffith recently had a meltdown when a fan animation mash-up of Scooby-Doo and Five Nights At Freddy’s characters used AI…FOR THE ORIGINAL VOICE OF DAPHNE, the late Heather North. She demanded that anyone involved with the short be blacklisted, including the creator of the piece, Eagan Tilghman.

The vocal performances are not even very good. AI is so not “there” yet. The animation was the main focus of the video, and this is some guy in his spare time using Blender to create a mash-up for YouTube, not some big studio trying to rip off Warner Brothers, who owns Hanna-Barbera’s library, or Scott Kaufman, creator of the game. It’s just the animatronics in a typical Scooby-Doo story, with a few nods to Rankin-Bass puppetmation specials for some reason. Tilghman did eventually do a re-dub with voice actors.

So there are voice actors who hate AI. There are live actors and animators who hate AI. There are writers who hate AI (unless they use it). I’m…confused. Is AI good or evil?

You know who really got hurt by the writer’s strikes? Not the actors and writers. They got what they wanted. Not the unions. They won…sort of. They also did stupid things like not letting their members dress up in costumes for union shows since the actors’ strike was going on during Halloween. Their kids were allowed to but even former president Melissa Gilbert had to ask current president Fran Drescher why they wasted time on that nonsense. The studios didn’t lose. They got an opening to save some money by not working on shows with overblown budgets and limited returns, then had an opening to cancel low-producing shows to save money. More shows were saved by activists than fans, but that’s another topic. It wasn’t even the audience, some of whom have stopped watching a lot of these shows for various reasons or just watched older shows and movies to pass the time. We have literal centuries of media, you know.

No, the real losers of the 2024 strikes were the set people. The camera crew, the sound people, the set decorators, the caterers…all the behind the scenes people who aren’t writers were out of work. Nobody came to bail them out. As far as I know there was no back-pay for lost wages when their shows were shut down. They don’t have huge mansions to sit around in. They do have families or themselves to support, and with back-to-back strikes they were out of work with no income. I wonder how many of them went to non-union companies or got out of the business entirely just to make ends meet? We’ll never know because Variety and Entertainment Tonight aren’t racing to ask them what their situation is. They aren’t popular enough, and so they suffered while the actors and writers sat on their butts until the strike was over. Making a regular TV show takes time, and a movie even more so. Sucks to be you, hairdresser. Now get my bangs right or I’ll flip out on the director!

Unions in the entertainment industry are kind of a joke, and a pathetic one at that. In theory, unions are important to protect the people involved, but in practice they’re a problem in this industry and need to be reigned in as much as the studios. The idea is good but the execution is poor. Fitting, given how off what they put out has the same issue lately.