Screen Actors Guild

Two of Hollywood's biggest stars -- George Clooney and Tom Hanks -- dropped in at the home of Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg this week to deliver a message: Start negotiating. With the writers strike fresh in their minds, the high-powered actors want to head off another labor disruption that could paralyze the film and television industry.

Hollywood legislation: An article in Tuesday's Business section about a bill in the state Legislature dealing with licensing fees for television, film and radio productions said the Screen Actors Guild supported it. A spokesman for the Screen Actors Guild said the group was reviewing the language of the bill but had not endorsed it.

Signaling a widening rift within the Screen Actors Guild, members of the union's New York board are demanding that guild leaders begin negotiations by the end of next month. Citing "unnecessary delays" in contract talks with studios, the New York board adopted a resolution Wednesday demanding that talks start no later than March 31. The New York division -- one of three in the guild in addition to Hollywood and the regional branches -- accounts for 14 of 71 seats on the national board.

Film producer Paul Schiff is a victim of the actors strike. The fact that the actors strike hasn't happened yet, and many in Hollywood doubt it will, is beside the point. Schiff and producers like him are at the mercy of insurance companies, which are refusing to cover independent movies that can't be filmed before mid-June.

Just as the Screen Actors Guild and its smaller sister union American Federation of Television and Radio Artists are jointly preparing to face off against the studios in upcoming contract negotiations, the two actors groups are embroiled in a behind-the-scenes soap opera -- over a soap opera. The latest episode in the long-standing turf wars between SAG and AFTRA erupted among the cast of the classic CBS daytime drama "The Bold and the Beautiful."

Heightening fears of an actors strike this summer, one of Hollywood's two major performers unions voted Saturday to break off its 27-year joint bargaining pact with its sister, the Screen Actors Guild, leaving each to negotiate separate new contracts with the major studios. The 11th-hour move by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is the latest thunderclap in Hollywood's winter of discontent, which has seen the television industry upended by a 100-day strike by screenwriters.

Labor negotiations could begin as early as this week between Hollywood's major studios and the smaller of the two unions that represent actors. The move could set the stage for a new prime-time TV contract for members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which is anxious to avoid a showdown with the studios that could trigger another Hollywood strike.

When leaders of the Screen Actors Guild cue up their contract negotiations April 15, they will have a short time to perform. The major Hollywood studios have in effect imposed a two-week deadline on SAG to hammer out a contract, replacing one that expires June 30.

Deepening the conflict within Hollywood's biggest union, the Screen Actors Guild's board of directors on Saturday rebuffed a demand by more than 1,400 actors that it immediately move to limit who can vote in upcoming contract negotiations. Kevin Bacon, Glenn Close, Ben Affleck, Ethan Hawke and hundreds of other guild members signed a petition calling on the board to require that only actors who work at least one day a year be allowed to vote on the principal film and TV contract.

Hollywood's labor negotiations resumed this week against the ugly backdrop of a slumping national economy, spreading credit woes and rising unemployment, not to mention the lingering effects on local businesses of the lengthy Writers Guild strike. Clearly, now would be an auspicious time for the Screen Actors Guild and the major Hollywood studios, which began formal negotiations Tuesday, to come to terms quickly on a new three-year deal. If only wishing could make it so.