You are reading an exclusive WrapPRO article for free. Want to level up your entertainment career? subscribe to rappro,
David Mandel is not one to sugarcoat. It’s a trait that shows up in his work, from the vicious insults of “Veep” to the intentionally scandalous characters at the center of HBO’s “White House Plumbers.” This also came to light when TheWrap asked the longtime series’ producer for his thoughts on the WGA strike currently unfolding.
“I don’t have a good answer other than to say, I think it’s going to be long and bloody, and it’s going to suck,” Mandel said.
Mandel, who is currently 52, stressed that he has been working in Hollywood for a long time but the current state of the industry “doesn’t make sense” to him. His IMDb page reads like a collection of comedy’s greatest hits — “Seinfeld” in the ’90s, cult hit “Eurotrip” in the 2000s, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in 2010, and “Veep” and “Saturday Night” Live over 60 episodes” over the course of three decades. And yet Mandel has observed that “over the past two years, even” his contemporaries have struggled.
“I am not talking about COVID. I’m talking about the changes not working,” Mandel said. “They’re scouting for jobs in a way that I don’t understand. I don’t know what else to say. It does not make sense.”
Mandel has heard leadership say they are trying to turn writing into a “gig economy”.
“It makes perfect sense because these aren’t studios anymore. These are studios that are fragments of giant corporations. And giant corporations, since Jack Welch’s ’80s, basically own anything and everything you can humanly basically decided to maximize profits by outsourcing,” Mandel said.
“They devalue research, they devalue R&D, and that’s who we are. We’re the research. We’re the new product. We’re the R&D. They don’t value us. They don’t care. They worry about stock prices and debt sheets,” Mandel said. “And the irony is that their debt sheets and their stock prices are in the toilet because they’ve made business decisions like, ‘Hey, let’s get rid of the cable money and go all streaming.’ I didn’t tell them to do that. I don’t remember the writers being consulted on that. So when these people are at the bargaining table making poverty pleas based on their own terrible decision-making – they never Will not admit that they messed up their own businesses.And now they are trying to take it out on the writers.
Mandel also briefly touched on one of the most nerve-wracking parts of this strike: the threat of AI.
“When the Writers Guild tells them, ‘Hey, we want to talk about AI,’ and they go, ‘Oh my god, no, there’s nothing to see here,’ you start to go, ‘Oh, Man, they’ve got weird plans for AI and replacing us all,” Mandel said before concluding that he thinks the strike is going to be “bad” and “long.”
The WGA launched its strike on Tuesday after weeks of failed talks between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). It marks the first WGA strike in 15 years since the 100-day strike of 2007. At the center of this strike is a laundry list of concerns, from the rise of professionally stuffy mini-rooms to fears of artificial intelligence. But more than anything, the strike is a reaction to the major ways in which Hollywood has changed in the age of streaming.
The truncated seasons and the rise of miniseries have resulted in fewer opportunities for new writers to climb the professional ladder. Meanwhile, streaming shows have eroded all residuals — the paycheck writers often depend on to survive — and a lack of viewer transparency from these companies has wounded writers’ bargaining power.
Related Stories:
All WGA Strike Locations in LA and NYC
Hollywood Writers Strike: From ‘Abbott Elementary’ to ‘Yellowjacket’ Shows All Affected
The Sticking Points: Writers Guild Breaks Down Why It Couldn’t Make Deal With Studio
