Ice-T says that the ongoing strikes in Hollywood featuring the Writer’s Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA are centered around technology and current contracts dealing with it. He discussed his support of the movement during a recent interview with AllHipHop.
“We have to stand with the writers,” he told the outlet. “SAG is on strike, the actors went on strike, so we’re all on strike. What it is really is technology, and there’s a lot of things that aren’t in the contracts that we signed that they’re dealing with.”
Ice-T On The Set Of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"
Ice Cube further says that the situation is analogous to music streaming. In making his point, he reflected on his contract with Warner Brothers from earlier in his career. “Let’s just say hypothetically I agree to let Warner Brothers sell my album and they were going to sell my album for $1 a record,” he explained. “I’m just making up numbers. I never agreed on Spotify. I never agreed to that. There was no verbiage in the contract that said you can sell or play my record and people would pay. That’s basically what’s going on with writing. We didn’t talk about streaming, we didn’t talk about AI. We didn’t talk about that. So, it’s just a bunch of shit and they don’t want to talk about it.”
Cube also noted that only a small percentage of people working in Hollywood are actually rich. He cites the majority of them being writers, assistants, makeup artists, and more. Of the rich, he says, “This strike won’t affect them, and it won’t really affect me. Even though Law & Order isn’t filming and we may not film until December, I got money in the bank. I’m OK. I’ll survive, but my production assistant won’t survive, the camera guys may not survive, hair and makeup won’t survive, the truck drivers won’t survive. It’s going to affect the small people and that’s the part people don’t get. It’s a huge industry.”
[Via]