You may have read something in the trades last week about trouble on the set of "Sit Down, Shut Up." Fox announced in March it had picked up a new animated TV comedy that features some of the funniest minds I know assembled in one writers' room. They include Mitch Hurwitz, creator of the Emmy-winning "Arrested Development"; Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, longtime "Simpsons" writers whose brilliant but short-lived WB cartoon "Mission Hill" is enjoying a nice second life on cable; and John Aboud and Michael Colton, the Modern Humorist dudes who help make "Best Week Ever" one of the best shows ever.
Well, it's a union dispute, that we know, but beyond that, I wouldn't blame you if you had trouble keeping your eye on the ball. This story is so complicated that I'm not even sure Dave Helling could explain it. (OK, that's an inside joke — Helling is a former TV reporter who now works for us and has that gift of boiling any bit of legislative arcana down to a totally comprehensible sound bite. By the way, his daughter just finished an internship on "The Daily Show," home of some of the other funniest minds I know.)
So I called John Aboud yesterday and he cut to the chase.
"We just hope they do the right thing and do it quickly, because lost in all this is the fact that there's a hilarious show that isn't getting made," said Aboud.
First, what is this hilarious show? Here's the press release:
From Emmy Award-winning writer Mitchell Hurwitz (”Arrested Development”) and Eric and Kim Tannenbaum (”Two and a Half Men”) comes SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, an animated comedy that focuses on the lives of eight staff members at a high school in a small northeastern fishing town (Go Baiters!) who never lose sight of the fact that the children must ALWAYS come second. We watch them grapple with their own egos, needs and personal agendas, their petty insecurities and prejudices, unrequited loves, and ruthless battles for power - and that’s just at the staff meeting….
With a distinctive new look - a combination of animation against a live-action backdrop - SIT DOWN, SHUT UP is a series for the young and old at heart. It lampoons modern society while exposing the dreams, flaws and struggling humanity of our first and most formative authority figures: teachers.
The show was produced by Sony, which in turn sold it to Fox. According to Nikki Finke, whose reporting is rarely called into question and wasn't here, Hurwitz and the other producers assumed that their writers would be covered under a Writers Guild of America contract, under the terms that thousands of writers had fought for this winter during its 14-week work stoppage. That was a fair assumption. All of Fox's currently-aired animation shows — including "King of the Hill," which will apparently give up its time period to "Sit Down, Shut Up" if and when it's ready to air — are covered under the WGA deal. And Fox is part owner of the new show.
Only in the past few days was it revealed that Sony had intentionally withheld the truth of the matter: namely, that the writers would be covered under the terms of the collective bargaining deal with IATSE, the Hollywood union best known to those of us covering the strike as the union the big studios loved, because its boss, Thomas Short, loved to attack WGA leadership in the press. Some WGA writers would rather have their eyes glued shut than be covered by IATSE now. As you can guess, when Aboud, Colton and their fellow scribes got the news, they asked what the point of striking was if Fox wasn't going to honor the terms of the new deal. So, last Wednesday, 14 writers walked out, effectively putting "Sit Down, Shut Up" on hold.
Aboud tells me he was served a breach of contract letter on Friday, which was kind of funny since he didn't think he'd signed a contract.
"We're gonna go in tomorrow (for talks)," he told me yesterday, "but unfortunately, these kinds of situations generally are about offers and counteroffers and negotiations and move at a glacial pace until they're resolved." Which he was hoping might happen today, but it's noon in L.A. right now and there's no word that anything's changed.
About WGA representation, Aboud says, "We were very clear going in and we had every belief that this would not be a problem. It really shouldn't be a problem. This is something Mitch, Bill, Josh and Sony have to work out." And if not? Aboud didn't exactly say that keeping the show under IATSE jurisdiction would be a dealbreaker, but it sure sounded that way.
What, I ask, was the primary difference between an "IA" contract and a Guild contract?
"Residuals," says Aboud. "IA has them go into a pension and health plan." Which is a dead end, he explains, because most Guild writers will spend the majority of their careers on Guild shows. Thus, they'll never accumulate enough hours to vest their IA pensions.
"Residuals for writers should go to writers and that's what the Writers Guild believes," Aboud says.
Well, here's hoping that Sony is forced, once again, to do the right thing and pay these guys residuals when they churn out the next animated classic for Fox.
I am eager with anticipation for anything Mitch Hurwitz is involved with, so it's sad to see his new show hit problems before even its first episode, but hopefully all will get sorted out.
And I'll be happy as long as we see an Arrested Development movie in the near-future!
(I heard from an industry reporter today who believes that Hurwitz knew all along that Sony was going IA but just kinda ... hoped it would change its mind. After the experience of this last season, why would you? Anyway, here's hoping it does get ironed out.--AB)
Posted by: ed | June 19, 2008 at 08:30 AM