Unprocessed grief can make a spirit stuck
Unprocessed grief can make a spirit stuck
On the WGA/SAG strikes, working on Haunted Mansion, and picking life back up when it falls to pieces.
Well, time for a rebrand.
If you’ve been following the news, I picked a gnarly time to take a full swing in the film industry. We’ve seen this coming since last December when Netflix’s streaming release model proved itself to be unprofitable vapor. The WGA, DGA, and SAG contracts were up. Unregulated A.I. threatens nearly every human sector of the job. The strikes impending. What felt like a plethora of odd jobs, maybe even a career, in costuming and superhero franchises in need of tireless dorks like me turned into a desert pretty quickly. At least I’m not alone.
Strike Takes Heavy Toll on Crews: ‘They Are Getting Clobbered by This’ - Variety
“I’m trying to cope with this the best way I can,” said Bill Bridges, a 54-year-old grip who said that many of his bills are going unpaid. “I’ve been in film industry my entire adult life and I can’t get ahead.”
“This is an entirely new financial low for me. It’s bad. I’m afraid I’m going to lose my house and have my wife’s car repoed,” he said. “It’s horrible and it’s extremely depressing. I just don’t know what to do.”
There’s not a lot particularly glamorous in this industry (craft services aside), especially below-the-line like most of the work here in Georgia. Especially as a production assistant, the lowest of the below-the-line, which I spent four years doing across four different departments before joining a union. In 2022, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever paid me $12.50 an hour to assist (often in solitude) a whole goshdarn Marvel Studios wardrobe department that would go on to win the Oscar that year. I did it because I wanted to see it through and make something (or at least make something happen) the best way it could. It felt purposeful in a way previous jobs hadn’t. Anyone who knows me even a little knows I love movies. I’ve been introduced in bars maybe a dozen times as “This is Tyler Scruggs, he saw Avatar 2 six times in theaters.” I’ll eat shit for movies and I now have the IMDb credits and a tangental Academy Award to prove I ate quite a bit.
Hollywood Studios’ WGA Strike Endgame Is To Let Writers Go Broke Before Resuming Talks In Fall - Deadline
“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it “a cruel but necessary evil.”
I don’t benefit at all (yet/immediately) from the demands of the Screen Actor’s Guild or Writers Guild of America, but I support them 1000%. Their asks are reasonable and keep in time with the present economic climate and state of art and technology. But the strike has evaporated what I’ve spent years trying to get to and having to start from scratch in a silent safety-net-less personal pandemic is wearing on my soul. But little do the powers-that-be know that I’ve got a thick skin for this sort of thing.
After spending six months last year on a Blade movie that is now set for release in 2025 (a made-up, wholly unguaranteed year), I moved over to work on Disney’s Haunted Mansion reshoots for about a month, and it was probably the least-toxic environment I had ever worked in. The people I met there were legends in the industry and also extremely kind, ego-free, and empathetic. It was the first job, in my four years as a production assistant, where a supervisor offered to take something logistically difficult off my plate instead of insisting against logic that the show must go on. They love to do that second thing. For example, a production designer once forced me to drive 3 hours roundtrip across Atlanta to Costco to buy cheaper liquor than the store down the street from the offices. I have lots of those stories. But they boil down to the narcissism of bullish decisions, and a lack of empathy for the human being you’re working with.
Chris Rock once said, “The show does not have to must go on,” but Google isn’t showing me anything about him saying that. Or of anyone ever saying that? But Google can’t be trusted, y’all! In keeping with the times, I got a stupid job ‘writing/editing’ an A.I. to be more personable and friendly at the end of May. Skynet!! I know, but they were going to pay me competitively with my best film rates, in a writing job, so I had to indulge.
Except those dumb bitches over at Google asked for my full-time commitment for TWO MONTHS without pay only to get emails every couple of weeks from the contractor asking for more time and patience. What’s the point of hiring human beings if you’re not going to treat them like they are? My theory is that at that time, the A.I. evolved beyond whatever the job entailed. Google Bard is launched now, so that was a couple of depressing months wasted for the hope of it all. That’s ok. It’s not like I’ve been trying to bulk up on a ramen-only diet after a bad breakup or lose my house in that time. Wait-
In the heartache and anxiety and stress, I do find some quiet. Often it’s in a movie theater. Maybe a gym if I’m feeling really good. I much prefer it there than in a drink. I’m intentionally away from the city. My phone’s Do Not Disturb mode is non-negotiable.
It’s July 28th, 2023. The coolness and thrill that comes from Halloween feels as far-away and made-up as the year 2025. For some reason, Haunted Mansion is newly out in theaters. The weekend after Barbenheimer. I only worked on it a month, but wouldn’t getting an on-screen credit be kind of neat? “It’d give me a buzz. That’s all.” I murmur to my friend Kale, joining me in the quiet.
I use a mix of AMC rewards points, the remaining available credit on a credit card, along with a single dollar bill to buy myself a Coke Zero. I’m clutching the free promotional Haunted Mansion iron-on patch the theater gave us. It reminds me of being on that golf cart in Fayetteville, Georgia at that extremely Hollywood-feeling backlot, crossing paths with Owen Wilson and Danny Devito, or head-nodding LaKeith Stanfield from a distance at crafty when we accidentally met eyes. Is it idiotic to kind of live for those stories? It’s not like I can live for the $12.50 an hour.
The movie is very ok. The costumes were fantastic tho! 😇 Why this was released in the Summer, especially when content is scant (and only getting worse into the Fall?) We’ll never know. But between that and the fact that none of its star-studded cast could promote the film at all in the weeks leading up to release, I think I made more money off Haunted Mansion than Disney will.
I didn’t get that on-screen credit. But it appears many people who worked on it a lot longer and a lot harder than me didn’t either, so that was more disheartening once I saw those posts on Facebook from industry friends. Jesus Christ, guys, is it too much to add the tailors and stitchers and extremely talented craftspeople’s names who spend their lives working on your dumb shitty movies at the end of your dumb shitty movies? It adds like a second.
I settle for the iron-on patch and the memory of eating a Jersey Mike’s sub sandwich ‘courtesy of Mr. DeVito’.
There is a line Tiffany Haddish’s clairvoyant character in Haunted Mansion says that struck me, “Unprocessed grief can make a spirit stuck.” She was talking about cartoon ghosts, but it made me think of the relationships in my life lacking closure. What it would take to find it. It reminded me of my own bitterness towards my circumstances, the people I blame that put me in them, and most of all myself for feeding a victimhood mentality I’ve spent years disowning. Look at me, complaining again.
I don’t really know what I am or meant to do. I don’t know if I’ll work in ~Hollywood~ again. I know if I did, at this point it’d feel like a bonus. In this capacity or another. I was grateful then and I’m grateful now. I think perhaps ironically I’m more grateful to simply be alive than I ever have before. Perhaps grieving it will make my spirit less stuck, even if it’s not dead. Maybe processing the grief from the people whose names no longer light up my iPhone is the best way to step into the next life, even if they’re not dead either.
I don’t know if music will ever become something I could do full-time, but I need to do it sometimes. Over a decade later and I still can’t bring myself to just record a damn YouTube video. ‘Just do the vocals for the instrumentals that are already done.’ I grit and kick my own ass like I don’t have $7 in my bank account.
I don’t know if I’m a writer. It’s draining and obsolete but one of the only skills I truly have. To think of freelancing again only to chase down grown men in midtown for $30 because PeachATL ad sales are down or whatever doesn’t sound pleasant either.
I do know that my identity does not come from my job. It never did. It comes from my reaching. My desire to push through dimensions and states of matter and make a curtain rustle or a book fall off a shelf. My only real job is to preserve energy and keep the spark of ambition alive. Because I want to haunt the future.
Nora Ephron definitely once said, “Everything is copy.” Meaning, everything you experience is potential artistic and creative inspiration or fodder. It’s what Taylor Swift took to heart and what makes her songwriting so textured and hyper-personal. It’s definitely a deeply held belief of mine, everything as copy, but it can pitfall into almost toxic positivity pretty quickly. I think as a writer you trick yourself into clutching a lot of baggage, hoarding it all for that would-be memoir. Retaining the worst things said to you by people you love thrown in as dialogue in a screenplay. A state of shock that doesn’t dissipate because it would require unclenched fists and open eyes to the expected imminent threat.
What makes music so special to me is that it has the lowest latency from my heart and mind to the stage. It is the processing of grief. Creativity has to happen, and as it seems, profit doesn’t. Now I want to lower the latency — the space between my art and this stage of a social media presence. This is a song called “New Man” which I wrote for a folk group called Holler Ghosts I’m starting with some friends. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but it doesn’t need to turn a profit like a Disney movie and it’s making my spirit less stuck.
Tyler Scruggs is a writer, musician, and filmmaker in Atlanta, GA. You can reply to these emails to respond directly or email him at t@tylerscruggs.com