Ron Perlman has clarified a “heated” remark he made in response to a quote from a studio executive amid the Hollywood strikes.
- READ MORE: Why are actors striking in Hollywood?
Last week, the national board of SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), which represents 160,000 actors and performers, voted unanimously to strike, seeking better pay and working conditions in the age of streaming, as well as safeguards against the unregulated use of artificial intelligence.
Amid the strike, Deadline reported one anonymous studio executive saying of the AMPTP’s (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) strategy: “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”
In response, via a since-deleted Instagram Live, Perlman suggested that the executive should “be careful” as “there’s a lot of ways to lose your house”.
Taking once again to his page, Perlman has issued a response, saying in a clip that he wanted “to give a background of my experience as a guild member and to give some of my reactions to the current events while we find ourselves in this situation”.
“In the aftermath of that, there has been a lot of reaction, mainly because at one point, admittedly, I got quite heated because I was talking about a quote from one of the executives on the other side of the negations talking about how they planned to not even begin negotiating until writers and actors started losing their houses and their apartments,” he said.
“And so as you can imagine my reaction to somebody wishing that kind of harm on people in the very same industry that they call their own would engender a response. So let me make something very clear right now: I don’t wish anybody any harm.
“I hope the asshole who made that comment also doesn’t wish anybody any harm, but when you start going around and saying we’re not even going to bargain with these fucking dickheads until they start fucking bleeding and their families start bleeding.”
Perlman went on to say that the strike is “a symptom of a struggle that’s way bigger than the strike itself” and “the soullessness of corporate America and how everything has become corporatized in this country”.
“Corporations only care about one thing, and that’s quarterly profits and their shareholders and their stockholders,” he continued. “When you co-opt something that deals in beauty and the human experience like film and television does, like any of the fine arts do, but it’s being run by people who only care about one thing and that is money, it makes for some very strange bedfellows.
“We all must try to get along, and we must all try to understand you have your value in giving us the resources we need to make content, and we have our value as storytellers because of the effect we have on people when we tell our stories beautifully and properly, on the people that come to see them.”
Perlman went on to encourage the AMPTP to “maintain a degree of humanity” in negotiations, adding: “It can’t all be about your fucking Porsche and your fucking stock prices. There’s got to be dignity if we are going to hold a mirror up and reflect the human experience, which is what we do as actors and writers.
“And not just us — the drivers, the camera guys, the costume, the makeup people, the hair people, the electricians, the production designers. You want them to lose their fucking houses too? Is that what you’re after? Just fucking break everybody? How sad.
“So yeah, I’m being very clear. I never mentioned one name, and I don’t want anybody to get hurt, but stop with the bullshit, okay? Because all you’re doing is you’re fucking killing what’s beautiful in this country by putting a price on everything.”
He concluded: “That’s what this strike is about. It’s about human dignity. That’s what unions are about. It’s about being able to come home to your kids with a smile on your face and say, ‘I did this for you today so I got your first two years of college set up.’ It’s all we’re all after. I send you nothing but love. Peace out.”
Meanwhile, director Christopher Nolan has said he will “absolutely” not work on more films until after the Hollywood strikes end.
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