The WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike seems to be coming to an end now (it all seems to depend on a WGA meeting tomorrow), or who knows; once you read this it might be already over. But what kind of damage has it actually caused? Three months of strike don’t really go without consequence. We hear daily reports on how much money the movie industry has already lost this year.

I have to make clear that I support the writers (I’m trying to be one myself so I have to really), though I also understand the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers). The main point of argument is the compensation for online content, so when they’ve made a TV show or movie and it’s also streamed on the internet. Of course the writers want to be paid for this but no one knows how the internet market will develop.

It’s a time where developments go really quickly, you can’t actually know how much money the internet content will make over the years. So it’s understandable that the studios were very hesitant, though pretty much paying them nothing at all is a bad idea when going into talks. At some times the strike got a bit silly though, there were some AMPTP and WGA mud slinging matches. (more…)

As promised last week here’s the list of falling starlets of 2007. So mainly the people that have been going down on the Hollywood ladder. I’m fairly certain that there will be more people that disagree witht his one than with the Rising Starlets 2007 list from last week. The premise is the same in this case though, these views are only based on one opinion and that’s mine. I could of course be completely wrong and some of them might have dozens of secret projects lined up. But looking at the current situation the list comes out as this:

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The Writers Guild of America is on strike, pretty much all the script writers in Hollywood. At first this doesn’t seem to affect the focus of this site a lot but it does. Without scripts there are no TV shows and movies, on short term it will only have a limited effect.

Right now the only thing affected are the late night shows one of our starlets might have been featured on, they’re pretty much doing re-runs right now. The next thing that will be affected are the sit-coms, they don’t have as many shows on the shelves as the one hour drama shows. So short term the main person affected will be affected is Kaley Cuoco, it’s already being reported that the Big Bang Theory is pretty much going to stop in the next couple of weeks. They’re simply out of material to shoot.

I have to say that I pretty much agree with the strike though, the main reason is that the writers only get paid about three cents for every DVD sold; an amount that was set in the early days of video when it was still expensive to put things on tape. These days with DVD are quite cheap to put something on the disc, meaning the studios make a bigger profit these days.

They also want a share in the new media markets like the internet and video being played on mobile devices. This is a trickier situation; right now you can’t really say how much money is made of that. There’s still a lot of development going on and still a lot of investments being made. So this might be a thing that should be postponed until later, doesn’t change the fact that they should be paid better for DVD sales.

Mischa Barton, Thora Birch, Kaley Cuoco, Elisha Cuthbert, Kirsten Dunst, Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley, Lindsay Lohan, Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Hayden Panettiere, Natalie Portman, Brittany Snow and Michelle Trachtenberg. Those are the names linked on starletlinks.com that are proven to be smokers. This means that of the names linked on the site in the age category over 16, 35% smokes. This is higher than the average in the normal population, the normal number for women in the United States is 22%.

Some things I have to say before going further into this is that these are the people that are proven to smoke. There might be others that do a very good job of hiding it. And of course I also don’t know how much these people smoke, they could be social smokers. But one thing is certain, they do smoke. Personally I think it’s a horrible habit; though I have personal reasons for that. But I don’t think any less of people that do smoke.

But why is the percentage of smokers so high in Hollywood? And why do they start so young? I think there are multiple reasons, I remember an interview with Shannon Doherty, she’s way past the starlet age but it does show a point. She once had to smoke in a role; she liked it so she kept doing it. I don’t know how often this happens but it shows it does happen.

At first she denied it but these days she can be spotted holding a cigarette quite frequently.
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