'My Name is Earl' creator spent strike on virtual vacation
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I'm kind of tired of writing about L.A. labor issues; I'm as ready to get on with other things as much as you're surely sick of reading about this stuff, but there's still some things worth talking about before we magically forget all of this ever happened a few weeks from now. It's easy to move on like that when you didn't have your ass (car, house, livelihood, etc) on the line as so many of these people did.
At first, I thought this was a story that would make everyone realize how close a lot of people got to losing everything they had, and on top of that, due to the screwed up network schedules and the CEOs using the strike as an excuse to cancel (probably illegally) a lot of development deals, may have lost their window in the business altogether too. Unfortunately, it turns out this guy was just playing around instead of pulling his weight along with all the other people that I'm sure would have rather been working indoors all day, making sure they could pay their rent.
Creator and exec-producer of NBC's My Name is Earl, Greg Garcia, spent some of the strike working a fast food joint, and while I'm sure he's a great guy, I actually find the ordeal a little bit unsettling. The amount of money he just gifted to somebody for the heck of it when he quit to go back to work writing really says a lot about the people who used the strike as an opportunity to screw around -- and had that luxery financially -- as opposed to people in truly tenuous positions that walked the picket lines nearly every single day.
He may be a nice guy, and that gift was generous beyond description, but what in the hell was he doing there in the first place?
I'm afraid I have to disagree with Allison at TV Squad here, I'm doing anything but smiling right now.
February 19, 2008 12:41 PM | Reply
The more I think about it, the worse I feel about this guy and what he did.