LEFT: Bill Wolkoff is a strike captain for the Writers Guild of America, coordinating the picket at the Television City lot. Prior to the strike, Wolkoff wrote for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. RIGHT: Sarah Bibel is a writer picketing at Television City. She spent 13 years working at The Young and the Restless.
David Blanchard/NPR
Across Hollywood right now, writers and actors are picketing in front of studio lots. They’re walking back and forth, holding up signs demanding concessions on things like pay, how many writers work on projects, and the use of AI in TV and movies.
But, on some of these lots, there are these strange alternate entrances where there are no picketers. Here drivers can come and go as they please without ever encountering any sign of a strike.
Behold the neutral gate. An entrance intended for people who work at these lots but don’t work for production companies that are involved with these particular strikes. (Usually that means things like game shows or TV commercials.)
But, as one group of picketers recently experienced, it’s hard to know if these entrances are, in fact, only being used by neutral parties or if the entrances might be being abused.
On today’s episode, the question of whether one Hollywood production was taking advantage of the neutral gate, and what the fight over a driveway can teach us about the broader labor battles in Hollywood and across the country.
This episode was hosted by Dave Blanchard and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, with reporting from Kenny Malone. It was produced by James Sneed and mixed by James Willetts and Debbie Daughtry. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and…
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