A new genre of cinematic entertainment is encouragingly emerging from the very necessary dual strikes in the film and TV industries.
Three days into the July 14-launched SAG-AFTRA strike, Deadline shared a viral tweet reading, “Kids chanting ‘Strike’ from the school bus as they pass Fox Studios in LA today.”
Though brief, the clip supplies the advertised dopamine hit—tiny, mighty voices chanting that timeless rallying cry as their bus driver hangs a right on West Pico in Century City.
Between Deadline’s post and a reshare from More Perfect Union, at least 1 million people got a glimpse at the youthful show of support.
One Twitter user replied with a slightly longer video shot closer to the elementary-age rockstars. “You’ve got the power!” a picketer hollered to the children.
This week’s edition of the same situation comes also from Deadline, which tweeted on Monday, “Michael Chiklis says ‘There you go kids! There you go’ as students cheer and whistle from the bus as they pass by the picket line outside of Fox Studios in LA.”
Again, the tweet is an accurate and adequate description. But you've gotta push play to mainline the joy from this one, which is downright raucous. Chiklis really had no option but to deliver a rousing performance for this bus full of massive The Shield heads.
Black Christmas scribe April Wolfe added to the discourse by letting those not in Los Angeles know that kids are supporting strikers on the daily.
"My favorite picket honkers are the cars with two kids in the backseat screaming with thumbs up cuz someone taught them what’s up," she wrote.
Awaiting the next entry in this wholesome form of filmed entertainment, we’ve dug back to find an earlier example and invoke the law of "two's a coincidence, three's a trend."
About two weeks after the WGA strike commenced on May 2, screenwriter Marisa Wegrzyn (Goliath, Feed the Beast) tweeted, “Around 3:30pm daily, a school bus packed with elementary school kids drives by the picket line. The kids shout STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! out the windows. Everybody goes crazy."
A reply from actor/writer Matt Price (Regular Show, Close Enough) gave visual evidence, and honestly that clip is even better than the one starring Golden Globe- and Emmy-winner Michael Chiklis.
The writers' strike is on its 85th day; the actors' strike will hit the two-week mark on Thursday. Catch up on Complex's coverage here.
Should you need more thorough explaining of the oft-misinterpreted and foolishly-diminished labor disputes by people who are, generally, absolutely not rolling in money or being treated fairly by studios and streamers, hit up the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
