During the day, Ryan Quinlan deals with the desk lamps, sconces, and chandeliers that appear in movies and TV shows. At night, he rents out props from his Brooklyn warehouse, such as an Egyptian sarcophagus and a stuffed leopard. On the side he acts and does stunts.
All that work came to an abrupt halt last week, when Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, with 36,000 members in the New York area, announced a strike for the first time in 43 years, seeking better pay and protection from artificial intelligence. It joined the screenwriters’ union, the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since May.
“This shut down all my income streams,” said 44-year-old Mr Quinlan. “There is no one who is not touched.”
While Los Angeles is the epicenter for film and TV in the United States, New York has long since established its claim as the Hollywood East, and the impasse is already taking its toll on tens of thousands of workers in one of the city’s fastest-growing industries.
But it’s not just actors and writers who are out of work. With both the studios and unions expecting a protracted battle, everyone from makeup artists and costume designers to carpet dealers and foam sculptors are preparing to go out of work for perhaps months at a time when many are still recovering from the pandemic.
“For the people who are your day-to-day, tech workers, it’s going to be devastating,” says Cathy Marshall, the head of the East Coast chapter of the Set Decorators Society of America, a major trade group.
Still, she and most industry workers support the actors’ demands, which center in part on their claim that union members are not receiving a fair share of the studios’ streaming revenue. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a union representing more than 168,000 behind-the-scenes workers, last week declared its “firm support” for the strikes by actors and writers.
The actors join a growing national wave of working-class groups, including hotel workers, writers and delivery drivers, who have demanded higher wages and benefits in recent months.
The strikes could have a huge economic effect on New York City, where film and TV productions supported more than 185,000 jobs in 2019, including work in related industries such as legal services, truck rentals and food catering, according to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
From 2004 to 2019, thanks in part to New York State tax breaks for manufacturing companies, the industry directly added 35,000 jobs, outpacing city-wide job growth.
In 2022, last year’s data was available, the median salary for manufacturing jobs in New York City was $173,500, or 49 percent higher than the average private-sector job, said James Parrott, the director of economic and fiscal policy at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. Many actors and technicians are paid well below average, he said, and lower-paid independent contractors are not included in the average.
But with all but a handful of film and TV projects on indefinite hiatus, fears are mounting.
Jessica Heyman owns Art for Film, a specialty prop house in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that brokers the rights to use art in film and TV productions ranging from huge paintings to children’s refrigerator scribbles.
Her company provided nearly all of the art displayed at Waystar Royco’s headquarters, the corporate setting for the hit drama “Succession,” according to George DeTitta Jr., the show’s set decorator.
After a slowdown in demand that began before the strikes, Ms Heyman said she was concerned about the lease she signed in April for a larger warehouse.
“It’s the worst possible timing,” she said. “I haven’t slept much.”
A little help has come from “Succession” superfans — like a customer from Oslo, who ordered an abstract geometric print that was shown during a showdown between characters Shiv and Matsson — but it’s not enough.
Instead, she wants to sublet some of her 3,500-square-foot space or do some art consulting work for hotels.
Until recently, the industry has also been a boon to more mundane businesses. Christina Constantinou and her mother, Eleanor Kazas, the owners of Carpet Time, a flooring store in Woodside, Queens, gradually moved from a 2,000-square-foot store to a 20,000-square-foot showroom, thanks to film industry clients.
“Nobody wants to come into a store to buy anymore,” Ms. Constantinou said — except for decorators looking for the perfect mise-en-scene. “It’s the biggest part of our business.”
Her clients are connoisseurs of what she calls “beautifully ugly”: a kitschy casino-themed rug with a playing card motif used on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’; boring linoleum tiles used in creepy cop shows; white carpet to accentuate blood spatter.
Ms Constantinou, who is sympathetic to the unions, had budgeted for three months of slower work after the writers’ strike began in May, but fears the deadlock could last much longer.
“At least we had PPP loans due to Covid, but we are not unionized, and I know a lot of these small businesses are really suffering,” she said.
Helen Uffner, the owner of a 50,000 piece collection of vintage clothing, one of the most highly regarded in the film industry, has decided, for the second time since opening in 1978, to close her shop indefinitely; the first time was during the height of the pandemic.
“When we’re sitting there, and the phone only rings once, and it’s a wrong number, there’s something on the walls,” she said.
She has started selling vintage accessories and costume jewelry from her personal collection to cover the rent of her 5,000-square-foot store in Long Island City, Queens, but expects to have to use her savings to stay afloat.
For some traders in the industry, the strike poses other risks. A prolonged hiatus could lead to the suspension of health care plans for some workers whose benefits are tied to hours worked, according to a spokesperson for IATSE, the behind-the-scenes entertainment union, which has about 15,000 members in the New York area film and TV sector.
The Entertainment Community Fund, a nonprofit organization for industry workers, said it has given about $1.7 million in emergency grants to more than 1,000 film and TV workers since the writers’ strike began in May.
Still, it’s worth it for Mr. Quinlan, the electrician and stuntman, to reach an acceptable contract with the studios.
He comes from a long line of theatrical unionists: his uncle was a cameraman; his cousins are electricians and electricians on movie sets; and his father, Ray Quinlan, is a producer of the ‘Godfather of Harlem’ series.
“My whole family is out of work,” he said, adding that they had been squatting for the long haul. “I hope everyone saved up for this rainy day, because it’s pouring.”
