week one…
It has been a whirlwind, but a fascinating ride nonetheless: I spent a few days on the Universal lot in LA meeting the team and getting to grips with if not the detail of the job, the scope. I was also able to tour the studios and visit the Jaws lake, the square where Marty McFly gets that De Lorean Back to the Future with a little help from Christopher Lloyd, the house where Hitchcock wrote many of his movies. The list goes on and on as does the lot: a modern day Prospero’s island crammed with ‘such stuff as dreams are made on’. But those dreams are threatened by the WGA strike and it was very awkward to cross a picket line on my first day at work. I hope, as so many do, that the studios and guild achieve a workable way to quantify the earnings from digital distribution and remunerate the writers accordingly, but those who remember the strike of 1988 which lasted 5 months will know this is a delicate and difficult issue to find agreement on. The team in LA are fantastic and gave me a warm and thorough introduction to the systems and services we support. It was invaluable contact since I’ll be working remote from them so much of the time.
From Universal City we went to 30 Rock, NBC’s New York headquarters and home to Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the eponymous NBC sitcom. Here the WGA strike is more obvious and devastating: we toured the empty corridors and green rooms around the sets and I was able to stand on the empty stage of SNL with the place to myself: not how one would want to make such an incredible entertainment pilgrimage. But my colleagues in New York, my first line of support as dawn rolls through the time zones, are talented and energetic and are well versed in operating remotely from the LA team.
And thence to London where I shall be based to meet the business partners whom I’ll be serving. I snatched 12 hours in DC on the way to pack my life into three suitcases and enjoy the autumn foliage briefly and am now in the airport awaiting my flight to London. It is a strange journey simultaneously into the very familiar and the unknown…