It was October and Alan Starzinski was sorry.
He apologized to everyone he told to use the crosswalk. He apologized when he asked for a thin crust pizza. He apologized for his absence on one of the rare days he could not make it to a SAG-AFTRA picket line.
He does not, however, apologize to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Starzinski was a volunteer strike captain outside Netflix’s Los Angeles headquarters at Sunset Bronson Studios in Hollywood.
Almost every weekday since the start of SAG-AFTRA’s strikes three months prior, the affable, brown-haired actor — a man who doesn’t seem tall but boasts on Instagram that he’s taller than the 5′8 Robert Downey Jr. — could be seen by the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue.
The strikes were a major blow to the nation’s economy. The Milken Institute’s Kevin Klowden estimated they’d cost around $6 billion dollars in a mid-October interview with Variety. For individuals, they were even more devastating, with many actors and entertainment workers emptying whatever savings they had.
They dragged on for longer than any previous SAG strike for a variety of reasons, chief among them SAG-AFTRA’s demand for improved pay for streamed programs. They dealt with hot-button political issues — what constitutes a fair wage and the expansion of artificial intelligence. Today, many actors are unsure whether those concerns have been met sufficiently.
Starzinski helped patrol the L-shaped picket line in front of the leading streaming platform for upwards of three hours almost every day. He made sure people passed both gates SAG-AFTRA asked members to picket. He kept people out of the street, and he spent time on a megaphone. He, like the other strikers, did not earn money from the work he did for those 118 days.
He spent over an hour on the megaphone trying to bring the crowd more energy and beckoning passing vehicles to honk. That seemed to be his favorite aspect and the one he excelled in.
Passing drivers saw Starzinski making strange gestures at them — lurching his palm forward in their direction while shouting. Some didn’t notice. Some pointedly ignored him. The rest, however, honked their horns as they passed, signaling their support for striking actors.
Loud cheers erupted from the picketing crowd every time he convinced an industrial vehicle to loudly proclaim its support. He criticized many drivers for their texting habits. For some car brands, he had specific ways to call on drivers to honk — from Jeeps, he asked for beeps, from Toyotas, he asked for toots and he always celebrated a “Honda honk.” When he caught the attention of one truck, lacking a working horn, he got the dog inside to bark its support for the strike.
“I am the honk daddy, and I get my honks,” he boasted to passing cars.
When he first got on the megaphone that day, he came as close to apologizing to the AMPTP as it seems he ever will.
“I know everybody in that office is excited they don’t have to hear my damn voice anymore,” he yelled towards the Netflix building, still celebrating the WGA contract signed a week prior, believing it foretold an approaching end to the strikes which exhausted him.
Starzinski knew he wanted to be a strike captain before SAG-AFTRA members even voted to strike.
“As soon as the WGA went on strike, I was like ‘Oh, we have to join them. This is a no-brainer.”
He was not new to the industry, having performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade for 16 years. Nor was he new to working with the union, having sat on SAG-AFTRA committees and run for a seat on the board. Multiple people on the negotiating committee recommended that he be a captain.
He was not even new to attempting collective action — that dated back to high school.
“I tried to get everybody to leave school one day,” Starzinski recalled. “They can’t stop us… What are they going to do, give us all detention? That’s just school. That’s all that is.”
Despite his long-time predilection towards striking, spending that much time on the picket line took its toll.
“Being out there on the line is exhausting,” he yawned. “Having general empathy for human beings within the same industry as you, that’s… that’s taxing… I have a lot of friends in [the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees] that are hurting.”
Starzinski wasn’t the only one exhausted by his time on the line. Strike captains were encouraged to take breaks when they felt they were close to being overwhelmed or breaking down.
“I did have to take two weeks off at one point,” Emily Kincaid, another Netflix strike captain, said. “I would come home, have to take a nap, and then I would wake up. I would be too tired to get anything [done] that I really needed to get done for my real life.”
As much as the extensive time on the line and seeing friends suffer hurt, Starzinski said seeing the entertainment industry standing together on that street corner in Hollywood helped him and others through it.
“We’re all going through the same stuff. We are all in this together because you cannot break such a tight bond. There are more of us than there are of them.”
One core of the strikes, Starzinski posited as he sat in a boxy, orange chair in the living room of his shared residence just over two miles from the Netflix strike location, was struck studios’ desire to “eliminate humanity” in art with the expansion of AI — a highly contentious issue — which he argued defeats art’s purpose.
“That’s what art is. It’s not pretty f—ing pictures,” he said with disgust. “It’s human expression of capturing something — of how you feel or what you think — and conveying that to others.”
He used photographers as an example.
“They are capturing a moment,” he argued, referring to their photographs. “They are not making it. They’re not painting anything. They’re not performing anything. They are, with their eye, telling you something is important.”
A robot could take pictures constantly, Starzinski expounded, and eventually one of those pictures might be good. Even then, however, someone would have to choose which picture looked best, thus assigning importance and meaning to the image. Even that, he believes, requires human expression.
It is that insight Starzinski argued for so strongly.
“Nothing is important. Nothing. Truly, nothing really matters in life unless you decide that it does and artists are telling you what they decide is important,” he proselytized. “If we’re trying to take that out, then what the f— is the point of any of this?”
It’s November, and Alan Starzinski is in Dublin.
Flights were cheap and his mother had already wanted to go. With the strike behind him, he jumped at the opportunity to tour the British Isles with her and his sister.
Even without picketing, half the world away, the community he formed with his fellow strike captains is as strong as ever.
The night the strike ended, a large cohort of strike captains from multiple locations and members of SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee went to a nearby brewery to celebrate. Tears flowed, Kincaid said, both in relief that a deal was finally done and in the worry that the close friendships they had built over the four months on the line would be gone.
That worry has not shown itself to be warranted so far. The captains’ group chat remains in use every day, with conversations about the impending member vote and about everything else happening in their lives.
“I never would’ve thought at this state and age of my life… I would make 15 new best friends, but I have,” Kincaid said.
While spending the last four months in a constant state of uncertainty as to what the future would hold, strikers have run the gamut of emotions; indignation at the studios refusing to give actors what they feel they are worth; resigned fury at California Governor Gavin Newsom’s refusal to grant striking actors unemployment benefits, which Starzinski relies on for half of most years; exhaustion from hours spent shouting in the sun; cautious optimism at the news that the strike was ending and so many more. Now, Starzinski and others have a new one to face: indecision.
The deal is not what most had hoped, with only $40 million allocated to streaming residuals, down from 2% of streaming revenue, then down again from $500 million, many are also worried that the initially celebrated AI protections are not as strong as expected.
Keeping his experiences volunteering for the union in mind, Starzinski now worries that the unity SAG-AFTRA formed during the strike could slip away, sending the union’s politics back into an intensely factional debate.
“For a long time there was a lot of infighting and it seems like now we’re starting to try to move that- move it past that,” Starzinski said in October. “There were two political parties that f—ing hated each other for, like Montague-Capulet sh—, like most people don’t even remember why they don’t like each other, but they just remember, ‘Oh, we don’t like each other.’”
During and before the strike, those rivalries found themselves leaving the forefront of the union’s debate. There was a new “big bad” to unite against and newer members of the union have pushed to move on from past differences. They want the union to work, Starzinski says, not to fight for petty reasons.
Dividing lines may be re-emerging with the new contract, however.
“We do still have a strong core that is not willing to put up with bulls—.” Starzinski said. “Everybody’s willing to fight, some are willing to fight for less.”
Those dividing lines may not be the same ones originally causing conflict, however. People who have been involved in the union for decades, Starzinski said, are happy with the deal, even those who despise one another. Even those who are normally never happy with negotiations are happy with this contract.
Although both have reservations about the deal, Starzinski and Kincaid both expect it to pass the member vote.
Without picketers, it’s far quieter at Van Ness and Sunset. Honks are less common, chants nonexistent, the tables and tents set up for strikers with their food, their water, their information are all gone.
Across the street, a billboard no longer advertises “Heart of Stone” or “Fair Play.” With the picketers gone, it seems to be singing a different tune, promoting “Maestro” and emblazoned at the top with the words “The performance of a lifetime.”
Despite the honks Starzinski and his fellow captains summoned, despite the day-in, day-out passion of striking actors, despite the best efforts of the negotiating committee, it remains to be seen if SAG-AFTRA has had its performance of a lifetime.