In an effort to assist crewmembers and provide funding for their health insurance during the twin strike, the Union Solidarity Coalition launched the eBay auction. Last week, the Union Solidarity Coalition, which was established by a group of writer-directors who were motivated to assist crewmembers during the strike, launched an eBay auction with lots so distinctive that it looks like they were imagined in a writer’s room.
And they have been coming in thick and fast. Among the offerings and current bids (as of publication time) are a dinner with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross ($10,200); a Zoom with Barry Jenkins and Nicholas Britell ($1,250); a custom song performed by the cast of Bob’s Burgers ($7,200); Natasha Lyonne assisting with the puzzle on the New York Times Sunday ($6,100); Lena Dunham painting a mural in your home ($5,100); John Lithgow painting a watercolor portrait of your dog ($4,450); a pottery class with Busy Philipps in New York ($3,500); Adam Scott walking your dog in L.A. for one hour ($2,500); a Zoom with Rosemarie Dewitt and Ron Livingston ($1,136).
This round’s offerings include a Zoom with Nicole Kidman and Lulu Wang; an “exquisite corpse drawing Zoom” with Charlie Day and Mary Elizabeth Ellis ($2,025); an L.A. gay bar hop featuring Triangle of Sadness star Dolly De Leon ($610); a private Zoom serenade with David Krumholtz ($510); and an hour-long Mortal Kombat gaming session with Kumail Nanjiani, with commentary from his wife and creative partner Emily V. Gordon ($1,025).
“We want to support the crew during this time when they are unable to work because they put in more work than any actor on set does.” We also enjoy playing video games,” Nanjiani says. TUSC founding member and writer-producer Liz Benjamin described, “People started coming out of the woodwork and being really creative because it’s a strike,” in a Zoom chat with colleagues Amy Seimetz and Susanna Fogel.
“It forced people to think outside the box because they wanted to do something different, not promote a movie or a project they’ve been in.” As soon as they did, the offers came in. “Once you get the train moving, everything in Hollywood kind of just snowballed,” Seimetz continues. “Everyone is eager to participate.”
The auction is TUSC’s most recent attempt to generate money and assist the crew during the Hollywood dual strike by SAG-AFTRA and WGA. On July 15, the group held a prior Solidarity Night! in Los Angeles. That event, along with other efforts, raised $315,000.
The proceeds from the auction will be used for the same purpose this time around, supporting crewmembers who have lost or are in danger of losing health insurance by paying premiums to guarantee access to high-quality medical care through the TUSC Motion Picture & Television Fund.
(TUSC and Entertainment Health Insurance Solutions are partners as well.) According to the legend, an idea for an organization originated as a brainstorming session in a WGA-DGA WhatsApp group. Adam Fogel, Seimetz, Dunham, Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Tara Miele, Alex Winter, Frankie Shaw, Josh Locy, Justine Bateman, Malik Vitthal, Paul Scheer, Zoe Lister-Jones, Andrea Savage, Tony Phelan, Julie Plec, Crystal Moselle, and Sarah Adina Smith are all listed as founding members of TUSC.
Many of them offered to help by reaching out to acquaintances, colleagues, and former partners to inquire about whether and what they could offer for the auction. “TUSC has two missions as an organization,” author, director, and producer Fogel states.
“The first is raising money to support the crew members who are in need directly; the second is organizing community-building activities that can foster the sense of camaraderie that we experience when working as a team on set.
Both of these goals are embodied in this auction: it serves as a means of raising funds while also proving that we look out for one another. We intend to carry on with this kind of outreach and fundraising after the strikes are over. The more united we are in our campaign for equitable contracts, whatever that means to each of our individual unions, the better, as crew unions have their own negotiations coming up.
The interesting objects in the auction attracted so much attention right away that many social media users used them as inspiration to construct fake lots. The sale is still running through Friday, Sept. 22, at 4 p.m. PT. A user joked, “Varnish a cabinet with David Lynch for $10,000,” on X (previously Twitter. Lyonne noticed and responded, “If it were real, I’d bid on it all day.”
Other posts included, among other things, $10,000 for Toni Collette to yell at you over dinner; a “degradation session” with J. Smith-Cameron, star of Succession; $620 for Jesse Williams to save you from a home invasion; $6,350 for a five-hour ASMR session with Patrick Stewart as Borat; and $9,128,083 for Steve Zahn to help you remember what you’ve seen him in without getting impatient.
The TUSC auction is part of a broader movement in Hollywood during the twin strike of creative fundraising. Insiders organized a WGA Garage Sale to assist the Entertainment Community Fund. Among the products for sale were a bespoke speech written by Chris Keyser, the co-chair of the WGA negotiating committee, a crystal consultation with Spencer Pratt, and a homemade film of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog getting “pooped on.”
Pay Up Hollywood is raising money for WGA and SAG members by selling yard signs. More recently, Pamela Adlon, the designer of Better Things, showcased the contents of a storage locker on Instagram. She intends to sell the locker through a special website to raise money for the ECF.
A group of partners, including Marta Kauffman, Paul McCrane, and Paul Scheer, are organizing “The Give Back-Ular Spectacular,” a live telethon-style fundraising event, in L.A.’s Orpheum Theater next month. To “raise awareness that this strike is adversely affecting not just writers and actors, but the entire community of artists, craftspeople, technicians, production assistants, and support staff,” a benefit event is scheduled for October 25.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Teamsters, Laborers’ International Union of North America, and other workers who are financially harmed by the work stoppage will be able to use the money raised to pay for COBRA and health insurance premiums. The insiders at TUSC claim that the reactions of their colleagues are not shocking.
Related: Hollywood Writers and Studios Set to Resume Contract Talks: Scripting the Future!
We are a group of enthusiastic self-starters who enjoy working in the creative and collaborative fields of cinema and television. “Okay, how can we expand this and keep going and keep going?” is a question we [keep asking ourselves]. As Seimetz clarified. We continue to expand because there are so many individuals eager to pitch in.
For example, Liz jumped right in and offered her expertise to run this auction; other people merely followed suit and helped out. Participating in something so encouraging at a time when the world seems so divided is truly inspiring. Benjamin claimed that Seimetz’s remark “hit the nail on the head.”
“[TUSC] is an organization without a leader. I have never had an encounter such as that. People who are all willing to jump in and say, “Yes, how can I help?” make up this group. It’s bringing a great deal of hope to a frightening period in people’s lives during a protracted strike.
Our shared goal is to uplift one another. According to Fogel, their reaction to seeing their sale featured online and in numerous news articles has been both exciting and startling. “This was not what we expected. It’s crazy and a lot of fun.
Though it’s always unpredictable what will go viral or become popular on the internet, it’s always a source of unending entertainment and motivation to see the memes that have been created. It’s also really crazy and wild. That should result in money being raised, but it’s also just providing us with a pleasant adrenaline rush.