The SAG Negotiations: Why George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Others May Have Exercised a Faulty Strategy

(The following is an excerpt from Michael Russnow's Huffington Post piece. For the full article click here.)

I like George Clooney and I like Tom Hanks. Who doesn't? From their screen personas to their amiable chats with David Letterman. They seem like nice guys and appear committed to good works and deeds, from Clooney's work on behalf of Sudanese refugees to Hanks' paying homage to our military veterans.

However, I'm concerned about their outspoken efforts to head off a SAG strike. Not because it would obviously be preferable to avoid a work stoppage so soon after the three and a half-month WGA industrial action, but because what they appear to be doing works against the very potential for which the Screen Actors Guild was originally created.

It's all well and good to make statements of a general kind regarding the need for the conflicting parties (the AMPTP and SAG) to be bargaining at the negotiating table, but the methods these well-intentioned actors have employed seem to be of a hurrying design that, by their very nature, take the air out of the balloon of solidarity and play right into the hands of the AMPTP.