Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This blog is coming at you from your girl Dan this week. 

This is a big week for me as a producer and director! I’m jetting off to Denver, Colorado for the 9th annual SeriesFest! The webseries I produced & directed last summer, Jennifer & Chicken, is screening in the festival’s Digital Short Series. Jennifer & Chicken is a mockumentary comedy following toxic party girl Jennifer in a DIY reality series co-starring her sweet best friend Chicken. All eight episodes are available on YouTube! Myself and the series creator, Meg Kelly, are going to be networking and doing a Q&A at the festival, while also attending a bunch of other events. If you’re in the Denver area and interested in going you can find more info about the festival and buy individual tickets to screenings here! 

I am going to do my best at cosplaying as an extrovert who is not terrified to talk to strangers for the whole next week (AKA I’m going to be channeling my inner Gio the whole time), while spreading the word of Jennifer & Chicken and, of course, Fred & Dan. We have new F&D business cards that I’m excited to pass out! Look for our blog next week about how it all went down, I’ll be spilling all the juicy gossip!

As this is a blog on all things growing a business, film, and the journey through the film industry we wanted to also address what a big week it’s been for our fellow writers. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike this week and consistent crowds of hundreds of people have been picketing outside major studios like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, CBS, Paramount, NBC, and more. Basically, writers aren’t able to make a living wage anymore while CEOs are raking in millions of dollars every year off of writers’ creativity. A corporate greed tale as old as time. 

If you’d like to see specifically what the WGA is asking for you can follow the link here for a comprehensive breakdown of WGA “demands” and the AMPTP counter offers. 

We, of course, stand with the members of the WGA and we are grateful for their continued fight to not just create a better industry for writers but for all entertainment workers. This is the most popular strike in the union’s history with over a 97% YES vote. What’s more, there are even other unions that are refusing to cross the picket lines for studios, bringing production to a grinding halt faster than studio heads naively anticipated. (quick aside: if one more CEO says that they have “plenty in the can” to wait out the strike I’m going to scream). 

I work on a non-scripted CBS show so the strike doesn’t affect us directly, but we film on the same lot as the main Netflix offices and I proudly honk my horn in support of the writers every morning on my way into work. I’ve been frequently posting videos, photos, and strike info on my Instagram if you’d like to see just how strong the support is for this. 

If you want to learn more about the strike you can go to the WGA website that offers resources and information. 

Thank you for sticking by us these past few months, we can’t wait for you to see what we have planned next. 2023 is turning out to be a big year! 

Xoxo Gossip Girl (AKA Dan AKA Janette)