Adam Nelson, campaign manager for Matthew Modine in his failed bid for SAG-AFTRA President, filed a federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor alleging multiple labor code violations by guild president Gabrielle Carteris.
The complaint accuses Carteris and her campaign of more than a dozen violations of Title IV of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which outlines labor laws concerning union elections. Carteris won last month’s guild election by a significant margin, earning 44% of the vote with 13,537 votes. Modine received 10,682 votes, with 5,048 for Jane Austin; 1,096 for Queen Alljahye Searles and 367 for Abraham Justice.
Nelson’s complaints were initially sent to SAG-AFTRA’s national election committee, along with those from 13 other union members; but all protests were dismissed. Now, making good on threats of Labor Department appeals made during the election, several supporters of Modine and the Membership First slate are turning to Labor Sec. Eugene Scalia and Los Angeles federal labor investigator Troy Krouse for possible redress.
“It is disheartening that in light of these blatant election violations, the SAG-AFTRA Committee has chosen to turn a blind eye to this impropriety and instead serve as a rubber stamp on the incumbent Ms. Carteris’ malfeasance,” read a statement from Nelson via his attorney, Robert Allen.
“The Union is in dire need of new leadership and a thorough review by the OLMS [Office of Labor-Management Standards] to ensure that it is once again run for the benefit of its members.”
In the complaint, Nelson alleges that Carteris violated Title IV by appearing in an episode of “BH90210” aired during the election period in which she plays the head of a fictional actors’ union. The complaint calls the episode a “blatant national commercial,” a description that echoes a nearly identical complaint filed by SAG-AFTRA Los Angeles board member Brian Hamilton last week.
Nelson also echoes previous federal complaints by claiming that Carteris used her status as incumbent president to add the guild’s recent deal with Netflix to her campaign statement, even though the deal was still confidential at the time campaign statements were due and was not officially announced until three weeks later.
But Nelson goes beyond Hamilton’s complaint, bringing up a video loop screened in the guild’s common areas during the election that he claims “predominantly” featured Carteris and actors that were running alongside her as part of the Unite For Strength slate. The complaint argues that the guild’s board used “illogical reasoning” and did not perform “any substantive investigation” when rejecting his protest, saying that it didn’t take into account the “tone, timing, and content” of the video.
“The union’s incumbent president, Ms. Carteris, is excessively featured in the loop of videos, while her opponent and members of her opponent’s party are categorically excluded from the videos, even though they are union officers, board members and representatives who were engaged during that same period in newsworthy union events.”
The complaints filed could lead to the Department of Labor to invalidate the election and force the guild to conduct a new one. In 2002, the Screen Actors Guild was forced to run a new election between incumbent Melissa Gilbert and challenger Valerie Harper after complaints were filed by the latter over the guild’s voting systems. The re-run resulted in no changes as Gilbert was re-elected.
Unite For Strength has condemned the complaints, saying in a new statement that Nelson’s new protest is “yet more poor judgment and destructive behavior.”
“It’s both astonishing and deeply distressing that Membership First continues to ignore decades of legal precedent, and remains committed to flagrantly wasting the hard-earned dues money of working class SAG-AFTRA members,” said a UFS spokesperson.
“This kind of partisan whining and clear commitment to dragging SAG-AFTRA through the mud, is exactly why Matthew Modine and his Membership First faction was roundly defeated across the country.”
UPDATE: 10/24, 2:20 PM PT: Updated to include response from Unite For Strength.
22 Actors Digitally De-Aged on Film, From Brad Pitt to Robert De Niro (Photos)
Digital de-aging-- the act of making an actor look decades younger (or sometimes older) on screen by digitally smoothing out wrinkles and tightening jaw lines--is all the rage right now in the world of CGI. Why hope that a young, untested actor can be convincing as a lookalike Samuel L. Jackson when we have the real thing right here? Imagine photoshopping a picture for a magazine, but now do that over and over for every scene of a movie. It's not a complicated process, and the technology hasn't advanced drastically dating back to the first instance in 2006, but the VFX artists have matured to the point that filmmakers can go entire movies with a de-aged actor rather than just a few scenes. Here are just a few actors who have gone under the digital knife.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen - "X-Men: The Last Stand" (2006)
The first major instance of digital de-aging came in the 2006 superhero film "X-Men: The Last Stand." Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen appear in flashback as their characters Charles Xavier and Magneto as they try and recruit a pre-teen Jean Grey. Greg and Colin Strause, formerly of the VFX company Lola Visual Effects, used what the team called "digital skin grafting" to make the actors look younger by removing the actors' wrinkles. Though this early example is a little plastic-y, it was enough to kick off an ethical discussion about what visual touch-ups could be done to actors and whether anyone should.
20th Century Fox
Brad Pitt - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008)
To convincingly tell the story of a man who aged in reverse, "Benjamin Button" director David Fincher turned to a system called Contour, developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman. Contour was first used in video games to help capture the performances and gestures of human actors and apply them to virtual characters, even going as far as to graft one person's face onto that of another human actor. So when Pitt appears older, his face has been digitally inserted onto the character. But the younger, '90s-era version of Pitt is still traditionally digitally manipulated.
Paramount Pictures
Arnold Schwarzenegger - "Terminator Salvation" (2009)
Arnold Schwarzenegger is not actually in "Terminator Salvation," even though his face is. For "Salvation," which came out during the time that Schwarzenegger was busy being governor of California, the visual effects team used an old plaster cast used on the original "Terminator" film and digitally placed it onto a body double. Schwarzenegger however would reprise his role in 2015 for "Terminator Genisys" and battle a younger version of himself. That process also required a body double and the plaster cast as a digital scanner tracked Schwarzenegger's facial movements as he read his lines.
Paramount Pictures
Jeff Bridges - "Tron: Legacy" (2010)
If the early iterations of de-aging technology made characters look like video game avatars, that was the point for "Tron: Legacy," in which Jeff Bridges plays both his older self and his younger avatar in the "Tron" video game. The team at Digital Domain spent two years getting the look right for the film, utilizing elaborate facial capture technology to properly scan Bridges's face. But the core process of de-aging would be the same as it would be done for years to come, in which Bridges would read his lines, and a body double would stand in and mimic his lines and gestures precisely. A double is used to properly mimic the lighting and shadows of a specific moment and give the artists a model on which to work, meticulously grafting the lead actor's face onto the double's body.
Disney
Sylvester Stallone - "Grudge Match" (2013)
Sylvester Stallone appears very briefly as a "Rocky"-era version of himself in a flashback scene in the comedy "Grudge Match," in which a now older Stallone squares off in the ring against his old rival, played by Robert De Niro.
Warner Bros.
Orlando Bloom - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" (2013)
Elves aren't supposed to age, but Orlando Bloom did in the decade-plus since the original "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. So Bloom had to be digitally de-aged to resemble his younger self for the brief cameo in the "Hobbit" prequel.
New Line Cinema
Michael Douglas - "Ant-Man" (2015)
Marvel's first dip into digital de-aging technology was officially in "Ant-Man," when Michael Douglas appears as a young Hank Pym. But the team at Lola VFX actually tinkered with the same technique in "Captain America: The First Avenger." In capturing the look of "Skinny Steve," they experimented with using a body double who would mimic Chris Evans's performance and then sub in Evans's face. The technique worked so well on "Ant-Man" in de-aging Douglas that Marvel would use it over and over again in subsequent films.
Disney
Paul Reubens - "Pee Wee's Big Holiday" (2016)
Shortly before Paul Reubens got de-aged to make it look as though Pee-wee Herman had never aged a day, Mashable reported in a lengthy investigation just how extensive digital touch-ups were in Hollywood, with A-listers secretly getting virtual work done in ways that no one would recognize on screen.
Netflix
Robert Downey Jr. - "Captain America: Civil War" (2016)
Marvel and Lola's de-aging technique got more advanced yet again with "Captain America: Civil War," making Robert Downey Jr. look like he was back in 1987 and "Less Than Zero." You can see Tony Stark turning his head and interacting with other actors in a way that hadn't been done before and required far more attention to detail.
Disney
Jennifer Connelly - "American Pastoral" (2016)
Lola VFX supervisor Trent Claus told TheWrap that Jennifer Connelly was de-aged by approximately 25 years to look as though she did in the 1991 film "The Rocketeer" for Ewan McGregor's directorial debut on "American Pastoral." In place of smoothing out wrinkles or pores as is usually done, designers gave Connelly a more youthful look by working more on the mass and proportions of her face to make her cheeks, chin and jawline appear fuller and rounder, even adding some virtual "baby fat" just beneath the surface.
Lionsgate
Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing - "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016)
This is where the ethics of de-aging start to get thorny. "Rogue One" actually resurrected the actor Peter Cushing for the "Star Wars" prequel, and Carrie Fisher, whose younger likeness appears at the very end of the film, died within weeks of the film's release. Industrial Light and Magic used actor Guy Henry to stand in for Cushing and mimic his speech pattern from "A New Hope," and they later pushed back on critics, with visual effects supervisor John Knoll saying, "We weren't doing anything that I think Peter Cushing would've objected to."
Disney
Kurt Russell - "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2" (2017)
Marvel had already done de-aging so many times that it's easy to overlook how much work actually went into getting Kurt Russell and all of his luscious, youthful hair to look just right in the second "Guardians" film. Though if you ask Russell, he'll tell you that they didn't have to do too much work at all.
Disney
Johnny Depp - "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" (2017)
Another body double was used as a reference point for the "Gilbert Grape" era image of Johnny Depp as a young Jack Sparrow, but the performance is all Depp.
Disney
Colin Firth - "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" (2017)
Both Colin Firth and Jeff Bridges starred together in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle," and when they realized they'd both been digitally de-aged in the past, they admitted they weren't fans of their on-screen counterparts. Bridges said he looked like a "weird version of Bill Maher," and Firth said even his wife didn't recognize his younger self. "I mean, there's plenty of evidence, photographic evidence one can compare but it didn't remind me of my young self," Firth told ScreenRant.
20th Century Fox
Michelle Pfeiffer - "Ant-Man and the Wasp" (2018)
Like her on-screen husband Michael Douglas before her, Michelle Pfeiffer was also de-aged approximately 30 to 35 years to look as though she did in the '80s, with films like "The Witches of Eastwick" and "Ladyhawke" serving as references, Lola VFX supervisor Trent Claus told TheWrap.
Disney
Samuel L. Jackson - "Captain Marvel" (2019)
De-aging took a massive step forward on "Captain Marvel," moving from de-aging an actor over just a handful of scenes to de-aging Samuel L. Jackson for the duration of the entire movie. The effect has never been better or more believable, even though the technology has remained relatively the same. The difference though is that for the first time Lola VFX's team was able to create a young Nick Fury without the aid of a body double, cutting the shooting time in half. The artists meticulously compared Jackson to how he looked in his mid '90s-era movies to see precisely how skin would hang off his face or how light would hit his cheeks.
Disney
Stan Lee - "Avengers: Endgame" (2019)
For what would be his final cameo before his death, Marvel brought Stan Lee back to his '70s glory days for a touching time travel scene in "Avengers: Endgame." His was one of nearly 200 shots that subtly utilize the de-aging technique across the film.
Disney
Will Smith - "Gemini Man" (2019)
Peter Jackson's Weta Digital worked with Ang Lee in bringing two Will Smiths to the screen. And unlike the photoshopping technique that has been frequently used, the young Will Smith is a fully digital creation, closer to Gollum or Caesar from the "Planet of the Apes" movies than just a body double.
Paramount Pictures
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - "The Irishman" (2019)
Martin Scorsese's sprawling gangster saga about the man who claims to have killed Jimmy Hoffa depended on its massive visual effects budget to show Scorsese's longtime collaborator Robert De Niro at not just one younger age but at four different stages of his life, young and old. They managed to do so "without helmets or tennis balls" on their faces too. Turns out De Niro has had that same grumpy expression even as a young man.
Netflix
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Will Smith is the latest actor to go under the digital knife in the sci-fi ”Gemini Man“
Digital de-aging-- the act of making an actor look decades younger (or sometimes older) on screen by digitally smoothing out wrinkles and tightening jaw lines--is all the rage right now in the world of CGI. Why hope that a young, untested actor can be convincing as a lookalike Samuel L. Jackson when we have the real thing right here? Imagine photoshopping a picture for a magazine, but now do that over and over for every scene of a movie. It's not a complicated process, and the technology hasn't advanced drastically dating back to the first instance in 2006, but the VFX artists have matured to the point that filmmakers can go entire movies with a de-aged actor rather than just a few scenes. Here are just a few actors who have gone under the digital knife.
20th Century Fox
