Social media has already proven itself to be a major weapon in Hollywood’s ongoing labor disputes, with members of the Writers Guild Of America, and now SAG-AFTRA, cleverly using the fact that they are talented writers and performers, and their opponents in the studios are not, to help leverage public opinion to their side. (Also helping: Not coming off as complete sociopaths trying to destroy the lives of regular working folks, more on which in a minute.)
Of all the social media message that have come out of the opening salvos of the SAG-AFTRA strike today, though, none were quite as, let’s say, passionate as the one from actor Ron Perlman. The Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts star went on Instagram earlier on Friday to comment on a story that ran in Deadline earlier this week, in which an unnamed movie studio executive said that the ultimate goal for the studios was “to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” (Another one called this stance a “cruel but necessary evil.” Charming!)
To which Perlman, in his (since-removed) video today, replied, “Listen to me, motherfucker. There are a lot of ways to lose your house…Some of it is just figuring who fucking said that…and where he fucking lives.” The subsequent “Be careful, motherfucker,” despite ostensibly being a courteous message of well-meanign warning, did not exactly reduce the general “Oh fuck” vibes of the former Hellboy star’s message.
Perlman has now, however, issued a second statement this afternoon, and while it’s not exactly an apology—the phrase “It can’t all be about your fucking Porsche and your fucking stock prices” features prominently—Perlman did acknowledge that he got “heated” on the topic, saying, “I don’t wish anybody any harm.” He later adds that, “I never mentioned one name, and I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” while acknowledging that studio executives do important work in providing resources for movies to get made. (He also spoke at length about “the soulessness of corporate America,” and denounced attitudes that sum up to “We’re not going to even bargain with these fucking dickheads until they start bleeding, and their families start bleeding,” so it wasn’t exactly an olive branch—but still a fair sight more measured than “Let’s find out where this guy lives.”)