Citing safety issues, the Directors Guild of America has ordered its members to stop work on Oak, a low-budget film backed by Thomasville Pictures, one of the companies behind Rust.
The Guild informed members late in the evening on March 15 that it intended to stop work on the teen genre movie shooting in Thomasville, Georgia, requiring members to leave the set or face union discipline. “Representatives of the DGA informed the producers of specific safety requirements that needed to be satisfied for the film to be covered under a DGA agreement,” a DGA spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “The producers failed to meet those conditions.”
The guild declined to provide specifics but a source on the production says one issue was the DGA wanted a guild-approved safety supervisor on set and the parties had agreed on stuntman Steven Legate. Oak’s stunt coordinator departed, however, and Legate was given the position, with another person coming in to fulfill the immediately available safety role. Sources say the change was not cleared with the DGA. (Legate ended up remaining in the safety supervisor position.) Another issue, according to sources, was that the production was late in filing paperwork with the DGA, an issue that has arisen on at least one previous Thomasville production that left members with unpaid benefits.
Shane Drake has dropped out as director of Oak, which would have been his feature film debut. “I was faced with a decision whether to stay on or remain a part of my union and I chose the latter,” Drake says. The decision was “incredibly difficult” as he has been looking for an opportunity to make his first feature for 15 years. “It was a movie that I felt strongly about and I had spent six months working on it. I was devastated,” he says. Drake says he can’t address the guild’s reasons for ordering members to withdraw but says he “certainly didn’t feel like there was any safety issue” on the film.
Following the DGA order, Drake’s name vanished from IMDb and executive producer Kevin Lewis is now listed as director. Other DGA members have left the production, as have some IATSE members. IATSE has not barred members from working on the film but the union recently alerted at least some of its members that Thomasville Pictures is a producer behind Oak and Sam & Kate, a film starring Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek that is also shooting in Thomasville. IATSE has also dispatched an international safety representative to the Oak set.
In a statement, Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for Thomasville Pictures, said the team was “proud” to be working with IATSE and SAG-AFTRA on two current projects in Thomasville and with the DGA on Sam & Kate. “On ‘Oak,’ we continue to work hand in hand with IATSE and SAG-AFTRA Safety Committees to ensure a safe working environment for all cast and crew,” he said. “We look forward to building on these local and national collaborations with all of our guild partners as we continue to produce films in Georgia and elsewhere around the country.”
Neither Thomasville Pictures nor Thomasville principal Ryan Smith’s name appears among the Oak credits listed on IMDb but sources confirm that Thomasville is backing the film and Smith is listed among the producers on a March 12 call sheet. A crew member says a high-level DGA official brought up the producer’s association with the tragedy on the Alec Baldwin film Rust, on which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed, when informing members that the guild was ordering members off the production.
The crew member says he believes there were no real safety issues on Oak and questions why the DGA has gone after that project but has taken no action on family dramedy Sam & Kate. “I hate to speculate but there were a lot of big-name stars attached to that one,” he says. “The DGA cares very much about who they’re in business with. Because Dustin Hoffman, Sissy Spacek and [executive producer] Amy Adams were attached to that movie–I don’t think they were going to mess with it at all. They saw our little movie and they were like, ‘These guys we can get.’”
Smith’s company is not only embroiled in the fallout from Rust but ran afoul of the DGA on Thomasville’s production, The Tiger Rising, which starred Dennis Quaid and Queen Latifah and shot in late 2019. As THR reported, that production turned into an ordeal of broken promises and overdue bills. Emails revealed that the DGA and IATSE had voiced repeated concerns about the production before, during and after the shoot. The guild sent repeated demands for documents ensuring its members would receive pay and benefits. In April 2020 — months after the cameras had stopped rolling — the DGA sent another demand with the subject line “6th Follow-up – PAST DUE NOTICE.” While the crew was paid wages, many were left with unpaid benefits.
IATSE also complained about unpaid benefits on Tiger Rising, with a representative writing in March 2020 that the union “has no option but to now pursue the remedies available to us in law and equity as this production remains in a material breach of its obligations.” It is unclear what steps, if any, IATSE took in that case. Buzzfeed has reported unpaid wages and bills on One Way, a still-unreleased Thomasville project starring Kevin Bacon that shot early last year. Press reports have also noted that some IATSE members walked off the Rust set citing poor and unsafe working conditions before tragedy struck.
When asked whether SAG-AFTRA planned to respond in any way to the DGA’s action on Oak, a spokesperson for the union said in a statement, “Safety on set is our top priority. We have met with the cast, producers, and other unions to ensure all safety protocols will be followed and SAG-AFTRA members are protected.” The spokesperson added, “We are keeping a close eye on the production and are prepared to take prompt action should our members be exposed to unsafe conditions.”
Source: Hollywood
