Other Hollywood nonprofits have also been distributing money and holding food drives, including the Motion Picture & Television Fund and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, a charity that provides financial assistance to workaday performers. The foundation, which is associated with the actors’ union but is run independently, has been processing more than 30 times its usual number of applications for emergency aid, or more than 400 a week.
Starting on Sept. 1, Los Angeles-area workers enrolled in the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan were allowed to withdraw up to $20,000 each for financial hardship. By Sept. 8, workers had pulled roughly $45 million, according to a document compiled by plan administrators that was viewed by The New York Times. A spokesman for the plan said no updated information was available.
Robin Urdang, a music supervisor in Los Angeles whose credits include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and the film “Call Me By Your Name,” has no pension plan to fall back on. To pay for living expenses, Ms. Urdang has been dipping into money she had been saving for a down payment on a house.
“It’s depressing,” she said, adding that she typically works on four to seven projects at once. Ms. Urdang is still working a bit, including on a series for Amazon that was past the filming phase of production when actors went on strike. But she spends much of her day crocheting sweaters and reading books.
Even so, Ms. Urdang said she sympathized with the writers and actors. Streaming has also changed her fortunes considerably. She used to do a lot of work on broadcast television, where an episode would go from script to on air in two weeks. (Most music supervisors, who select and license songs, are paid half their fee at the start of production and the other half when episodes are completed.) Now she does the same amount of work, but the payment schedule on an eight-episode streaming show is spread out over a year.