Read more strike coverage on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.
My kids are making a killing on the writers' strike. Y'see, I have a deal with them where I have to pay them five dollars any time I slip up and curse in front of them. They are now making more money than any of my clients.
The reason I'm dropping so many F-bombs these days is the endless rhetoric being tossed around by both sides in the strike.
Instead of talking to my clients about TV deals and movie deals, I'm talking to studio heads, and network execs, and negotiators on both sides about the strike. And I'm hearing lots of rants and speeches and arguments and posturing.
The writers are fuming about how they have taken DVDs "off the table" and still can't get a meaningful deal on New Media royalties from the producers. I'm also hearing more than a few off-the-wall conspiracy theories from the writers' side.
A number of people on the studios' side have told me that if they had remained at the negotiating table, they could have had a deal in 12 hours. If that's true, and they were that close to an agreement, then they need to get their butts back in that room and make a deal. This is a marriage where there can be no divorce; neither side can go on without the other.
From where I sit, this strike has become more of a political campaign than a labor negotiation.
WGA president Patrick Verrone is now listening to poll numbers about how the strike is being viewed by the public. Verrone is an animation writer who has never been a show runner. Show runners are the ones who actually pull everything together and get shows up on their feet. Patrick, this is your chance to really run the show. Prove you've got it in you by getting us back to the table and making a deal.
And Dave Young, the writers' chief negotiator, seems to be basking in the limelight, telling the LA Times that he was treated like "a rock star" at rallies and pickets all over town. Must be heady for a union organizer who came out of the schmata business. Yes, Hollywood is intoxicating. But Dave, you need to remember that people are hurting -- and that this is not about you, and it's not about being a rock star. In any case, rock stars don't get the cheers and the adulation and the groupies and the money by not recording records and not going out on tour. They get in the studio, they hit the road, they make deals.
The bottom line is that a lot of people in this town are already suffering, and many more will join them if this strike continues on unnecessarily. So it's time to stop the posturing, tone down the angry rhetoric, save the conspiracy theories for the next season of Heroes, and get back to the table and make a deal.
Read more strike coverage on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.