Requiem for a Job

And so it was, accompanying the first round of deep-sixed production deals at ABC-Touchstone, that TV writers' assistants who thought their at least theoretical jobs secure, were treated to a very different reality. And so it was that one of them was me.

Now don't get me wrong. I said "theoretical" for a reason. Namely, that while many of the striking writers and the collaterally damaged -- the support staff and below-the-liners -- have inhabited delusional head spaces about when and how they'll return to their TV shows, the larger color is and has always been gray. No one knows shit, and anyone -- especially at my level -- who claims authority is likely full of it. I go to the picket lines; I hear a lot of rumors; I read Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily, who incredibly has enough fingers to track LA's sprawling pulse. The surest statement these days, if I may quote a song which I loved in high school, well before I knew how true it was, is All I know is that I don't know.

Is the Director's Guild agreement with the AMPTP auspicious? Possibly. Will the strike go until the Screen Actors Guild threatens its own walkout if Big Media won't settle with the writers? Possibly. Is Google going to team with Tom Cruise, Al Gore, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford to buy back the studios from their disillusioned corporate parents? Hey, you never know.

But until last week, when the writer-producer I assisted, Jon Robin "Robbie" Baitz, whose posts you may have read on this site, was fired from Brothers & Sisters, I had at least a theoretical job -- one I could come back to when Nick Counter and Patric Verrone finally shake hands.

[Full disclosure: Robbie hired me during pre-production on the Brothers & Sisters pilot, which he wrote, and we've become close friends over the season and a half that followed. He has been nothing but generous toward me, so I'm not going to claim even the least bit of objectivity when I talk about his situation vis a vis the show. But I will say that Mike Ausiello's portrayal of Robbie Baitz as a force of histrionics and division on the show is utterly unfounded, and that after he left Brothers & Sisters, not a day went by that multiple writers and actors didn't lament his absence to me.]

Anyway.

My theoretical job has been replaced by other theoreticals: an office that may require clearing out and a Disney parking placard I could maybe sell to a crazed B&S fan. (No, I wouldn't.)

This is not a poor-me campaign to be kept on. It's just an attempt to classify my feelings on the subject. Because often when friends, colleagues and relatives have asked how I'm doing and if I'm worried, my answer has been "fine" and "no." I have a girlfriend, not a family; a lease, not a mortgage; a weekly softball game, not kids. If this thing goes six months and I go into debt, then I'll be some place I've been before, and I'll have plenty of company. I don't mean for a second to downplay the suffering of many, many Angelinos -- like the crews who work 14-hour days only to fall into the gulf between the writers and the studios -- but I'm not speaking for them.

As an assistant, you trade security for opportunity. The salary is low (though now there are benefits), but you're right there when storylines are hatched and when casting choices are debated. You might hear the phone call that kills a character. (Which I haven't.) And in the best of all worlds, you might get to write a freelance episode. (Which I have). But you're also making coffee, taking lunch orders, acting as a shuttle service for your boss's dog. You've got full access to a broad spectrum of television experience, and you see some seriously exciting shit... as well some incredible mundanity.

Not that driving a dog around is mundane. I like that dog more than I like some of my friends.

Best of all, you have role models and, in some cases, mentors; older, established writers who are full of hilarious and often frightening tales of writing in Hollywood. In an industry that caters to (and nurtures) a fickle consumer's every whim, in a town where every action, as Dirty Sexy Money creator Craig Wright put it, can be explained by one of three expressions -- "Why Not Me?," "You Never Know," and "Fuck 'em!" -- examples of sustained success are worth a pick at the old brain.

But like them, you're at the mercy of the tides. Which is how it's possible to create a show and then get fired from it. It's all a reminder that no matter how much you believe a TV show is a big family, you are there at someone's pleasure. And that person is there at someone else's. No matter how much mutual respect you share with cast, crew, writers, assistants, studio execs; at the end of the day, a show is a monster. And it will eat anything. Including, possibly, the studios who produce it.

Hey, you never know.

Read more strike coverage on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.

Comments

[BobLamm]

OK, OK. I realize we're supposed to care about what happens to the real Dan Silk, even if we're friends of his whom he likes *less* than Jon Robin Baitz's dog. But here's the crucial question that is troubling millions of viewers of BROTHERS AND SISTERS: with Baitz and Silk no longer writing for the show, is that the end of the fictional character of Dan Silk? He was by far the best character on BROTHERS AND SISTERS and his many fan clubs have been eagerly awaiting his return to the series.