And so, the Writers Guild strike is upon us. Scribes carrying picket signs began marching outside studios and network headquarters on both coasts this morning. To those who don't think the strike involves any sacrifice, I'd like to point out that, for many L.A.-based writers, this is the first time they have walked anywhere in years.
I hope that these picket lines -- and the absence from work of actors, directors, Teamsters and others who refuse to cross those lines - will cause some sobering realizations in boardrooms from Burbank to Broadway, but the writers' demands have seemed so reasonable to me throughout this process that I frankly don't know what might break the stalemate. The corporations' apparent unwillingness to concede to the WGA on a single major issue reminds me of the way President Bush treats Congress: "I'll be happy to negotiate, just as long as you end up doing exactly what I want."
The very anonymity of the writer in TV and film does seem to be handicapping how the writers' side is portrayed in the media. When attendees were converging on the Convention Center for last Thursday's closed-door pre-strike rally, one could sense the news cameras scanning the crowd desperately for anyone whom anyone would have any chance of recognizing. Even I had no clue who these people were, until I spotted an LA Times photo featuring household-name Larry Wilmore. The arrival of well-known writer/performers at today's protests helped a bit. "Look, it's Tina Fey! And she's outside 30 Rock! How perfect is that?" But if the spectacularly fortunate few who are familiar to the public at large become the faces of the strike, this creates its own problem, furthering the myth that this is merely a petty spat in which a lot of rich and famous writers are acting spoiled and greedy, trying to shake down the kindly and benevolent multinational mediasaurs.
Others in this space have written with much greater expertise and detail on the financial realities of the industry's working (and very often non-working) writers. I particularly recommend Howard Rodman's "It's The Money, Stupid" and Chris Kelly's "What Were Residuals, Daddy?" To expand on Mr. Kelly's main points, residuals are not a gratuity that the studios can decide to hand out if they like our service; they're an essential part of the bargain in this showbiz crapshoot. Inherent in their concept is that residuals SAVE money for television networks, since it doesn't cost as much to pay residuals for a rerun as it would to pay talent to create a brand new show.
True, the rerun market has eroded in recent years, but it's not because people have suddenly decided they never want to see their favorite shows again. It's just that they're frequently choosing to watch those episodes on their own schedule and their preferred platform. They buy deluxe boxed DVD sets, they download from iTunes, they may now even watch advertiser-sponsored "free" streams over network-controlled websites - all the areas where the corporations claim there's not a nickel (or even four cents) of profit to spare for the people who dreamt up those shows in the first place.
It's a fluke of timing that writers are taking the lead in this battle. If the actors' agreements were expiring first, I feel certain that they would be fighting the conglomerates on precisely the same grounds. By its very nature, the craft of scriptwriting is passive-aggressive -- sitting alone in a room, conjuring up scenarios which prettier people will be forced to enact - so it must be jarring to see these timid scribblers suddenly becoming so aggressive-aggressive. We're not used to standing up and shouting for our rights, when a well-turned quip (or an overwrought blog post) is more in our comfort zone. The fact that we've taken this drastic a step into the glare of national attention and actual sunlight indicates how important these issues are for the future of our profession.
I've always been dismayed by the mixture of dismissal and contempt which is reserved for screenwriters. Well, at some level I do understand it, because nothing about the job seems all that difficult to the outside observer. "You're just making stuff up! You just write down what people should say and what they should do. Heck, I say and do stuff all day. How hard can it be to write it down" Most people wouldn't have a clue how to direct or edit a movie or operate a Steadicam, and their experience playing a poetry-reciting turnip in their fourth-grade pageant cured them of any desire to act for a living. But writing? Everyone's taught to write. Or, as Prince or anyone under a certain age with opposable thumbs might put it, "evRE1z tOt 2 RYT :)".
But it is not easy to write. It is particularly hard to write well. And while we've all seen far too many examples where utterly cruddy writing hasn't been an obstacle to ungodly commercial success, the best actors and directors know the value of a great script. Undoubtedly, the best producers and executives do too, even if they still don't want to part with any more of "their" money than they absolutely have to.
I certainly wouldn't want to be a network or studio executive, nor would I claim to be able to do their jobs. But maybe the Writers Guild should demand that, during the current impasse, each of the members of the AMPTP negotiating committee must write one episode of their favorite TV show or must script the sequel for their studio's biggest tentpole franchise. Maybe then it would be clearer to them how difficult our task is and how important writers' contributions are to that revenue stream which gushes into their office buildings, from which tiny rivulets are allowed to trickle back to WGA members inside precious green envelopes.
Come on, Nick Counter. Show us your best "Dirty Sexy Money".
Or just show us some respect, and let us get back to work.
Read more thoughts about the strike on the Huffington Post's writers' strike opinion page.
Of course there are bigger personal concerns for non-industry folks than what happens to the Writers Guild. But that doesn't mean the writers shouldn't be striking. And to the extent that the strike IS getting national attention and the writers are all being characterized as, oh, I don't know, guys wearing expensive jeans talking on their iPhones, the WGA needs to do a better job at demonstrating what the financial realities of the business truly are for writers. Believe it or not, writers have kids and I'd wager some even have family members in Iraq. They also DO have jobs, or did until Monday, and many make less per year than the middle-class "regular people" who you say couldn't care less about the writers.
Why? Because audiences, for the most part, don't like to acknowledge your existence. You're the ugly secret of the business, the man behind the green curtain, the puppetmaster pulling the strings and putting words into the mouths of their favorite characters.
That more than anything annoys the public who would somehow like to believe actors are their characters, and concoct their own dialogue. It breaks the illusion to acknowledge the existence of the almighty narrative deity that is the writer. So you won't get much sympathy in this strike from the public. Just like that guy who tried to divulge all of magic's dark dirty little secrets. Although they know it intrinsically, no one wants to hear someone actually writes movies and television shows.
And the studio brass knows this. And they know how desperate cave dwelling writers are in their need to ply their craft, pay their mortgages, feed their families and support whatever addictive habits they've cultivated to keep from killing themselves.
And they exploit that desperation despicably.
On the other hand, not everyone in the Writers Guild deserves their membership. Some have gotten their cards riding on coattails, nepotism and the idiocy of producers. So the lake of a qualitative criteria within the business makes suspect the labor pool. Do we care if some hack gets a pension? Do we care if the guy who wrote 'Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo" ever eats again?
I applaud the efforts of the talented in gaining compensation, but do I really care if the writers of " Two and a Half Men" ( it is truly a horrible piece of shit show, and shame on anyone for liking it ) pays their mortgage. No.
1) Put a face on it. Hire papparazzi to follow TV's producers around. Get images/ footage of their mansions, limo's, jet aircraft, and lifestyles. One producer/director/studio exec after another, after another, after another.
2) Interview writers at the top, middle, AND bottom. Images and quotes on how they live, where they live, how long they worked to sell even their first script.
3) Demand that the negotiators for the producers each bring in a single page of script they've written for any tv show they like. Make THEM fully understand how hard it is to be funny on demand.
4) Take a single TV show, 30 Rock, say, and lay out exactly how much EVERYBODY from the top to the bottom is making, and pro-forma, will make as it goes to syndication, etc.
5) Educate the American public on how much work goes into script writing. The re-write. The all nighters. Script consultants. Test markets. Most Americans believe writers are lassy asses who sit down at a PC and a few hours or days later have a completed script.
6) Get rid of the pre-printed picket signs. There's no creativity to them, and creativity is why writers should be compensated decently.
7) Work the newsmedia with a well crafted PR campain including the clips from #1 and #2. If the WGA doesn't have a dynamite PR firm, hire one tomorrow.
8) Get writers to edit each others' blog postings submitted to places like Huffpo. They need to educate, inform and entertain readers instead of whining. .
9) Determine what the 3-5 key messages the WGA wants the American public to know about their position is, and hammer them home in every single sign, interview, posting, blog, etc.
If one of them is that Bob Geffen has WMD at his Malibu beachfront, by god, you'd better have at least half of America calling for UN inspections.
10) Acknowledge that most of TV is crap and get the blame cannon pointed at the right places.