With the first week of picketing movie studios and TV networks at its end, a few realities become clear:
1. People who have chosen for their profession to sit all day at a keyboard aren't physically designed for marching around in circles for four hours at a time.
2. Cars honking at you any other time of the year would be infuriating, but when you're picketing, a honk of support is one of the world's more beautiful sounds, akin to the wistful song of a lark on a dew-dripped summer's morn. (That last part about the lark wasn't necessary, but when you're a writer on strike, you have to keep in practice.)
3. After four hours of walking in circles, the sight of someone delivering 20 boxes of pizzas is enough to make you believe that there not only is a heaven, but it includes free delivery.
4. It's absolutely wonderful that actors from SAG have joined writers in the picket line -- not just for their support, but because the physical appearance of the line immediately goes up twentyfold.
5. Being solitary creatures, when you put hundreds of writers together for hours with nothing to do while walking in circles but talk, what happens is that they begin to analyze the contract offer and what's at stake in even greater detail, and get angrier and more supportive with each step.
6. Everyone you meet outside of the WGA has an opinion on who's right -- and not one of them has read a line of the contract offer.
It's this latter point which occupies much of a striking writer's life: dealing with concerned relatives, inquisitive friends, opinionated passersby, comments on blogs and articles, quotes and more.
And so, that brings up the quintessential striker's question:
How to Respond?
There are only so many hours in a day, and you have to save your energy for walking in circles. You can't dash off a letter every time you read a crusty statement from Nick Counter, chief negotiator for the AMPTP. You can't reply every single time the John Ridleys of the landscape make yet another inaccurate or churlish pot-shot. (Hey, anyone who quotes Ayn Rand as a convincing argument for anything sane has sent his credibility off to day care.) You can't send an email to every online comment that doesn't have a clue what it's ranting about. And you can't convince the world, one stranger at a time, why the Writers Guild is noble and true and good and honorable, and the companies are one step above Dick Cheney.
So, what do you do?
You take a deep breath and don't do anything.
It doesn't matter.
Really. It doesn't matter.
There's truly no need to convince anyone that they're wrong. Oh, sure, you'd prefer that everyone understand that the Writers Guild is noble and true and good and honorable. But if 24% of Americans still think George Bush is doing a good job, what chance do you think you have of disabusing someone who thinks that getting paid zero for distributing their work online is a swell payment option?
You can't convince the unconvincible, so don't try. Not just for the waste of effort, but because it doesn't matter.
As numbing as it is to read Nick Counter sputter and finger-point, you must remember a reality: Nick Counter is spokesman of the AMPTP and therefore has only two functions when speaking to the press: 1) to try to make the AMPTP look good, and 2) to scare the other side so they'll hopefully splinter.
You must understand: when he opens his mouth to the press, he's a PR flack. (I say this as a former PR flack.) You can't worry about what Nick Counter says to the press. Not just for the waste of effort, but because -- it doesn't matter.
Responding to online comments may be the biggest waste of all. These are people who haven't read any of the offered contract and literally have no idea what they're talking about. Who in their right mind would listen to someone giving life advice on what contract to sign without reading that contract themselves first?? Keep in mind, that's how the U.S. Senate got us involved in Iraq.
So, don't try to convince anyone online. It doesn't matter. Boy, howdy, it really doesn't matter.
And as invigorating as it may be when you engage someone one-on-one and triumphantly convince them that the Writers Guild is noble and true and good and honorable, what you have accomplished is that you have just convinced one person. Only 3.3 billion to go and you've got a majority.
And even if you have a majority...
...it doesn't matter.
Why?
The only thing that matters -- The Only Thing That Matters -- is whether the companies who make up the AMPTP want to sit down at the table and negotiate a fair settlement with the Writers Guild.
It's nice to keep people informed, because information is important. And interesting. And entertaining. But ultimately, this isn't Current Events 101, a debate society or traveling circus. It's a contract negotiation between employers and employees. Period.
That's all that matters.
While public pressure can sometimes have an impact, as long as one side feels it's too harmful to their membership, they won't settle. Ever. When both sides see conditions are in their best interest, then they'll settle.
That's all that matters.
But until then, if anyone wants to bring pizza, that's always appreciated.
Read more about the strike on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.
The WGA has given TV executives and TV viewers a GREAT opportunity. The best TV shows ever were made during the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's. Bring them back. Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Mary Tyler Moore, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Jack Paar's Tonight, Sid Caesar, The Bob Newhart Show, Johnny Carson's Tonight, The Wild, Wild West, The Jack Benny Program, That Girl, The Avengers, Carol Burnett, Sonny and Cher, Jackie Gleason, Kraft Television Theater, Studio One, Philco Playhouse, Playhouse 90, Armstrong Television Theater, Rowan & Martin's Laugh In, The Ed Wynn Show, The Saint, The Rifleman, Knight Rider, The Six Million Dollar Man, Mission Impossible, Superman, and on and on. Nothing created since even comes close (except Seinfeld). Make these classics the new stable for prime time TV on all networks. Bring back the best TV ever produced - and everybody wins, both young and old. After several months of seeing these classics, maybe, just maybe, the standard for acceptable TV will increase from its current toilet-level.
.
It all boils down to this:
HE WHO HAS THE IRON BUTT WINS.
Patience
Persistence
Peserverance
LAUGH LOUD, OFTEN, AND WITH EACH OTHER.
I've been there and done that.
Stay centered.
Stay cool.
You are no one's fool.
Let them sputter
Let them whine
What YOU have is 'time, time, time'
When they watch their money
flow OUT of the coffers, that's when you'll know those acceptable offers
will come so fast they'll make your head spin.
That's when you know the side of truth wins.
It doesn't matter, for instance, if the country -- or the world -- wants us to invade Iraq. The Bush boys will do what they do, regardless. They can do an overall lousy job "running" the country, and blatantly rip off the middle class to benefit their wealth elite buddies, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says about it. The blogosphere can bitch and moan, the MSM can do whatever it is they do, the world can weigh in with its complaints, and it makes no difference.
Perhaps the Dems need to learn this? They seem so concerned with any amount of negative response, no matter how small or inconsequential the faction voicing it, that they get nothing done.
Just do what needs doing, because when it comes to what anyone else thinks, or says, It Doesn't Matter!
The only thing that really matters is the answer: no. The Big 6 supported the illegal aggressive invasion of Iraq and are presently lobbying, successfully, for even more total control over everything we see, hear and think. They completely ignore protests, and openly smear and vilify whistleblowers, truthtellers, and anyone with a shred of integrity.
Anyone who believes the Big 6 will suddenly see the light and, for the first time ever, come to a "fair settlement" of anything has chosen wishing over reality. Because they know Americans prefer crap over quality, and they got so much crap, they can wait until the unions cave, which they always do. (Remember night premiums? Double-days? Weekend pay?)
Note to strikers: try not just focusing on LA and NY - most of your "fans" do not live there. Set up lines - even if they're "one-dayers" in Chi, Phila, Miami, Dallas, etc. The more support you gather, the less painful it will be when your union is busted.
Now, the downside: some of you will have no jobs to come back to. How's that for pain. BUT, you've made your bed, you voted to authorize a strike, you've struck, now you MUST have courage and resolve and see this through, no matter how long it takes. It can, and very well may, transform the industry, but it's up to you, WGA, what it is transformed into. Make everybody proud.
Too true!
But that's the art of PR: Simplifying it for the rest of us, err, them.
If I were WGA I'd start educating the American public until 51% did understand the offer, or at least enough to recognize that what the studios are demanding is the right to sell or give writers' work away on the Internet w/o compensating them AT ALL.
If it takes a slogan or a phrase, create it.
Don't wait for the American public to go to the WGA website and study the contract.
Here, in the second week of the strike, I keep asking myself if WGA even has a PR firm and what value they are adding.
Guess what, just because WGA is full of great writers doesn't make them good PR flacks.
Would you allow me a one-time fair usage waiver for that please? Thanks, brother.
And disgraced ex-Disney CEO Eisner sure came across whiny as he wanted the Writer's Guild to blame Steve Jobs for the studios hiding money from the content creators.
It's a strange world.
(Bush is soaring now at 33+% approval.)
Writers, like voters, must vote with their feet and their pocketbooks, not their mouths.
And while there's a certain irony in him writing about how talking doesn't matter, he's right.
Or, as we could say in the WGA, since homophones are indistinguishable on screen, he's rite.