Maybe it will be a revolution.
Maybe it will be terrible.
"I respect the WGA's position. They probably do deserve a larger percentage of profit participation, but a lengthy strike will affect more than just the writers and studios. On my show we had 14 writers. There were also 2 cameramen, 2 camera assistants, 4 hair stylists, 4 makeup artists, 7 wardrobe people, 4 grips, 4 electricians, 2 craft service, 4 props people, 6 construction, 1 medic, 3 art department, 5 set dressers, 3 sound men, 3 stand-ins, 2 set PAs, 4 assistant directors, 1 DGA trainee, 1 unit manager, 6 production office personnel, 3 casting people, 4 writers assistants, 1 script supervisor, 2 editors, 2 editors assistants, 3 post production personnel, 1 facilities manager, 8 drivers, 2 location managers, 3 accountants, 4 caterers and a producer who's not a writer. All 102 of us are now out of work.
"I have been in the motion picture business for 33 years and have survived three major strikes. None of which have been by any of the below the line unions. During the 1988 WGA strike many of my friends lost their homes, cars and even spouses. Many actors are publicly backing the writers, some have even said that they would find a way to help pay bills for the striking writers. When the networks run out of new shows and they air repeats the writers will be paid residuals.
Maybe it's just a disruption.
And yet, there’s something so ham-fisted and ridiculous about the studio’s position – honestly, we’re talking about a few cents here and there – and something so old-mannish about their terrified position on possible internet revenue streams – that it’s hard not to grab a sign and march around, acting out some kind of weird fantasy of myself – a guy with, let’s face it, no real marketable skills, who has nonetheless parlayed an ability to write funny words for other, better looking, people to say, into a very nice sinecure and a comfortable imported car – and act like I’m the lead in a Clifford Odets play.
The truth is, the web – that thing that brings us email and MySpace and cats playing the piano on YouTube – has a kind of Wal*Mart effect on the entertainment choices offered to the audience: there’s a lot more to choose from, most of it’s pretty awful, and all of it is going to be a lot cheaper. When you combine the digitization of content with unlimited bandwidth, what you get is a cheaper, more efficient system. And Brentwood was not built on cheap, or efficient. This town – and all of us who work here – all of us, writers, agents, actors, lawyers, studio executives, all of us here in the second grade classroom called Hollywood – have a stake in preserving this great big slushy inefficient mess of a system, that makes pilots that never get aired, buys scripts that never get produced, makes movies that no one sees, produces series that get cancelled.
