Why We Want Our Words’ Worth
Groucho Marx said, “Who needs writers? Give me a competent director and two intelligent actors, and at the end of eight weeks I’ll show you three of the most nervous people you ever saw.”
Groucho got it. The Hollywood studios and networks apparently do not.
And so we, the screen and television members of the Writers Guild, East (of which I’m president) and the Writers Guild of America, West (of which my colleague Patric Verrone is president) are on strike, our first in nearly twenty years.
(By the way, Groucho didn’t write the lines quoted in the lead paragraph. They were crafted for him by the now 88-year-old Hal Kanter, a proud Writers Guild member. This is why the business needs us.)
The last few weeks leading up to this remarkable and avoidable strike have been unlike any in my life. To be at the center of a major news story as a participant, instead of a journalistic observer looking in from the periphery, is unsettling.
I arrived in Los Angeles for the final negotiations before our contract expired at midnight, October 31, and was quoted in the New York Times describing those last days of formal talks as akin to “jury duty in a bullring.” By which I meant long hours of tedium and waiting interrupted by occasional high drama and flashes of fancy capework. And, of course, a lot of bull.
Over the next three days my negotiating colleagues and I found ourselves in such disparate locales as the nondescript meeting rooms of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the office of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and an arena at the LA Convention Center filled with more than 3000 cheering writers. All part of trying to make a deal and all quite bizarre.
There was and is a staggering amount of misinformation. Second-guessing. Spin. And outright lies. Rumors become fact. The simple end of a meeting is characterized by the other side as a walkout and then reported as such in the press. Truths are distorted, reshaped. Phony theatrics abound, gorilla dust is thrown. There was a heated argument about the number of chairs in the meeting room, a trumped up hissy about when the strike was supposed to begin.
Another mindboggling revelation is the depth of the lack of comprehension by studios and networks of how the creative process works. At a level far worse than I imagined, they can’t seem to fathom what it takes to write a script, reacting just a few evolutionary notches above the lowest common denominator viewers who think the actors simply make up their lines. No wonder they seek to pay us so little.
Screenwriter Marc Norman (”Shakespeare in Love”) has written a new book on the history of the screenplay craft titled “What Happens Next.” It demonstrates that not much has changed in studio attitudes toward scenarists since the days Jack Warner would walk by his studio’s writers building to make sure he could hear typewriter keys being hammered. The dreaded Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures used to do the same thing, but as he heard the sound of typing would snarl, “Liars!”
At one point during negotiations, it was seriously propositioned to us that writers who base their scripts on history or contemporary real life events should be paid less than those who create an original story because they don’t have to use their imaginations as much. I am not making this up.
I was reminded of the old joke about the logic of civil engineers: if it takes a woman nine months to have a baby, they’re convinced that gathering nine women together will produce a baby in a month. Come to think of it, studios often throw endless numbers of writers at movies like the Irish were hurled at Scottish warriors in “Braveheart” (written by Guild member Randall Wallace) — all in the hope of getting birth to a single, “Titanic”-like smash. The success rate is about the same.
The crux of what we’re striking for is a fair and respectful contract that allows us to share in current and future revenues from the Internet and other new media. They tell us that this cannot be done, that it’s too early to have a business model, that they have no idea if there is money to be made.
But money is being made. They simply don’t wish to share it any more than they wished to share revenues from VHS tapes or DVD’s. They told us then there was no business model, too. Fool us not just once but twice, okay, shame on you. But fool us a third time — on new media — shame on us. Big time. We can’t let it happen again. Our future livelihoods depend on our success. And so we strike.
What we’re down to is a package that will cost the studios and networks around $150-160 million, spread over the three years of the contract. That’s about twice what Viacom paid Tom Freston to buy him out as its CEO. A little less than what Merrill Lynch is paying Stan O’Neal to retire as its chairman and chief executive. Less than what Citigroup was paying incoming chairman Robert Rubin. As a consultant.
Some believe the studios and networks are out to destroy our union, that we are as vulnerable as the rest of organized labor has been since the Reagan years and especially since the tenure of this Bush White House. They seek to portray us as overpaid and self-indulgent, when in fact at any given time, half our members are unemployed. Most of us are part of the middle class that labor fought so hard to build and which others now shortsightedly seem bent on destroying.
And so we turn our pens to picket signs. We march and chant and even have the inflatable giant rat now so familiar at the site of labor protests. We must win, not just for ourselves but the future generations of writers to come. And I find myself saying to myself, as Gregory Peck yelled at David Niven in “The Guns of Navarone” (scripted by the late Writers Guild member and blacklist victim Carl Foreman),”You’re in it now — up to your neck!”
Help.
Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York.
copyright 2007 Michael Winship
Of course the goal of the studios is to destroy your union. To the studio owners your labor is no more important than that of the person who cleans their offices. They think that lowering their cost of labor is good for their business.
Hoa binh
I wish the American television audience was smart enough to say, “We’re with the writers for as long as it takes! We’ll just turn our TV sets OFF altogether and not watch another ad until the writers are treated fairly and original shows (not re-runs) come back!”
This is a test. Are we, the people, too addicted to TV and too otherwise stupid to do, as an audience, what we ought to do?
It would be good for us, really, to take a break from watching and contemplate that all our favorite characters are really just ordinary people who wouldn’t have a clue what to say on a set except for their writers (who are even more-ordinary people.)
This piece is indicative of many of the things wrong with trade unionism today:
First, Winship frames the story in terms of his personal journey, rather than trying to clarify a difficult and complex economic struggle at the heart of the US media and entertainment empire for an audience that does not really understand and therefore won’t really give a damn;
Second, it is filled with anecdotes rather than useful facts;
Third, it does not even mention the actual issues that are at the center of the strike until well into the story;
Fourth, it does not even mention, until nearly the end, one of the most basic facts: writers are often structurally unemployed like construction workers and other trades people.
Fifth — and maybe most importantly — the jokes are generally not very good.
Although it may be “boring,” the presentation of political economics (especially by a writer) should be fact-based and clear if we are ever going to understand things well enough to build power to change — or even effect — the miserable system of post-industrial capitalism which controls what we eat, sleep, think and do — and even write.
Good Luck to Guild Members, may they some day find better leadership.
Right on, Writers Guild!
With a play for new media residuals, they are right at the center of what all writers are facing, including journalists, some of whom (New York Times) have been less than sympathetic. Look at how the newspapers papers tried to deny free-lancers a share of profits when they reprinted their work on line, now slightly limited since Tasini vs New York Times. According to the National Writers Union (see http://www.nwu.org/nwu/?cmd=showPage&page_id=1.2.13.3), who had brought the suit, they had been “selling freelance-authored material to electronic databases such as Nexis/Lexis without any additional payment or purchase of electronic rights from the original authors. They claim[ed], without justification, that by purchasing First North American Serial Rights they automatically gain[ed] electronic republication rights. Tasini et al. v. The New York Times et al. established that they [were]violating the copyrights of writers.”
That case and this strike are profoundly important for bloggers and other commentators who may want to sell their work from time to time.
Hang in there!
From a UAW union brother.
www.autoplant.info
The fact that anyone would have to “explain” why writers are the most necessary cog in the wheel is pathetic.
“Another mindboggling revelation is the depth of the lack of comprehension by studios and networks of how the creative process works.”
Really? Guess you haven’t read any Mamet or Eszterhas or Goldman or Phillips lately, eh? If the pres of the WGA is just figuring this out, the rank and file are in serious trouble…
I’ve always found it intersting that a playwright like Arthur Miller is considered to be an accomplished artist, but the writers for TV and movies are cogs in the wheel. They usually work in relative obscurity.
Obviously, a playwright who creates an entire play is different from someone who inserts scripts for preconceived characters or writes jokes for an established comedian. However, it seems like there should be a lot more recognition for the creativity, time, and intelligence it takes to do their job.
There’s something wrong with the person (like the producer) who has the idea or who puts it all together getting so much of the credit for a project while the people who do the hard work don’t even get the financial rewards they deserve.
As I understand it, the main issue is payment for profits derived from ‘new media’. The writers want a share, the studios we paid for your work already why pay again for reusing it on a different media. The studios claim they can’t pay for reuse on new media because they don’t make any money from it yet.
My simple solution: agree to pay a percentage of profits generated from ‘new media’ If the studios don’t make money the writers don’t get extra, but if the studios start making money they should pay the talent.
The complicated part is the way the studios can cook the books and hide profits.
Writers should get a % of the gross. Creative accounting in the series THE ROCKFORD FILES lead James Garner to sue to get his profit share that the studio said didn’t exist. The studio charged the show for a new car every time it got a bent fender. (among other things)
The studio kept rerunning episodes even though the studio’s books showed bigger losses each time they ran them. This was one of the things that nailed them. If the losses were real NOBODY would rerun shows over and over!
The writers are entitled to compensation every time a sale is made on their work and the union is essential to a decent life in show business. If you want to bust unions go after the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association.
Bravo Writers Guild!
I read at another site that writers only get 2 cents per CD that is sold and contains their work. No wonder they’re striking.
Lobo Gris
I say dig up Ronald Reagan and have him fire the whole lot of them! Spoiled little pencil pushers! ( Of course,I have my tongue firmly planted in my cheek right now)
I think the Writers Guild may be successful in their strike. People care about TV more than just about any thing else. I hope it doesn’t backfire and we end up with wall-to-wall “reality shows” permanently. But I support the writers. They make a huge contribution to culture and deserve to make a decent living.