Spyglass Entertainment (The Sixth Sense, Shanghai Noon) is the latest studio to make an interim, independent agreement with the Writers Guild of America. Spyglass joins David Letterman's Worldwide Pants, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner's United Artists, Media Rights Capital, and The Weinstein Company. These interim deals basically mean that the studios will agree to the WGA's demands during the strike, and in exchange they can do business with members of the Writers Guild.

In other strike news, the Academy Awards will be picketed by the WGA if a deal is not reached by the February 24th ceremony. (And since there are currently no negotiations even scheduled, that seems unlikely.) The WGA recently granted a waiver allowing a couple of writers to work on the NAACP Image Awards, but the Academy Awards will receive no such waiver. WGA West President Patric Verrone says, "The Guild examines each request like this individually and no decision is easy. Our ultimate goal is to resolve this strike by achieving a good contract. Because of the historic role the NAACP has played in struggles like ours, we think this decision is appropriate to jointly achieve our goals."

If you have been watching The Daily Show (or as Jon Stewart now calls it, A Daily Show) since its writer-less return, you've likely noticed the show has lost a lot of its zing. Stewart is a very funny man, but he can't do it all by himself. And if he's up there winging it as the host of the Oscars, it could be a mighty awkward evening. Now, there's no way the Oscars will crash and burn like the Golden Globes did. Even stripped down, I don't think anyone could have anticipated the fiery train wreck that is Billy Bush -- the guy makes Ryan Seacrest look like Johnny Carson. But if the threat of a far crappier than usual Academy Awards ceremony -- traditionally Hollywood's biggest night -- doesn't bring the strike to the end, I keep hearing this thing could go on for a very long time.

This is a bummer, man. A big ol' bummer. Let's hit up some Q & A:

Pictured: My writing partner and I at the 1997 Academy Awards.

Last week, I recommended taking on a writing partner to someone having trouble with story ideas. You can check that entry out here. I received a lot of comments and questions about the ins and outs of writing partnerships, so I'm devoting today's post entirely to that subject. I speak from experience here, I have had a writing partner for two years. I'd like to give you a completely honest look at how the two of us write, warts and all, and the pros and cons of being in a partnership.

My writing partner Sonny and I met while Pages at NBC. As a Page, I wrote a play that I was really happy with. I did a read-through with my friends that went really well, and I nearly got the show produced in New York. And then Garden State came out, and had roughly the same premise. Damn you, Braff! Months later, Sonny was unhappy at his job, called me at 3AM, and asked if I'd like to write a television pilot about our experiences as Pages with him. We embarked on a lot of hung-over Saturday morning writing sessions with no pressure, no deadlines, and frequent breaks for pizza and episodes of Undeclared on DVD.

That lack of stress changed pretty quickly once our script was enthusiastically received. The next thing we knew, we were flying out to Los Angeles a couple of times a month and signing with agents. Once agents entered the fray, we quit our (well) paying gigs in New York and made the trip to La La Land. Now, we weren't writing for fun, we were writing to survive. This put a lot more pressure on us as a writing partnership and even as friends. We worked through it fairly quickly, but this is why it is a good idea to discuss details and "rules" of your partnership early on, even if you're good pals and it's an awkward conversation. Sonny and I never did this, so when we had to bring up issues down the line, things got strained. Below are five major points I learned from the issues (formerly) in my partnership:

I've accumulated a huge backlog of questions in the few weeks I've been doing The Write Stuff. Today, I open up the old mailbag and start dishing out some answers.

Jen asks:

Looking forward to reading the column! Here are a couple of topics about which I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts:

-screenwriting/film school and how useful and necessary it is
-writing for TV versus the big screen, and the pros and cons

To answer your first question, the value of film school sort of depends on the individual. I majored in Film Production and took some screenwriting classes. The screenwriting classes were incredibly useful, and are a great way to find out if writing is something you really want to do and can do well. If I had gotten crappy grades on my scripts, I'd probably be doing something else right now. As for my Film Production major, I haven't used the knowledge I gained there much, but should I ever want to make the leap to directing, you better believe those skills will come in handy. I can tell you that for a screenwriter, a Film Studies major would probably be more useful than Production. Watching the great films and discussing what makes them great is only going to make you a stronger writer. Of course, a Netflix membership is a lot cheaper...