writers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's Write Stuff time again, and what a crazy time to be a writer! As I'm sure you've heard, on Cinematical and everywhere else, the Writers Guild of America has officially gone on strike. There's not much I can say on the subject that hasn't been better said already-- check out great statements from writers Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield) -- but I am in complete and total support of the strike.

This isn't rich people trying to get richer, as it may seem to a casual observer. Only a handful of writers command the incredible salaries you read about on sites like this one. This strike is about writers wanting only what is fair, now and into the future. Writers get no respect these days. Even a casual film fan can name hundreds of actors and 20 or 30 directors with ease, but how many screenwriters can they name? Plain and simple, without screenwriters those actors have nothing to say. Those directors have nothing to direct. Movies and television would cease to exist, unless The Bachelor 38 is your idea of quality entertainment. These are working people just like anyone else, a Hollywood area code doesn't change that. Their demands are far from outrageous, and it's time to give these talented men and women the respect they deserve. You can find me on the picket lines this week.

Moving on to less stressful matters, let me pop open the old mail bag for three questions from commenter Jim...

Though their contract isn't set to expire until October 31 of 2007, the WGA (Writers Guild of America) are downloading the word 'strike' onto their iPods and shoving it into the face of anyone who will listen, most notably the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. While studios would like negotiations to begin between the two parties this January, the WGA doesn't like that idea and would rather postpone talks till September, leaving only two months before the end of the world as we know it. Wait, writers aren't that important, right? I mean, what's the worst that can happen? It's not like the entire industry will fumble about before being brought to its knees. Right?

This stalling technique is nothing new for the WGA; their current contract wasn't finalized until five months after the previous one expired -- and, with online streaming and movie downloading bombarding the industry, serving as yet another medium for which studios can use to screw writers, expect this one to go right down to the wire ... as per usual. What does this mean for film? Well, folks will begin stockpiling scripts as if they were canned food and production will kick into high gear -- followed by a "de facto strike" this summer, which will halt production on films unable to wrap things up by October 31.

Why won't the WGA just succumb and begin negotiations early to avoid all of these complications? Sure, it seems logical, but then they don't have the threat of a strike to throw on the bargaining table. Besides, the extra time will allow them to calculate just how many pennies they should expect to get their writers for this whole downloading/streaming stuff. In the end, we're the only ones who will suffer -- look for this battle to play itself out in the trades over the course of the next year. Hooray, we now have something besides Spider-Man 3 to look forward to!