strike meeting

It was surprisingly low key, even though this was a relative victory for the writers. The final meeting in 1988 was much more boisterous, and that was in the face of a clear loss. And I can't help thinking it's because of the attitude of our leadership.

There wasn't a sign pointing upstairs saying "WGA VIPs"--as there was at the Convention Center at the start of the strike--but these guys still seem determined to somehow place themselves above the membership. It's petty and it's irritating.

After we'd all gathered in the Shrine Auditorium, the negotiating committee took the stage, to a nice round of applause. This was when the pressure began to make every ovation a standing ovation.

I noticed five empty seats at the front of the stage. They've given themselves a separate entrance, I said to the writer next to me. He didn't hear me. They've given themselves a separate entrance, I hissed. They've engineered their own ovation!

The writer had a sudden moment of recognition. What I said had the ring of truth. Would he ever again be a true union man? But I like to think I better prepared him for what happened next.

WGA President Pat Verrone, negotiating committee chairman John Bowman, chief negotiator David Young, and a couple "WGA VIPs" entered, to another standing ovation. In the course of the evening, they introduced each other in every possible permutation (five factorial?). Signs outside told us no food or beverages were allowed inside the auditorium but everyone on stage had been provided with a bottle of water. John Bowman had three.

After the applause died down, David Young explained the terms of the deal, addressing us as "brothers and sisters." When Shield creator Shawn Ryan arrived late and took his rightful place on the stage and another member of the committee stood to greet him with a special handshake, I could have sworn they expected to hear some clapping, but for some reason that's where we decided to draw the line.

strike

Yesterday was hopefully the last day of WGA picketing, a mass march at Disney. As soon as I reached the line a stranger asked if I would sign his picket sign. "It's for my kid when he grows up. So he knows that I did something." I signed, but also silently hoped that he would someday accomplish something more than walking in a circle for days on end.

I hated the picketing but others seemed to love it. For many was just a mobile writers' room, with all the laughs and none of the work. And always followed by a delightful lunch. I especially had problems with the strike captains. Every TV show in production chose a strike captain, so at least those were actual working writers. Yes, working writers who agreed to to be Strike Captains, capitalized to emphasize the authority therein. I think most were disappointed the position didn't come with handcuffs and license to kill. But the other strike captains were worse. They were volunteers. Yesterday I passed the strike captain who was always at Radford Studios, where I did most of my picketing. I overheard him telling someone, "I think I'm still going to be yelling, 'Car coming!' for weeks to come." Yes, that's what he did. As we walked back in forth in front of the Radford gate he would alert us that a car was turning in, because without that notice we would all surely walk directly in front of the car, get smashed by the heavy tires, tangled in the undercarriage, and within a week or so there would no writers left. Fucking idiot.

Even so, as cynical as I am. I will probably look back on this period with at least some fondness. If we achieve anything near what we hoped for in our negotiations then it will have all been worth it. Otherwise it was just a pain in the ass. Well, perhaps it wasn't all bad. It was nice to run into a few old friends. I probably should have had them sign my picket sign.

strike?

The writers' strike led to an impasse, with management walking out of the negotiations. The DGA stepped in and made a deal, a better one than they would have made without our efforts. That deal has unofficially been offered to the writers. End of story.

But, sadly, for many, it's just the beginning. I'm getting deluged by emails, urging me to hold firm. The DGA set a decent template, they say, but it's just the beginning. Now we need to make a deal that works for us.

I can't tell you how deluded I think this is. At some point in any negotiation, you take the best possible deal. In this case, we have a convenient way of knowing what that deal is. The DGA got it. If it wasn't the best possible deal before, it is now. And we helped set the preconditions that made it happen. That is a real accomplishment.

But the false bravado of those who are acting like now's when we roll up our sleeves and really start to negotiate makes me cringe. It's the battle cry of the impotent.

Uh Oh, Nikki's Tired Again

I'll spare you the effort to click to deadlinehollywooddaily-- THE go-to place for strike information. Here's Nikki's latest:

DHD Update: Back On January 22nd
I’m exhausted. I'm not feeling well. I'm overwhelmed. I need a week away from the emails and the comments and the phone calls and the rumors. Most of all, I just need to rest since I've been going, going, going, since the strike started. I look forward to coming back on January 22nd and finding it settled (?). In the meantime, stay out of crosswalks while I’m gone. And I promise to return refreshed.

And so, at a point where the DGA is in the mix, our news source decides she's tired.

Hey, I've been going going going since the strike started too!
She sounds like those certain mothers who complain how exhausted they are all the time, handing off their kids to others, so they can have 'mommy time.' All the while still thinking they are great mothers, and somehow doing the world a great service.

I want to strike forever

That's how this inflammatory quote from today's Hollywood Reporter makes me feel:

Meanwhile, studio negotiators must grapple with their own knotty dilemma in deciding when, and how, to resume negotiations with the WGA.

As one management-side source put it, "The tough question is how do you reward the DGA for good behavior and not the WGA for bad behavior?"

It's not enough for them to negotiate with us? Now they're parenting too?

cluster bombs before the peace

Chatter is increasing, the DGA and management may be close to a deal. So the studios take the opportunity to cut loose a bunch of writers. They know, as soon as this settles, they'll no longer be able to claim force majeure. So it's last call, belly up to the bar, boys. Like Israel dropping cluster bombs into Lebanon in the final days before the peace agreement took effect (photo from "Waiting for Lefty").

The State of the Strike

The DGA and management are negotiating. Meanwhile, the WGA keeps making deals with companies looking for a competitive edge. So pressure is being exerted from both sides. Ken Ziffren, the universally respected entertainment lawyer who played a big part in resolving the 1988 dispute, has stepped in as the directors' lead negotiator. The Oscars are fast approaching and in peril if this isn't resolved soon. All signs point to a deal. But does management hate the writers so much that they'll set the template with the DGA, and then offer us half? And is Nikki Finke out of her fucking mind?

AND mean?

From Nikki Finke:

NBC Entertainment co-czar on Monday told his new best friend, the no-talent Ryan Seacrest before the Golden Globes awards show was officially scrapped that, "Sadly, it feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom. But NBC wants to try to keep that prom alive."

I don't know where Ben Silverman went to high school, but at Grant High, circa 1975-1977, the nerdiest and ugliest kids weren't also the meanest.

some good news

United Artists is making an interim agreement with the WGA. Tom Cruise took over UA after Sumner Redstone banished him from Viacom. None of the other moguls are happy about this deal, Redstone included. Could it be payback?

Letterman versus Leno

I've never met Letterman. Leno is a famously great guy. I worked with him briefly, on a show called "Television Parts," hosted by Michael Nesmith, sometime around 1984. He was as nice as advertised.

The show was an effort to do for comedy what MTV had done for music, sparked by legendary NBC president Brandon Tartikoff writing the words "comedy video" on a napkin. Unfortunately, someone took the instruction literally, and my job was to translate existing comedy routines into short films, often beat by painstaking beat.

And so Seinfeld's classic routine about looking for a missing sock became an overblown detective parody with him as a private eye looking for a missing sock. Great comedy video, NBC raved. Yes, but a mirthless detective parody.

Leno's was one of the weaker bits, a short comedy film about how big his car was. At one point, to emphasize the largeness of the vehicle, there was a shot of dwarfs, in gas station uniforms, filling 'er up!

"Good use of dwarfs," Brandon Tartikoff said at a rough cut, my only memory of the great man.

Last night, Letterman and Leno went back to work. Their lives have been linked: by the Comedy Store strike of the late 70s, by the competition over Carson's job...an excellent HBO movie was even made about their rivalry. Letterman has the blessing of the WGA, having signed an interim agreement. Leno has no writers and had to cross a hostile picket line. And what did Letterman do right that Leno did wrong? It's completely unclear to me.

I am all for interim agreements, I have even advocated them here. But for an interim agreement to be an effective tool in a strike, it has to serve as a template for future deals. And as far as I can tell, no template has been set. From the New York Times:

“We are a writer-friendly company,” Rob Burnett, the chief executive of Worldwide Pants, said in a telephone interview. “We don’t have a problem giving the writers what they are asking for. We think they deserve it, and we’re happy to give it to them.”

Finally. A little respect. It's everything I ever wanted to hear in a negotiation, if only the party sitting across the table had been as life affirming and writer friendly as Worldwide Pants. So what did we get?

He said the specifics of what Worldwide Pants had agreed to were not much more than “we pay the writers the residual payments they are entitled to.” He declined to spell out how that would be worked out in terms of new media, and Worldwide Pants does not appear to have jurisdiction over such issues.

In a statement, CBS said, “CBS controls the Internet exploitation rights for both programs, and will comply with any eventual negotiated agreement between the A.M.P.T.P. and the W.G.A."

Of course they will. We all will. Is that what we've been holding out for? Because if that's all it takes to get an interim agreement, let's just have everyone sign one, and we can end this fucking thing right now.

Me! Of all people!

When Bernie and I lived in Napa, we were devoted readers of the St. Helena Star. They had a seemingly endless supply of stories about people who grew up on vineyards, pursued other avenues, and then, surprisingly, at mid-life, found themselves with vineyards of their own, often inherited from their families. The emphasis in these stories was always on the unlikely chain of events that led to this improbable picture. Who would have thought it? Me! Running a vineyard! All my life I tried to get away from vineyards...

Hollywood is full of such stories. Her parents discouraged her, but Rumer Willis is going to try her hand at acting (and she's really good!). Jason ReitmanKasdanCoppola is a gifted director in his own right (he even raised his own money). It's why I can't take it seriously when Sherwood Schwartz walks the picket line with his son (Sheldon?)--who, in a stunning turn of events, found himself running the Brady Bunch at the age of tweny-three--and his grandson, a young writer who also somehow managed to find his way into the family business.

But I can't completely claim the high ground, because my mother was a writer and my grandfather was a writer. I'd love to be able to emphasize the circuitous path I took to get here, but really I'm just another son of a vintner running away from grapes. Who would have thought it? Me! Writing scripts!

And yet the fact is, it wasn't writing that got me through school, it was math. And I have a fantastic factoring problem I want to post. But I'd need to learn how to type exponents on my keyboard, and realistically that's not going to happen.

reality

One of the reasons management walked out of the talks with the Guild is that we wouldn't take reality off of the table. The WGA wants to represent reality writers. And reality writers need us. They're working sixteen hour days on a flat rate with no overtime! Without a union, they have no protection from these sorts of unfair labor practices.

This is the worst talking point I've heard since Marc Cherry wrote Desperate Housewives while he was living off of residual checks.

Writers Guild members don't receive overtime, and the WGA has no interest in how many hours a writing staff works. I once worked forty consecutive days on Arrested Development without a break. And I was easily the laziest person on that show.

What the Guild does is immunize the producers against any charges of labor law violations--if they make a deal with the WGA. The writers still work for a flat rate with no overtime, but the rate is higher, and there are better benefits. And the producers are protected.

We need reality writers so we can do a better job of shutting down production during a strike. And I have no problem with using labor law violations to scare the producers into settling with us. Life would definitely be better for reality writers under the WGA. Just not because of improved working conditions.

Of course, if reality is being used as a bargaining chip we can later remove from the table at a strategic point in the negotiations, as many suspect, then this is all moot.

Calling Peter Chernin...

At the end of the 1988 debacle, as we were in the midst of capitulating, one of the few clear wins WGA executive director Brian Walton was able to announce was that we now had a "hotline to the C.E.O.s," he could not emphasize enough just how important and hard won this hotline was. I wonder where the hotline is now.

strike update

Talks have broken down again. Management seems to really hate us. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing productive happens through the holidays. So I'll be back at the picket line on Monday, even though I pulled my groin picketing last week. It is my first strike injury, an aggravation of an old basketball injury, and it has me hobbling like an old man. It's what I get for making fun of Sherwood Schwartz.

three generations of Schwartzes!

The WGA is starfucking so compulsively, so thoroughly, that they've already run through all the actors, and have now turned to balling themselves. Yesterday at CBS Radford, my picket line ground to a crawl so ninety-one year-old Sherwood Schwartz (creator of Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch) could take a lap with his son and grandson (all in the business!). There was a big announcement, and then they slowly, ceremonially (painfully) circled one time, before setting up off to the side for interviews and photo ops. If this powerful image of institutionalized nepotism doesn't bring management to its knees, I don't know what will.

Les Moonves

In entertainment news:

Nikki Finke at deadlinehollywooddaily.com finally catches up with my suggestion that it might be a good idea to test management's solidarity ("a reasonable template," 11/16).

And the president of CBS is now, by all indications, a black male. So why isn't the prime time schedule more diversified?

moral dilemmas all around

Last night, I was at a dinner party for the writers of Lipstick Jungle. We finished writing six episodes before the strike started, and now they're shooting them in New York. It felt like a scene from the Way We Were--some writers are much more adamant about the strike, others are more casual and have even visited the set (all while carefully not writing, I'm sure). The showrunner has been on set a lot; he is a hero in the network's eyes.

In February, we go on the air in E.R.'s timeslot. That should be great news for our target audience of powerful women balancing their careers and their personal lives. But the writers of E.R. are pissed. Their showrunner shut down production when the strike started. Because they're not producing fresh episodes, our show was able to step in.

Then I went to a fancy Depression-era theme party in an amazing house with a live jug band and fancy soup (in support of the strike, I guess). I talked to a guy who's run the Simpsons on and off for twenty years. He has one percent of the profits in the show. And Fox is still claiming the show isn't in profits! He was going to audit, but then it turned out the audit would have had to go through Jim Brooks, so then it went away. I feel something like that happened with him and Tracey Ullman years ago.

The shittiest working conditions of my life were directly due to a narcissistic writer/showrunner with a pathological need to control time by defying its very limits.

I hope we get everything we want out of the strike against management. But no one screws over writers like other writers.

a reasonable template

In 1988, Carsey-Werner made a deal with the WGA during the strike and went back into production. I've been asking incessantly on the picket line why something like that doesn't happen today. A recent Wall Street Journal article poses the same question:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119482950368089597-qZSQTKZ51Qd7BNpglPdeNNbPDDo_20071211.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

It would be nice if some of the few remaining independents stepped up and made deals, even if they were mainly symbolic. Why couldn't a company like Act III, or even Werner himself, come to an agreement with the WGA right now, favored nations, landing where we all think this is going to go anyway.

But what's more baffling to me is that someone like Peter Chernin or Les Moonves doesn't do it. If one of those guys had the balls to break off from the alliance, the potential increase in market share would be huge. Any one of the networks could take over prime time by being the only one with new shows. And deep down, I think these guys want to destroy each other even more than they want to destroy us. So what's stopping them?

St. Crispin's Day

In 1988, most of the meetings were held at the Hollywood Palladium. Our debonair executive director Brian Walton would get the crowd whipped into a reliable frenzy. Even in defeat, he gave the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers..." Standing O!

At the meetings, there was a microphone on one side for those in favor of whatever was being discussed, a microphone on the other for those opposed, and one in the middle for people with something to say that wasn't exactly pro or con. This being a roomful of writers, no one wanted to take a simple yes or no stance. The middle microphone, or what I came to call the pet peeve microphone, had a line out the door.

This is my pet peeve microphone. My issues with the guild are very narrowly drawn. I want to picket because I want to, not because I have to. I believe freedom of assembly includes the right to not be forced to assemble. I think there's a difference between striking and picketing, with striking being the more effective of the two. I think my commute from Topanga Canyon should count against my picketing hours. And I think if we don't get a piece of the internet now, we never will.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

writer's guild v.i.p.?

I heard there was a sign with those weird words pointing upstairs at the strike meeting at the Convention Center. I haven't been able to confirm the report, but issues of status have crept onto the picket line, and in ways that cut deeper than John Stamos and unavailable tee shirts. There was a strategic meeting of showrunners last week, and yet it included lots of people who aren't currently running shows. It makes me wonder who chose these people and on what basis (obviously I wasn't chosen). There is a particular fascination with the powerful personal narrative of Marc Cherry. It's a favorite WGA talking point: he wouldn't have been able to write Desperate Housewives if he hadn't been living off of residuals. Does anyone give a shit? Why the Guild thinks the best spokespeople to put front and center are the well-fed faces of millionaire showrunners is beyond me. It's not always better to put a face on the message. It depends on the face.

this is why there are no shirts

Strike!

Whenever you see pictures of celebrities on the picket line, they're wearing strike tee shirts. Every day I picket, and every day, I ask for a shirt. They are absolutely unavailable. I can't get a fucking tee shirt. But John Stamos shows up, and somehow they manage to find him a shirt.