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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Human Side of Writers Strike

By the time this column appears in print, the scriptwriters strike may have ended. More than likely the pickets will still be visible outside The Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros., NBC Universal and the other major studios in the Los Angeles area. That is where you will find people like Andy Schwartz, a third-generation writer; Melissa Carter, who spends six hours a day writing in the office of her Burbank home to free up the afternoon to spend with her family; and Michael Tabb, a Northridge resident who can go through three drafts to get one page right in a screenplay. “We are not lazy people,” Tabb said, standing outside the Alameda gate to the Disney corporate headquarters. I visited with Tabb for almost an hour on Thursday morning, the fourth day of the strike by members of the Writers Guild of America West. The reasons for the work stoppage are by now well known the Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers failed to come to an agreement on a new contract to replace the one expiring Oct. 31. The main issue is over residuals, the payments writers receive when their work is re-run on television or distributed on DVD. The Alliance’s proposal to pay residuals only after the studios make their costs back was taken off the table. A demand by the Guild for a 4-cent raise in the writer’s cut of DVD sales was withdrawn as well. That leaves the issue of how much writers should receive when their work is distributed through new media downloads, Internet streaming, mobile devices and neither side is willing to budge. It’s less about the present than the future of how television and movies are viewed. “As a young writer it’s an inconvenience but it’s necessary,” said Schwartz, of Studio City, who is a scribe for the comedy/drama “Scrubs.” “The necessity outweighs any temporary inconvenience.” If the last writers strike in 1988 is any indication, that temporary inconvenience may last months. The walkout lasted 22 weeks and cost the Los Angeles economy $500 million. The fiscal impact for this strike is predicted to end up being in the billions. <!– Writers Guild: Picketers march outside Disney Studios in Burbank. –> Writers Guild: Picketers march outside Disney Studios in Burbank. Tabb, a strike captain, is prepared to stick it out for the long haul. So is Carter, whose writing credits include the feature film, “Little Black Book” and the television series, “Yes, Dear.” Residuals from the film sustained Carter and her family during two leans years. “If we leave this fight now there will be no chance to get residuals,” she said. With more viewing taking place on computers, a cut of revenues generated from downloads is not unreasonable, Carter said. The Writer’s Lot I consider myself a minority among the transplants who come to Los Angeles in that I am not trying to break into the Entertainment Industry. I have no interest in writing scripts for television or movies. As I see it I could a) compete against 10,000 other people in a medium in which I have no experience, no contacts, and no good ideas to put on paper. Or I could b) stick with what I know and just do better at my current job, which I’m sure my editor would prefer. Besides, I am too old to break into writing for Hollywood. And it’s a lot of work. Scriptwriters are not lazy people. In keeping up with the coverage of the strike, I check several times a day on the message board at the Los Angeles Times website. While this in no way is a scientific sampling, some opine that scriptwriters are lazy, untalented, overpaid and greedy for asking for more money and should instead teach English in inner-city high schools. When all you see is the finished product it’s easy say, “I can do better than that,” or, “What a piece of garbage.” In their defense, it’s probably safe to say that no television or film writer wakes up in the morning and tells himself, “I am going to write a really crummy screenplay today.” “If a person isn’t exposed to the process then they don’t understand,” said John Putch, a Studio City filmmaker who writes his own scripts. He is not a member of the WGA. Learning the process is as close as the nearest library. Last winter I read Syd Field’s first book, “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting,” and last month I read “Save the Cat!” by Blake Snyder, a book recommended to me by a screenwriter-turned-producer. Both give an outsider an inside look at what it takes to fashion a script and certainly makes the reader watch movies or television differently. Nearly a year after completing Field’s book I still find myself paying close attention to how a story gets laid out in the first 10 minutes, and picking out the plot points that turn Act One into Act Two and then into Act Three. Daytime television writer Rick Draughon compares his experience on soap operas to an assembly line where one script a week gets knocked out. “It’s hard to make the work as good as it needs to be,” said Draughon, who lives in Sherman Oaks and took part in pickets outside ABC Prospect Studios in Los Angeles. New Media, Old Problem I participated in a work stoppage of sorts in December 1996 as a freelancer with the Chicago Tribune. The Great Freelancers Revolt was neither great nor much of a revolt. It had to do with the contract offered its stringers which had among its provisions the signing over to Tribune the rights to all of the stories we wrote, including what was used on its nascent online site. We would receive no extra money for stories appearing through new media when it really was new. Sound familiar? Some freelancers signed the new contract right away. But more held off, organized into the Tribune Independent Writers’ Association, and met to discuss what the new contract meant. It was an individual decision whether or not to sign the new contract, one association organizer told me multiple times. I held off signing the new contract. I attended a meeting of the association to which they invited a representative of the National Writers’ Union. A work stoppage took place at the holiday season. I interviewed at a daily newspaper in one of the surrounding counties in the event that I didn’t sign the new contract. In the end I signed a contract guaranteeing ownership of my stories after 30 days. I liked freelancing and wanted to continue. Most of all I didn’t want to watch the balance in my bank account to continue to drop. I imagine that as the WGA strike continues similar thoughts will enter the heads of Guild members. There are bills and mortgages and everyday expenses to pay. Savings accounts can’t last forever. There is a difference between 1996 and today and differences between the newspaper and entertainment industries and their approaches to online distribution. Back then there were many unknowns about the success of reading news stories online. Those unknowns have been answered today about whether people want to watch television online or on a mobile device. I’ve heard enough presentations from Disney, for instance, to know how critical they consider streaming ABC shows at the network Web site and making shows available for downloading to an iPod. Other networks have followed suit by streaming shows at their respective Web sites. How much money that generates I have no clue but the eyeballs are there and that’s a start. By striking, the Guild membership is affecting not only their careers, but those of the crews working on films and series. The longer the walkout, the greater the ripple effect. Ancillary businesses of costume and equipment suppliers, camera rental facilities and possibly post-production facilities could all feel the hit. Putch’s livelihood as a television director was pulled out from under him by the walkout when the network cancelled an episode of “Scrubs.” That scenario will be repeated throughout the industry as more shows like “24” and “The Office” stop production, or go into immediate re-runs, as the Leno, Letterman and O’Brien late night talk shows have already. His support of the Guild, however, remains strong. “Not wanting to give download revenues is ridiculous,” Putch said. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] .

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