As many of you might have heard the Writers Guild of America is on strike out here in the Land of Broken Dreams. And the big thing is do you really know what the strike is about? Sure you're going to miss your favorite TV shows, and you probably think that Hollywood scribes are overpaid -- and many are, but no more so than any other author that you can think of -- music or book included, yes I'm including songWRITERS in the category -- as they get a nice royalty check anytime a song is played on the radio or a CD is bought or a song is legally downloaded.
Here's a video that breaks down what's really going out and why the so-called high priced writers are on strike.
http://weblogs.variety.com/wga_strike_blog/2007/11/writers-strike-.html
As a WGA member in bad standing (i.e. I haven't paid my dues in over a year, because I haven't had a WGA job in longer than that), I feel for the writers who are losing their jobs, but not that much.
Although the one thing that kills me is how shitty Hollywood producers and executives STILL treat us. Think about it this way -- projects GO FORWARD when the writing has reached a level to attract the necessary talent and to excite the marketing people.
Actors who make $20 million a movie (plus all the other obscene bonuses like first dollar gross and shit like that) forego all the ego-driven shit and will work for scale (roughly a few grand a week) IF AND ONLY IF said talent responds to the words on the page put there by none other than the writer!
Not the wily producer, not the studio executive, not the director (unless he's the writer) and the lawyer or marketing whiz or the D-Girl with the big tits who'd suck someone's dick to get a better job - THE WRITER, the scoffed at person who creates the words that come out of the rugged star's mouth those words that make the heroine swoon and all the women in the audience wet with envy.
Maybe the writer's ARE greedy for wanting $.08 instead of $.04 on EVERY DVD sold - at the retail price. Considering how they got ass-raped by VHS sales and the previous DVD boom (which now ain't shit, as people aren't interested in having movie libraries too much anymore).
The sad thing is that the producers were supposed to pay the writers back from the pay cut they took back in the early days of VHS... and that's NEVER going to happen. that money has been snorted, pissed, smoked, driven and built up, up and away for the rapaciously wealthy producers, actors and studio people.
And they'd all be nothing without the writers concocting stories.
I tell you whats going to happen, is that we'll have another year like 2005 -- when everyone thought that the movie industry was a few steps away from the grave because of ALL THE SHITTY MOVIES that got released in late '04 and throughout '05. See, back in late 2002 there was the threat of a WGA strike, so the studios stockpiled all these scripts and rushed them into production without really getting them ready or just buying shit and doing films so producers could get stuff in the distribution pipeline. Now that strike was averted, but not before some of the worst and expensive films were releases, stuff that was so bad the media were claiming that Hollywood was over.
But all that really happened is that the audiences were sick of gagging on the shit that was being spooled out weekend after weekend with huge marketing campaigns... if you remember during 2005, there were some great films -- BATMAN BEGINS, WEDDING CRASHERS, CRASH... to name a few, that really underscored the point -- if you make a great movie, people will come.
And where does a great movie start, from a writer staring at a blank page deciding where and how to begin.
