The week before last Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, the sniping between the striking Writers’ Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers got downright juvenile.
NBC Entertainment President Ben Silverman, understandably
upset that his network was losing the closest thing it has to the Oscars,
criticized the writers: “The nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high
school are trying to cancel the prom.”
The strike Web site United Hollywood fired back, referring to the producers as “big, jock bullies who won’t return to the bargaining table.”
Didn’t you always suspect that Hollywood was like perpetual high school? (Copyrighted Associated Press photo by Damian Dovarganes.)
That said, it is time someone told the kids to grow up and settle this thing. Last Sunday’s Golden Globes broadcast was just the latest in what has become a steady stream of embarrassments caused by the strike, which is heading into its 12th week. Before that, we had late-night talk-show hosts going back on the air without writers and, for the most part, without scripts, struggling to entertain us. The prime-time schedule is starting to fill up with reruns and reality shows because the networks are retaining fresh episodes of hit shows for the all-important sweeps months of February and May.
I don’t even watch that much network TV, and I’m noticing. Hasn’t NBC now aired every Saturday Night Live compilation special in its vaults?
It’s all rather gloomy.
Yes, we all realize that this is not Middle East peace or solving the health care crisis. Conan O’Brien had a wry observation that the strike had forced some people to read books and talk to each other in their leisure time. But TV and film are important parts of the lives of many of us, providing insight into our world and observations about our culture as well as entertainment.
On a less abstract level, the writers’ strike is having a real impact on the lives of many people who are not writers or producers. They just happen to work in the entertainment industry as stagehands, caterers, makeup artists or extras. It has to be frustrating struggling to cover the expenses of living in New York or Southern California while the disputing parties refuse to initiate a return to the bargaining table for fear of appearing weak.
Whether it’s George Clooney, who has made noise that he might be interested in initiating mediation, or someone else, there has to be someone in Hollywood who can tell the producers and writers, “Enough is enough.” Maybe the newly inked deal between the Directors' Guild and AMPTP will get things going again.
Writers need to return to the table with firm demands but also a realistic concept of what sorts of rapidly changing business models the producers face. After all, a new deal won’t do much of anyone any good if the whole enterprise falls apart.
Producers need to return to negotiations with a healthy respect for the writers.
Frankly, garbage like Silverman’s comments shows an extremely poor attitude toward writers, and that attitude, if you believe what you read, is not confined to him.
Where would producers, directors or actors be without writers? We are never more aware of that than at this time of year, when we celebrate high-quality movies that often are the product of one or two writers’ voices.
When I recently talked to Harold Prince, the original director of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Broadway, he quickly singled out screenwriter John Logan as a major reason why the current film adaptation works. Atonement and its stars would not be contenders this awards season without a great screenplay from Christopher Hampton.
And any time you hear about a production in turmoil, there’s often talk of writers being brought in to overhaul the script.
But any time I interview screenwriters, they usually talk about not getting a lot of respect from producers and others in Hollywood.
The fact that their strike has so crippled film and television and some of their biggest events re-emphasizes the importance of writers.
Granted, few viewers consider the writer when picking a flick or turning on a TV show, although theater fans often are anxious to see the latest from their favorite scribe. But then again, without a strong script, Tom Hanks is nowhere near as good as he can be. (The main reason Charlie Wilson's War was my favorite movie last year was Aaron Sorkin's witty-yet-profound script.) The writers deserve fair compensation for what they bring to the table and its use beyond the big and small screens.
And we, the audiences, deserve a lot better than the stream of disappointments that writerless Hollywood has been cranking out lately.
It's all about greed. The Network Mega-corporations make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. The presidents of these corporations make millions to tens of of dollars each. Yet they walk away from an agreement that would cost their corporations less than 1% on annual earnings per share. And what's worse is - the corporations actually feel entitled to do this! What people should be asking is: What kind of people are the stockholders of these companies for not doing anything to stop this??!
Posted by: Zarina | January 20, 2008 at 04:31 PM
Rich,
As one of those screenwriters who often didn't get respect, all this is, to quote, Yogi Berra or some other witty sage, "deja vu all over again."
Heard all the same laments, blame, spin the last time around when we had a strike or whenever the idea of a strike was invoked. You're right about the importance of the writer. Without the writer, everybody else is out of work...including the producers and studio heads. All we ever ask is for what is fair...If someone else is making a profit on our work, we just want our cut. The producers can't boast out of one side of their mouth what a goldmine the internet is and cry poor out of the other side.
What's happening in the film business to middle class actors, writers, directors, and techies is no different than what is happening to the middle class in the rest of the country. The corporations and a big business-toadying administration is destroying the middle class worker and the gulf between haves and have-nots keeps getting wider. Soon we'll be a third world nation, with just the rich and the poor. Look no further to the weakening of the American dollar and the obscene imbalance between CEO salaries and the rank and file worker's.
Actor Steve Weber (from the old TV show WINGS) concisely put the strike in proper prospective a few weeks ago on THE HUFFINGTON POST. He said it all pretty much boils down to who do you root for when you watch IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE every Christmas: Jimmy Stewart's George Baily or Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Potter? And if you're rooting for Mr. Potter, you're rooting for the wrong guy.
I also remind you, it was the producers who walked away from the negotiating table.
Charles Edward Pogue
Posted by: Charles Edward Pogue | January 18, 2008 at 12:56 AM