Change of direction: the writer's strike

Well, unless you are culturally retarded or—you know—actually retarded you’ve heard about the writer’s strike in tinsel town. I know this ain’t worth much in the grand scheme of things, but I support the writers 100 %. This is supposed to be a blog about sexual trauma, and coping with life in its wake. Well, art, particularly good art, makes that process a little easier. So as far as I’m concerned this is a viable topic for my little island in the web.

I’ve been reading around, mostly on huffingtonpost.com and a few other sites, trying to understand the issues at hand: why the writers are striking, why the studios don’t wanna play ball, the sentiment of commenters, trolls, random passersby, et cetera et cetera.

What I’m finding is that most of the folks who support the strike understand the lay of the land—the rules of Hollywood, specifically why writers have residuals in the first place.

For most folks in La La land employment is never certain, every job is a temporary job. Some jobs just last longer than others, depending on how successful the product (movie/tv show) is. Just like fighters, who are only as good as their last fight, writers (and actors and directors, everyone) are only as good as their last film (or tv show). Now there are a few exceptions, but these apply to A list movie stars and A list directors, who have accrued some political capital. (And for the record I have NEVER heard anyone referred to as an A list writer).

Screenwriters, who haven’t seen an increase in home movie sales since 1989, are hurtin’ pretty bad. To my knowledge there hasn’t even been adjustment for inflation. Combine that with the problem of living in or around Los Angeles, a very expensive town to live in even when the economy is good. And for those of you keeping score at home we’re in the middle of a housing crisis and a gas crisis. Things look to get worse in the foreseeable future. I’m not a number wiz, but I reckon the cost of living is about seventy thousand just to make ends meet—most likely by the way my estimate is conservative.

Now the people—I’m excluding film execs et al—who have crapped on the strike don’t seem to have a realistic idea of how Hollywood works.

“Fire the writers and hire a whole new crop! With better ideas! And imaginations!”

Huh? Ok guess what, most of the people who want to work in Hollywood are already there. Where is this magical “new” crop supposed to come from? The market is already saturated. And those fresh faces out of film school? Hmm. You’ve got to be pretty fucking stupid if you’re a NYU graduate and you burn your alumnae network. You will NEVER get to work with Spike Lee, Ang Lee, or any other highly connected NYU alumnus because THEY WILL BLACKLIST YOU. And as for “better ideas,” it’s not that the overall body of writers is poor; but collaborative art and the economics of collaborative art, are labyrinthine. Write 100 great scripts. Now turn them into MOVIES. Five of them might be great, 20 will be middling, 10 will be poor, 10 will be god awful, and the rest will be stuck in development hell. Outsourcing won’t do a damn thing.

“These guys are greedy who do they think they are blah blah”
See above. Really, I won’t type it again.

“This isn’t the studios fault. Things are out of their control”

I recognize the studios can’t see the future; however, they have the resources to approximate the future impact of technologies, and quite frankly if studio execs make bad deals they should be fired. Screw golden parachutes, golden bungee cords, golden showers, a side of effect their departure should not be exorbitant bonuses. As in other corporate structures wealth is overconcentrated at the top—this is not to say that studio execs shouldn’t be paid well, this is a volatile, dangerous executive position in a volatile fickle market—I don’t have a problem with golden handshakes, within reason—they deserve performance based bonuses and penalties. If the studios are as strapped as they claim, having a treasure chest for a rainy day by way of performance based pay, might have provided them with some bargaining wiggle room.

Suffice to say, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the strike.