Writers’ strike means more than losing fall television line-up

By Jack Bullion
Skiff Staff

There are dark clouds building on our entertainment horizon. Many people have heard ominous news about some sort of writers’ strike that’s supposed to go down sometime in May. And many more simply wonder what all the fuss is about. From afar it may just seem like one of those disputes eccentric Hollywood types like to air out in public. Why is this thing taking up space in our nation’s newspapers? Why should we care? What on earth is at stake for the Joe Average here?

Well, for one thing, some really bad TV. And I don’t mean ABC Friday night bad, or even XFL bad. We’re talking about the televised equivalent of table scraps. TV shows kind of need writers. Without them, we’d be watching the cast of “Friends” having a spirited roundtable discussion about the new budget proposal. Or perhaps Eddie the dog performing tricks for the entire half-hour of “Frasier.” Television may not get that calamitous, but it ain’t gonna be pretty either. The major networks are already quietly putting more newsmagazines, game shows and reality shows in the works. So if you think NBC’s “The Weakest Link” is great shakes now, wait till you’re getting three hours of it. A night.

The writers’ strike is also bad news for movies. No, our traditional summer fare isn’t going to be affected by it. Story, plot and character development will still undergo their traditional hibernation period; things will still blow up and cars will still pointlessly chase each other; and the ignorance of the fickle movie-going public will still cause at least one studio’s hundred billion dollar labor of love to bomb spectacularly. This coming fall, however, things may start to get a little dicey.

Hollywood studios are already beginning to plot a greedy raid on perhaps even the most tepid Sundance Film Festival entries. Better start camping out now for your ticket to that documentary about shoelaces filmed entirely in one take by some C-average film student from NYU, as it promises to be this autumn’s cinematic sensation.

As crippling to the entertainment industry and our viewing habits as the writers’ strike might very well be, it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for Hollywood. For decades, Hollywood has been treating writers like second-class citizens. Look no further than that uniquely Hollywood creation, the “insider” movie. “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Player,” two of the best such films, feature their screenwriter characters undergoing the ultimate indignity: losing their life (and their stories) to Hollywood high society. It shouldn’t be hard to grasp the rather broad symbolism. “Insider” movies are usually written by jaded and bitter screenwriters, getting some small measure of revenge on a system that demolishes their creativity and demeans their importance to the filmmaking process.

I must admit that, as an amateur (and I’m not using that word lightly) screenwriter, I’m very partial to the writers’ cause. I got turned on to screenwriting in my high school creative writing class, but all the fun I was having experimenting with that new form of expression was tempered with a growing awareness of just how disposable a writer is considered to be. Even screenwriting how-to books, while giving support and encouragement to wannabes, spend a surprising amount of space preparing the writer for the inevitable discouragement and frustration he or she is going to face in the harsh glare of showbiz.

Perhaps the most crushing fact the novice screenwriter learns is, if you’re lucky enough to get the thing sold, it’s no longer yours. It becomes the property of the director, the actors, the producers, the gaffer, the best boy, the dolly grip, the caterer and the wild hyena wrangler. Screenwriters, I quickly got the impression, are lucky to even be allowed on the set. I’ve seen many a disappointing movie and have often been incapable of suppressing the thought that the whole affair probably looked a lot better on paper before a small army took a packet of red Sharpie pens to it.

To be sure, filmmaking is a collaborative process, and everyone involved plays an important role in the creation of a movie. The writer’s strike, should it occur the first week in May when the Writer’s Guild of America’s contract runs out, will not result in screenwriters being appointed the heads of studios. For that matter, it may not alter the protracted “revision” process that many a script undergoes in the hands of others. But the purpose behind the strike isn’t to cause a wholesale remodeling of the writer’s role. The Writers Guild simply wants a little more recognition.

Recognition is mostly monetary, of course — the writers want increased residuals for work of theirs that ends up on network TV, cable, the Internet, video and DVD, etc. Then again, name a form of recognition in Tinseltown that doesn’t involve lots and lots of greenbacks. In other words, screenwriters want to be treated like an integral part of the filmmaking process — which, anyone has to admit, they are, since they’re sort of the ones that make up the movie or the TV show in the first place.

Should Joe Average still care? Well, if it means losing his fall TV lineup or winter movie fare, then the average entertainment consumer definitely will. But if we’re looking for someone to blame, let’s point it squarely at the Hollywood behemoth itself, whose years of neglect towards its writers might have cost it this season’s output. When you get right down to it, the rest of us should manage. We’ll just make it a BlockBuster night a little more frequently.

Jack Bullion is a junior English major from Columbia, Mo.
He can be reached at (j.w.bullion@student.tcu.edu).

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