Kyle Foreman writes, "I've got a two-part question for you about the probable WGA strike." I'll answer the two parts, one at a time…
First, how exactly would a prolonged strike affect this season of TV shows? Specifically the hour-long dramas that have to be aired and viewed sequentially, as opposed to 30-minute sitcoms that have very little in the way of long story arcs. I know that at any given time there are always a few episodes completed and ready to air, and a few more with finished scripts, and that there may well be a plot outline for an entire season. But when the strike comes, what happens if there's no settlement when the pre-strike material runs out?
Reruns. Or the show goes off the air until new episodes can be produced.
One or two shows may even try to soldier on with scab scripts but there usually isn't much of that. In every past WGA strike in which I've been involved, there have been rumors that some show had a hefty stockpile of completed, ready-to-film scripts, plus a crew of gifted scribes willing to cross the picket line…but the rumors always turn out to be grossly exaggerated or completely untrue.
Sometimes, there have been a couple of shows that have tried to keep up and running but the results are usually disastrous. In the '81 strike, the show I walked off taped four episodes with scab writers and wound up with three unairable episodes and one that needed extensive repair work. When we returned to our jobs, we were paid our full price to do extensive rewrites on the three, and new segments had to be taped for all four…so those episodes cost a lot more to produce than any others and also weren't as good.
On that program, something interesting (but not all that unusual) happened. The series had several producers and one of them was in charge of recruiting the scab writers. He did, promising three aspiring writers three things. One was that they would be paid the same fee that the "real writers" received. The second was that he would fiercely protect their identities so that they wouldn't get in trouble with the Guild that they hoped some day to join. And the third thing was that after the strike was over and the regular writers returned, he'd find openings to add the scabs to the staff.
He kept zero of these promises. The fee he paid them was Writers Guild scale on a "per writer" basis but it was well below what the regular staff had been receiving. (On some kinds of shows, there's an agreed-upon number called the Aggregate Minimum. Every writer must receive at least the scale payment and the total salaries for writing must equal this larger number. On an hour-long prime time show, it means that the Producer must either hire a lot of writers — so that their combined paychecks equal the A.M. — or must pay some of them well above scale. In this case, he paid each of the three scabs scale but their total compensation was about a fourth of the Aggregate Minimum.)
As for keeping the scabs' identities secret: The Producer thought he might want to join the WGA some day and he didn't want to be accused of authoring the scab scripts so he turned over their names to the Guild and even offered to provide evidence. And of course, after the strike was over, very little effort was made to get the scabs onto the regular staff. In fact, everyone blamed them for the fact that those episodes had turned out so bad, which was probably not fair.
When the WGA goes on strike, some shows can remain in production for a while on what they have in the pipeline. It runs out first on the soap operas and those are sometimes able to keep going with scab writers. In '88, I recall picketing with a lady who was one of the main writers of a popular daytime drama and the strike was true agony for her. Not only had it disrupted her life but it was destroying the lives of these characters she cared about. She had carefully planned that Fred would divorce Jessica and find true love with Heather, whom he'd gotten pregnant…and now the scabs had Heather try to murder Fred, reveal it was Pete's baby she was carrying and run off with Sidney — or whatever it was. "When we get back, it's going to take me months to get some emotional logic back into those characters," the striking writer said. She was actually considering not going back because, as she put it, her "novel had been ruined."
Most of the so-called "reality" shows will keep going. One of the strike issues this time is that most (not all) of those shows claim not to have writers and the WGA knows that's a bogus claim to try and avoid paying WGA rates. The shows call their writers "segment producers" or "continuity editors" or "researchers" or something of the sort and the Guild is seeking to stop that. But the majority of shows that have writers and admit as much will at some point stop production. I'm not sure what will happen with programs like The Tonight Show and The Late Show With David Letterman. Both shut down for a time during past strikes but eventually came back on, with admittedly less material and a lot more difficulty.
One of the many maddening parts of us going on strike is that people get mad because their favorite shows become unavailable, and they often direct that anger at the "greedy writers" instead of at the "greedy studios." Somehow, there's this feeling out there that it's a natural thing for an employer to try and squeeze every possible dime out of a project even if it means slashing the salaries of the creators of that project, and that it's ignoble for the creators to resist. So I can predict with some certainty that we'll get denounced a lot for the fact that shows stop production. Anyway, here's the second part of Kyle's question…
Secondly, what happens if a show's creator/director also writes some or all of the episodes? I know there are people that are members of both the writers and directors guilds, but how do those people usually align themselves? Do they consider themselves directors first, since that's seen to be more prestigious, or do they walk out with the writers, knowing there has to be solidarity between the guilds lest everyone get screwed? Or do they stop writing but continue to direct, essentially getting the best of the situation? I would think the leadership of the guilds would frown on such flaky behavior, but this is Hollywood after all, and I hear it can be a pretty cutthroat, "look out for number one" type of place.
A writer-director, regardless of which role he considers more important, is in a simple but awkward position when the WGA strikes: He can direct but cannot write. That's awkward because there's a bit of overlap in the jobs, just as there is with being a writer-producer or even a writer-actor. They can do one job but not the other.
There is a loophole of sorts in the WGA contract. The Guild claims jurisdiction over the writing of scripts so if you sit down and write a script during a strike, you're scabbing. But there are also these odd exclusions called "a through h" writing chores, so called because they're "numbered" a through h in the contract. They include things like cutting for time, changes in technical or stage directions, assignments of lines to other existing characters occasioned by cast changes, changes necessary for Standards and Practices (i.e., censor) clearance, etc. If a director, producer or actor makes those kinds of alterations in a script, they are not infringing on WGA turf and therefore not in violation of the picket line.
As a result, if you're directing a show or a movie during a strike, you have to make a personal choice as to where "a through h" writing leaves off and the other kind begins. It isn't just writer-directors who are in this dilemma. Often, directors who are not WGA members want to not infringe on our area and will refuse certain duties as going beyond the realm of "a through h." I don't think there's a lot of solidarity between the guilds in the sense of "we're all in this together" but you often find a professionalism that doesn't want to encroach on someone else's area at any time and especially when there's a strike.
This is not usually a big issue because on a show like My Name is Earl or CSI Scranton, you don't even bring in the actors or a director until you have a script that is deemed filmable. These shows cost millions of dollars to film so it's just plain a foolish investment to go out and start building the building without a sound blueprint. There's also the sense on some shows that the Show Runner (the writer or team that sets the direction and is creatively in charge) is a key component of the show's success. For the long term health of the series, you don't want to undermine your Show Runner(s) the way the above-referenced soap opera writer had her planning despoiled. You can do that with the soaps since they aren't supposed to have a long value in reruns and DVDs, and they're always dumping main characters and introducing new ones, anyway. But most prime-time shows are expected to endure and you don't want to screw up the core players and their relationships just to get a couple more episodes produced during what might be a short strike.
Hollywood can be a pretty cutthroat industry but you hope that people will be sane enough to not cut your throat to their own disadvantage. A lot of the things that both sides have done during times of labor unrest have made things worse for everyone, including themselves. The most optimistic thought I can muster about what's looming now is that maybe this time, all the parties will be a little smarter. But then I have to admit that if that were true, there would have been a fair deal in place months ago and it wouldn't have come down to where we are now.
