Monthly Archives: November 2007

Larry King used to brag a lot that he did zero preparation for his interviews…as if that was a good thing. It usually turns out to be a great way to make sure that you only ask the obvious, predictable questions that your guests have answered everywhere else and for which they have stock replies. Or sometimes, you just look clumsy, as in this brief exchange the other night with Jerry Seinfeld…

There's an awful lot of misinformation out there about the WGA and its strike, starting with the belief by some that all TV and movie writers own several homes and luxury cars. Those are the exceptions, not the rules. Hey, if you want to see people who are rolling in cash, take a look at the ones who are now trying to deny us a share of the revenues when our work is run on the web.

But then it's one of the things we live with as creative folks. When Producers and studio execs do everything possible — ethical or not — to maximize their incomes…well, that's good, old-fashioned American business. But whenever we want a raise, there's someone out there complaining we're greedy. (Among the more surreal moments of my life: During the '88 strike, I was in a meeting where a man with my initials and an annual salary of 70+ million told us that "the business is hurting" and his studio could not possibly meet one of our demands which might have cost them six million dollars over three years. Did I mention this man's personal paycheck was over seventy million dollars a year?)

Some other bits of faulty info. I keep reading "The WGA does not represent writers of Animation, Reality Shows or Game Shows." Wrong. The WGA represents quite a number of writers in all three of those areas. What it's seeking in the current negotiation is jurisdiction over all of them.

Also, there's "Animation Writers do not get residuals." This too is not true. Many do. As I've mentioned here before, some animation writing jobs are covered by the WGA, some are covered by The Animation Guild and some are covered by neither. When the WGA covers a show, it secures residuals in some form. The Animation Guild does not but even on some of those shows, writers have successfully negotiated residual deals…and of course, they're totally on their own when there's no union involved. It's not easy for an individual to make a residual deal but it has been done, and I'm a little tired of people talking like there's something about cartoon production that automatically makes it impossible to pay residuals.

One of the big myths is that so-called Reality Shows don't have writers. Of course, they do, even when the show is all about what "real" people do in spontaneous situations. In those cases, someone has usually engaged in the plotting to set up those situations. Someone else (or maybe that same someone) has written narration. On a game show, if the host reads questions, someone wrote those questions. Even if the host just welcomes you and explains the rules, someone wrote those words. On Deal or No Deal, Howie Mandel reads all the introductions and many of his other lines off a TelePrompter. Someone wrote the dialogue on that TelePrompter.

For the most part, "writerless" shows are shows that have writers but they give them titles like Segment Producer or Program Consultant and they write along with their own duties, usually for extremely rotten money. Eliminating this practice is one of the goals of the WGA.

Lastly before I hit the sack: A lot of people think that when the WGA goes on strike, writers stop writing. No. We just stop writing for the studios and shows that our Guild is striking against. A lot of us have other writing gigs — books, comic books, graphic novels, magazine articles, etc. I doubt William Goldman is hard-up for cash but if he is because he can't get a screenplay deal during the strike, he can go write his next novel. The strike will be a financial hardship for some writers but not for all of us. Good night, Internet.

A video by Harry Shearer…

So the strike starts Sunday at one minute past Midnight. What does that mean? A feverish weekend for some writers to finish up certain scripts and then things start shutting down.

One of the sometimes-frustrating parts of a WGA strike is that its effects are immediately felt in some quarters and not in others. Some shows will shut down right away. Others will continue to film or tape for a few weeks. At some point in those few weeks, the Producers will be out there, citing the programs and movies that are still in production, selling press stories that say, "Gee, we're not being hurt very much." But of course, even as they're saying that, execs are meeting to discuss what they'll do in two weeks or three or whenever the backlog runs out. (One thing to keep in mind is that most of the media is controlled by companies we're striking. If some development in this story is very bad for the Producers, how fairly do we think it will be reported on a channel owned by Disney or in a magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch?)

I don't know why the Guild isn't calling the strike today. Perhaps they feel that given the timing of certain TV shows, it's less awkward for us not to try and pull the writers off them. Letterman and Leno have tonight's shows all written. Both are loyal WGA members who apparently will not do their shows, with or without their writing staffs, until the strike is resolved. Why put those guys in the position of having to decide whether or not to perform their "host" duties tonight? Tomorrow night's Saturday Night Live is probably far enough along that it could go forward without the writers…so its producers and actors who are also WGA members would be placed in an uncomfortable position. These are all shows we can shut down quickly enough. We don't have to make it difficult for our members there.

Also, waiting until Sunday night puts the ball in the Producers' court. Are they prepared to make a big leap in their positions to ward off a work stoppage? They probably aren't but just in case they are, maybe it's not a bad idea to give them time to make that leap.

It's hard to make these determinations from outside. There are official negotiations but there are also "back channel" and sidebar and informal conversations. From those, our leaders get a sense of how to play this. They can easily be wrong but it doesn't hurt to remember that they're making these kinds of judgments based on information that's unavailable to the rest of us.

I have to get back to work on a project. (Fortunately for me, I have several that don't fall under WGA jurisdiction, though I wish they did.) But I did want to address one other matter: The question of how long the strike will last.

Nobody knows. Nick Counter, the mouthpiece for the Producers, doesn't know. Patric Verrone, President of the WGA, doesn't know. And if those guys don't know, surely the guesses you and I make aren't good for a whole lot. That's actually one of the more interesting/frightening parts of a strike. If either side knew for certain it would be X number of days, they could plan their lives much more efficiently than they now must plan. I believe this has the potential to be a very long strike. The Writers certainly are not going to fold quickly enough to make it anything less.

So if you see someone say it's going to be six days or six weeks or six months, just remember: That's only a wild guess.

The real answer is that it will depend on the answer to this question: The Producers have taken the hard-line position that they will not discuss an increase in DVD and new media payments…and they will not address other issues until that one's off the table. How long will it take them to back off that position? You cannot begin to assess how long the strike will last unless you can answer that. And not only can you not answer that at this moment, I'd be very surprised if Nick Counter could. But he'd better figure it out soon.

From Japan, here's a minute and a half of dogs jumping rope. Isn't this a lot better than talking about strikes and means of torture?

I'm sorry. I do not believe anyone who says they're not sure if waterboarding is torture. Well, maybe if the little old lady who lives across the street from me said it…though come to think of it, she watches the news. She knows. The political candidates and nominees and such in our government all certainly know and when they hedge and balk and decline to offer an opinion, they're lying just as certainly as anyone ever lies about anything. It's torture and they know it and they just don't want to say it.

Malcolm Nance knows it's torture. How does he know? Because he has "led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people." If you even suspect he might be wrong or that the point is arguable, spend a few minutes Googling and searching the 'net. See if you can find a single article from someone that says, "Oh, I've supervised waterboarding hundreds of times. It's not at all unpleasant and in the right company, it can even be rather enjoyable. On our anniversary each year, my wife and I take turns waterboarding each other."

Thanks to Dan Gheno for pointing me towards that article. Hey, Dan! Next time you're in town, let's get some of our friends together and have a big waterboarding party! We'll see who can dispense the most phony information in order to make it stop.

Nothing's changed in the WGA/AMPTP situation since last night but I thought it might be useful to summarize where everyone is at the moment…

The WGA Board and Negotiating Committee are meeting, probably right this minute, to decide when to strike. Everyone assumes it'll be a.s.a.p. but one thing our leaders have managed to be in this whole matter is Not Easily Predictable. There may be some kind of other strategy in play, like trying for a time to keep the town just on the cusp of a strike. I haven't heard anything about this; just suggesting that one of the WGA's strengths may be in being fast on its feet, whereas the Producers are more or less committed to doing things the way they always do. There are six major, multi-national corporations who have to agree on a change of battle plans for their side, and we all know how tough it can be for even one of those corporations to alter the way it does business, especially when it thinks those methods have generally worked.

The Producers say they are ready to continue discussions and that "a deal could be closed this weekend." But as far as I know, that's only possible from their point of view if the WGA will walk in and say, "Okay, let's forget that nonsense we were spouting about getting a better share on DVDs and other new technologies." More likely, that would be phrased as, "Okay, let's accept a token, meaningless increase in those areas and let's agree to a three-year study to determine how that marketplace will work, and then we'll fight this same battle in the next contract but in the meantime, you'll have three years more of getting to keep all that dough for yourself." However it would be stated, the WGA ain't about to say it.

Various studios are scrambling to plan what, if anything, they're going to tape or film next week. Most shows probably have two schedules and they're waiting for the WGA announcement this afternoon to see which one will prevail. On many, it may be possible to continue for another week or so with material that's already been through much of the pipeline. The networks are probably continuing to order up episodes of "reality" shows and game shows that they don't really want to broadcast.

And a lot of peripheral folks are worried. Script coordinators and people who run TelePrompters and guys who deliver croissants to the set are all wondering if and when their income streams will be halted. This is one of the real tragic aspects of all this. The people who are responsible for the strike — the studio heads and corporate execs — won't be missing any mortgage payments. Some writers might but, of course, they're doing this for their own livelihoods and they feel forced into it by the Producers' actions. The Wardrobe Assistant who may be laid off if and when their show goes dark…that person is like collateral damage.

In truth, some of the non-writers whose jobs may be affected do stand to gain from all this, at least in indirect ways. There are many unions in Hollywood where the members do not receive residuals directly or share in home video revenues but they do indirectly. In many cases, the employers contribute to the union's health and pension plans via a formula based on the kind of residual structure that the WGA is out there defending. Others profit in other ways from the WGA upholding the idea that those who do the hiring must respect the dignity and importance of those they hire. Still, there will be those who will suffer during a battle in which they have no self-interests and that's regrettable. You really wish there could be a better way to do this but unfortunately, the folks who have the real power in the industry think they do jes' fine with this one, most of the time. This is not going to be one of those times.

Fred Kaplan on the mystery of why Karen Hughes has left her post with the Bush Administration. I know why. She was in charge of improving America's image overseas and she figured out that in order to change that, we'd have to change what we do over there.

This is me actually blogging at you from inside the WGA Membership Meeting. I want to pay attention rather than sit here and fidget with this micro-mini keyboard and anyway, it's supposed to be confidential, even with umpteen thousand writers in the house. But I don't think it would be wrong to report here that the place is packed, that the attendees are solidly behind the Guild Leadership, and that if the Producers think they can intimidate this union into a crappy, status quo deal, then somebody on their team has pulled a Paul Wolfowitz and is in serious need of firing. This Guild is serious and together and not about to fold. Tell you all about it later.

Off to the WGA General Membership Meeting to find out when we strike. Blog ya later.

I know a lot of folks who read this site are still interested in the Kennedy Assassination. Sunday at Noon (Eastern time), C-Span2 is airing a live interview and phone-in session with Vince Bugliosi, who I assume will be talking mostly about that. The announcement makes it sound like he'll be taking calls for three hours. However long he's on, it oughta be interesting…maybe not three hours' worth of interesting, but interesting.

I'm planning a trip to New York later this month and attempting to procure house seats for Young Frankenstein. One by one, acquaintances and friends who've told me they could arrange these for the new Mel Brooks musical are finding out that they can't. I can apparently get house seats for anything playing in town except this one show…

…unless someone reading this has the necessary connections. If you are such a person, please do let me know.

If you have a Series 2 or Series 3 TiVo and you transfer recordings to your home computer, you will want to play around with VideoRedo Plus. It's a pretty good video editor but, more importantly for us, it works directly with ".tivo" files and will also convert them effortlessly to several other formats. With it, I could record an episode of Phenomenon on my TiVo, transfer it to my PC, edit out all the commercials and stupid parts and then put the show back onto the TiVo for viewing. Of course, I'd wind up with about a three minute show but…