Supposedly, a new offer is being presented in negotiations today, and the AMPTP guys are telling reporters that this will not be a "take it or leave it" offer but, rather, a starting point for further discussions. At the same time, the WGA is said to be readying some sort of proposal which, one assumes, will be on the same basis. That all sounds good if it actually comes down that way. My suspicion is that we're in for a few more rounds of the Producers presenting us with offers that they say are made of gold…then our guys do a little scraping and say, "Hey, this is just gold-colored lead paint over a lot of Play-Doh." Whereupon each side rushes to the press and accuses the other of not being serious.
Speaking of "the Producers," I have this from Jack Lechner…
I'm loving your analysis of the strike. But I do have to point out, as the Producers Guild already has, that it's a misnomer to refer to the AMPTP as "The Producers." Fact is, the AMPTP is the studios and the networks, and their affiliated lackeys, vassals, and subdivisions. Almost every producer I know is entirely sympathetic with the WGA. Hell, I've already suffered serious economic woe as a result of the strike — and I'm entirely sympathetic with the WGA. So please call a spade a spade, a producer a producer, and a greedy conglomerate a greedy conglomerate!
Well, the AMPTP does stand for "Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers" but in a sense, you're right. The noun "producers" does cover a pretty wide spectrum of folks in Hollywood. I've even been a "producer" on some of the shows I've written, though I can't recall doing many things on them that I wouldn't have done in my capacity as Writer. The title gets applied to folks who do the day-in/day-out business of getting a movie made or a show on the air and it also applies to the studio and the money men. I've also worked with people who had the title of Producer or even Executive Producer who insofar as I could see, didn't do a damn thing on the show except sometimes to watch it.
I've been using it rather generally and maybe I shouldn't, if only for the sake of clarity. I'll try to watch it…but everyone should be aware that not all "producers" are Mel Cooley. Some of them are Sumner Redstone.
While I'm in the "corrections" part of the e-mailbag, here's one from my pal Vince Waldron…
Nice piece on the oddly slanted coverage of Leno's damned-if-he-does-damned-if-he-doesn't behavior toward his workers and the strikers
outside. (Like you, I wonder why it's only talk show hosts who are expected to serve as mother hens to their studio hired staffs.)But I'm actually writing about your parenthetical aside regarding The New Price is Right, in which you assert — jokingly, I assume — that the show has no writers. As you no doubt know, the show does indeed employ writers, and more than a few, to provide at least some of the words that Drew speaks, as well as pretty much everything his announcer intones, as well as all the words spoken by whoever it is that reads the prize descriptions. The fact that the show's writers aren't credited is almost solely due to show owner FremantleMedia's desire to avoid having to offer them the same industry standard benefits that accrue to writers on most other network shows. But, curiously, someone at FremantleMedia thought enough of their "writers" to submit three of their names to the TV academy for Emmy recognition, as Writers, for the 2007-2008 season — a strange gesture indeed for a company that claims not to employ scribes on their shows.
That and other subjects of more than passing interest to WGA members will likely be aired at this Friday's WGA rally to Win Industry Standards for Fremantle's writers, to be held this Friday at noon outside the company's Burbank HQ (at Pass and Alameda, just down the street from Bob's Big Boy.)
Hey, isn't that the Bob's Big Boy where Drew Carey always eats? Someone told me he owns it, and he may, but apparently he's there several times a week for meals. Maybe you could all go over there after the rally, see if he's eating at the counter and get him to spring for lunch.
But you're entirely right, Vince. That show has writers and like most writers on shows that are supposed to look spontaneous, they probably do a lot more than is readily apparent. This is one of our key issues in the current talks and I shouldn't have glossed over it as I did.
I'm hearing from a lot of folks who feel Jay Leno got slammed unfairly for…well, I'm still not sure exactly what the crime was. Something to do with assuring his staff they had nothing to worry about and not coming through with checks in the six hours after they were laid off. A lot of the pieces (starting with The Drudge Report, which is always a good place to get off track) said that Jay had fired his writers. Jay didn't fire anyone, especially his writers. They said he'd fired his staff…but the staff works for NBC. NBC laid them off, and this seems to have been done largely to send a message of fear out there. One of the Stupid Management Tricks that doesn't seem to be working this time is the concept that any time someone peripheral suffers as a result of the strike — a secretary being laid off, a business losing business, etc. — it's the fault of those awful writers for not just taking the rotten offer and getting back to work. It couldn't possibly be the fault of the AMPTP for giving them that rotten offer and refusing to budge off it.
That's worked in the past to ratchet up the pressure on us. But I don't think it's working this time.
Lastly, I need to clarify something that a number of correspondents and websites have gotten wrong. In 1985, a Writers Guild strike collapsed after three chaotic weeks and the WGA accepted what a lot of us think was the worst deal in the history of Hollywood labor unions. Some of us thought so at the time; others have since come 'round to that view. Among those who at the time campaigned for us to accept it, you now get a lot of, "Oh, no, I was never one of those idiots who were yelling that it was a good deal." What it was was an immense rollback in our compensation when a movie or TV show we wrote was sold on home video. As I've written here a couple of times, there was talk then of studies that would reassess the marketplace for video cassettes (this was pre-DVD) and some sort of upward adjustment if that industry turned out to be more lucrative than some thought.
Some people seem to think these studies were part of the '85 deal. They weren't. The settlement we accepted that year was that we'd take a whole lot less on home video, end of story. There was absolutely nothing in that contract that required the studios to spend ten seconds studying the marketplace or to give us ten cents more if, as it turned out, they were suddenly making billions selling movies on tape. The "talk" was all consolation statements…studio heads telling the press, "We're going to look into this…see if the writers deserve more…" But they were in no way obligated to do it so they didn't do it, and we all knew (or should have known) they weren't going to do it.
Moral of the story: We have a saying around the Writers Guild that if it ain't on the page, it ain't getting on the screen. It's the same way with deals. You don't get the money if it doesn't say so on the paper. And sometimes, not even then.