No word on what's up with the strike other than assurances that they're talking and that everyone is considering everyone else's proposals. This could mean progress or it could mean that any minute now, both sides will be out there accusing the other of not knowing a good formula when they see it.
These things are always roller coasters, always a matter of hopes being raised and then dashed, raised and then dashed. It can make the strike seem longer and more painful if you allow it to keep doing that to you. My guess is that when we are close to a real resolution, there'll be no doubt about it. It won't be a matter of unsourced rumors. Dave, Jay and Conan will be talking about booking actual guests the following week for tentative new shows. The WGA will announce a general membership meeting. The AMPTP will find a way to assure advertisers and theater owners that new product is on the horizon.
Until then, assume the strike is indefinite.
Even when we have the above indicators, there may be stumbling blocks. The deal isn't the deal until the rank-and-file of the Writers Guild membership votes to accept. If the Guild's Negotiating Committee and Board of Directors vote to recommend it, then that will probably happen…but it isn't one of those George Tenet brand slam-dunks. Expectations among the members are high, not so much for the dollars and cents involved but that a number of the so-called "moral issues" will be addressed and improved.
The WGA never strikes only for money. We always have issues relating to the way the business works…matters such as screen credits, expanding the Guild's jurisdiction (into reality shows and animation, for instance), separation of rights, etc. Two big concerns that have loomed large the last few years are the matters of Late Payments and Free Rewrites. A number of employers have quite consciously opted to make the checks late so they can collect interest on the money a little bit longer. I once worked for a producer who had that built into his budget. It was planned that all checks would be two weeks late because this would net him an extra $1200 or thereabouts.
In the era of electronic payment, you would think this kind of thing would be ending…and in some areas, it is. I'm working on a project for a European company and when I hand in a draft, they sometimes have the payment in my bank account within six hours. But if I work for certain major studios in Hollywood, it will somehow take three weeks.
We'd like to mop that up and we'd also like to stop Free Rewrites. The contract between the AMPTP and the WGA specifies a certain number of drafts that you do on a script for the agreed-upon fee. Producers have been known to pressure writers to do more…and often, it can turn into writing a whole new script as an alleged "rewrite" of another. After you've delivered the final draft of the script in which everyone goes to the planet Neptune in search of water, the producer decides it'll be too expensive and instead, they want it to be a story in which everyone goes to Starbucks in search of Colombia Nariño Supremo. Well, okay, those decisions get made…but to get out of paying you or another writer to write that new script, they want to consider it a rewrite of your old one, the one you finished, and have you not charge them. We'd like that to stop, too. There are also matters relating to age and racial discrimination, product placement, honest accounting and several others.
Every negotiation, the WGA comes to the table with issues that are more involved with ethics and creative control than cash, and every negotiation, the AMPTP seems to take the attitude of, "Oh, they aren't really serious about anything but the money," which is always wrong. A large part of the Guild cares at least as much about the moral/ethical/creative concerns as they do about how much loot goes into our wallets. In the current bargaining, if you hear that they've settled the money questions, that may not be the end of it.