Last night, the Writers Guild held a meeting at the Hollywood Palladium. The last time I was in that building up on Sunset Boulevard was for the meeting at which we voted to end the 1988 strike. It's hard to believe that the Palladium has not been torn down and replaced by a Walmart…or just plain fallen down on its own accord.
Anyway, I didn't attend last night but my great friend Shelly Goldstein did. In the wee hours of this A.M., she wrote and posted a report on Facebook and I just got her permission to share it with you here…
My thoughts on last night's WGA meeting at the Palladium. Bear with me:
The room was absolutely packed. The energy was unlike any industry or guild event I've ever seen. I'm going to describe it with some simple adjectives:
"Happy"
"Positive"
"Engaged"
"Unified"
Not a single person in the room thought it was a perfect deal that would revolutionize the industry and end all our creative and financial problems.
It wasn't a roomful of wild abandonment, 1,000 people looking to party. Although there was palpable joy oozing from every inch of the room.
It was a roomful of focused, celebratory word-nerds justifiably proud — showing absolute respect to our board and negotiators…and reveling in the joy of a word that gets way too little respect in this country and perfectly describes what we need a hell of a lot more of:
"Union."
People were — ok, this sounds silly, but it's all too rare in 2023 — "nice." The room was engaged, everyone wanted to hear from others' experiences on the line. People showed care and concern for each other. If you bumped into somebody, they apologized before you could. People showed genuine joy for what we did over 146 days.
What "we" did — thousands of people in the WGA, thousands more who supported us in countless ways. Not — as in the past — a single Kingmaker or Exec or Agent or Politician who swooped in to save the day. It was all of us, together.
The leadership spoke beautifully – notably our President, Meredith Stiehm and co-chief negotiator, Chris Keyser.
If Chris' speech was video'd, please watch it. It was articulate, factual, heartfelt and invigorating. We all bought the pitch in the room.
Our chief negotiator, Ellen Stutzman, went through the deal point-by-point — with pride and intelligence, never overselling it. She explained what was asked for, what was possible, what was accomplished, how it was different from similar asks during these negotiations (and during past decades.) She told us what they'd said and how the negotiators moved the line as best they could.
And moved it, they did. Not 100%, but no one in the room was silly enough to believe that was possible.
Still, the gains in the deal run the gamut from good to strong to spectacular.
How long has it been since a "rally" offered its attendees simple "facts?"
Ellen also made it clear the WGA's future intention is not merely to rest on this contract, but to work more closely with the members to make sure provisions are adhered to by our employers.
Cheers and standing ovations were plentiful. My two favorites went to Drew Carey & "Fake Carol."
There was clear support for SAG, IATSE, UAW and other union workers.
I have been in this guild for a long time and I've never seen anything like it. I don't know if I ever will again.
We all know there will be problems. We're screenwriters.
But sometimes we're blessed with a moment of clarity and actual joy.
This was one of them.
For years I've sung "It Goes Like It Goes," the Oscar-winning song written by David Shire & Norman Gimble from the 1979 film Norma Rae. It ends with this lyric, that played through my head throughout the evening:
It goes like it goes, like the river flows
And time, it rolls right on.
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better.
And maybe what's bad, gets gone.Last night, thanks to our membership, our leaders and our allies, things got a little bit better.
May it continue.
