Writers' Block

The big studios own this game of Monopoly but did the writers manage to win
Hollywood Boulevard?

Nishi Malhotra, Washington DC, Hardnews 

His name is Harlan Ellison. He is a writer, a science fiction legend, who has four times won the Writers' Guild Award for solo work and twice sat on the board of the Writers' Guild of America (WGA). He was out on the picket lines in Los Angeles, striking with fellow Hollywood writers against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers (AMPTP) on most days, waiting for the brouhaha to settle down and get back to work like everyone else. But, now that it is over (the strike having ended February 12), this is what he had to say about the deal struck by his union to end the 100-day long standoff in the second largest entertainment industry in the world:
"They beat us like a yellow dog. It is a shit deal. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse's asses who kept mumbling "lessgo bac'ta work" over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer...My Guild did what it did in 1988. It trembled and sold us out... it got us no more control of our words...it made nice so no one would think we were meanies; it let the Alliance play us like the village idiot. The WGA folded like a Texaco Road Map from back in the day...geezus, you bleating wimps, why not just turn over your old granny for gang-rape?"
Ellison's choice of words (featured in an online article and riposted back and forth over blogs on the Internet) may be considered unfortunate by some but his indignation is not entirely ill-founded. Early on in the negotiations, the WGA backed down against the AMPTP and gave up on two key demands: the issue of 'residuals' from DVD sales and jurisdiction over animation and reality show writers.
On the third issue of compensation for media content written for and distributed through the internet and digital technology, the WGA claimed 'victory'. Under the terms of the new three-year contract, the writers' proceeds from the online sales of movies and television shows will be doubled. But for content streamed free over the web, the writers will get only a fixed payment of $1200 per year for one-hour webcasts for the first two years; earnings would increase to two per cent of any revenues earned by distributors in the third year.
In accepting the new deal, which the National Public Radio (an independent station) commented on as being "a cup only half-full", the WGA followed the lead of the Directors' Guild of America (DGA) which accepted a similar formula for compensation vis-a`-vis digital media. But writers do not earn the same as directors even though the AMPTP would have people believe, on its official website, that the average Hollywood writer is over-pampered, over-paid and earns more than an average surgeon.
On the other hand, according to WGA President Patrick Verrone, "If they gave us everything we had on the table right now, if they gave us everything we wanted-everything-and they then made a deal with the DGA and matched it, which is what they'll do, and then they made a deal with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and tripled it, which is typically what happens...if they did that-if they gave us everything-on a company-by-company basis they would be giving all of us less than each of their CEOs makes in a year. And in some cases, a lot less."
So what was it that did make the writers agree to the deal - given especially the fact that major Hollywood stars were just beginning to come out from behind their veils of silence to stubbornly stand behind the people who write their lines? The SGA's contract with the AMPTP forbids actors to walk off the sets of on-going productions in support of the strike of another union. So, they did the next best thing - many major stars like George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford took out full-page advertisements in major newspapers to extend their sympathy towards the writers.
Were the writers' demands unreasonable to start off with? This (some would say expectedly) was the opinion of the media moguls - two prominent executives, both of whom headed major studios in the 1980s and moved on to internet-related ventures. Former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's famously cryptic line, "I've seen stupid strikes, I've seen less stupid strikes, and this strike is just a stupid strike," was translated into plainer language by former Paramount and Fox CEO Barry Diller as "There are no profits for the work that writers do that is then digitised and distributed through the internet." Diller's contention was that the writers should have waited to see how the new technologies pan out in the next few years and there is better understanding of where the revenues from new-media ventures are going to come from. It is important that readers know that both executives, while disagreeing with the WGA, did not support the AMPTP either.
But leaving aside science (of the technology involved) and fiction (of Ellison's harangue), the most likely explanation for the fold-up of the strike is that the writers' simply could not afford to continue to strike beyond the window of opportunity that presented itself now - just prior to the Academy Awards and before the start of the new spring season of television programming. This is the time when writers are most needed and any continuation of the standoff beyond this point would have meant settling in for a long bleak period of no wages, plenty of bills and endlessly drawn out negotiations because summer is the season of television re-runs and no new pilots would be tested till Fall 2008.
Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp, estimated that the walkout cost the local Los Angeles economy more than $3 billion. Of that total, an estimated $772 million came from lost wages for writers and production workers, $981 million from various businesses that service the industry, including caterers and equipment rental houses, and $1.3 billion from the ripple effect of consumers not spending as much at retail shops, restaurants and car dealers.
More than 90 per cent of the 3,775 writers who cast ballots in Los Angeles and New York voted to immediately end the work stoppage. Whether the benefits from the new contract will be enough to offset the income writers and others lost because of the strike is a matter of debate. Many feel that for the writers to have given up today's money for a nonexistent piece of the future was a mistake in the first place. Entertainment attorneys are already predicting that working writers may have fewer opportunities as studios use the strike as a means to cut programming budgets, reduce fees and limit the number of productions on their sets.
Still, the WGA believes it has won an epic battle in the history of the entertainment industry - figuratively at least - by pitching its fraternity of pencil pushers against the might of the studio lions...and extracting a few chunky grams if not a full pound of flesh.