carpe diem 11-10

scroll down for my latest column.

the writer's strike raises all sorts of thorny issues, what with the hollywood screenwriter not being exactly the most sympathetic character when it comes to siding with a striker. but the issues underlying the strike are fascinating, and also point out just how horribly skewed the entire system is towards those at the top - meaning the studio heads, not well-paid actors; actors' pay is just a drop in the bucket - making ever-higher profits on the backs of the people who created the content.

i hesitate to call it 'art,' as we're talking about television and movies - ALL movies, not just the good ones. but on the other hand, we are talking about creative people pouring themselves into something only to have fat rich men siphon off most of the resulting cash.

anyway, there are some great stories out there about the strike, some funny, some more serious, and some just plain silly.

'blood pizza,' indeed. :)

peace,

k

CARPE DIEM 11-10

Like anything that happens in that otherworldly, mythical land we call Hollywood, the screenwriter’s strike that began on November 1 has a certain air of the fanciful about it. There aren't many strikes that feature so many cameras—not to mention cameos, like Tina Fey carrying picket signs and Jay Leno handing out Krispy Kremes.

Even what we call “Hollywood” isn’t in the actual place Hollywood, California, which is a seething freakshow of transvestites, drug dealers and rent boys. The glamorous Hollywood of our quaint heartland dreams mostly takes place hidden away far up in the hills above Hollywood, and in the great rooms of Beverly Hills mansions. That’s where the rich and beautiful ply their real trade—negotiation—safely ensconced behind massive gates.

And the fact that we’re talking about writers—Hollywood screenwriters, no less—lends the strike a certain loopy weirdness. On the face of it, it’s hard to muster a whole lot of sympathy for people who generally start entry-level jobs at $70,000 a year, topping out around $150,000. These are not coal miners or auto workers facing unsafe working conditions. Hell, they’re not even air traffic controllers, whose jobs routinely involve life or death decisions.

No one’s going to perish because a writer for the Ellen Degeneres show didn’t get hazelnut in his half-caf latte.

But, again, this is Hollywood. And when you compare the obscene wages earned by the pretty bobbleheads who speak those writers’ words on camera with the money earned by the scribes without whom even the greatest actor is helpless, it becomes apparent that writers are low man on the totem pole, despite being the creative engine behind the massive Hollywood money machine. And $70,000 in heartland money is a far cry from $70,000 in L.A. money.

But the strike isn’t even about Leo DiCaprio or George Clooney taking an unfair portion of the pie. Hollywood, like pro sports before salary caps, is a nutty nutshell of capitalism at its most absurd, with studios paying seemingly limitless amounts of money for big-name actors and directors in the hopes that their talents will return an even more absurd profit. Indeed, it’s these same studios that, having belatedly discovered the potential for profits waiting for them in the form of digital content, are hoping to seal a deal with the writer’s union that would ensure that the digital wave will wash most future profits into those lavish mansions owned by studio heads, leaving the writers in their seedy bungalows—in literal Hollywood, not mythical Hollywood—where they belong.

At issue are the potential revenue streams from digital downloads of television shows and movies. The technology is there, but the methods by which these formats are marketed and sold are still in their infancy—and both studios and writers can sense the coming flood. The studios are seeking to lock writers into a long-term agreement that would largely shut the writers out of future profits, and the writers are having none of it. The issue of where the media is going is so important that negotiations to alter the agreement by which writers get a share of DVD sales was taken off the table prior to the strike, in order to concentrate on the digital future.

To give you an idea of where a writer stands in the hierarchy of Hollywood, the current deal gives writers four cents per DVD sold. They were fighting to get eight cents.

And according to some prognosticators, the studios have looked at the short-term losses they will undoubtedly incur as shows featuring pundits like Stewart, Colbert, Leno and Letterman—whose content relies on daily writing—go into re-runs, soon to be followed by serial dramas, and then sitcoms. They’ve looked at the numbers, and figured they can still make a whole lot more money down the road, if they hold out and squeeze the writers—who generally don’t have the resources to weather a long strike like the studios can.

So for now, look forward to a whole lot more script-free dreck, brought to you by the makers of “Ow, That Was My Balls,” “Catty Bitches 7,” and “Dude, Watch This!”

Maybe a forced dose of “reality” television is just what America needs to realize how important the words spoken by actual actors really are.

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