writer's strike

here's my column from last week. hopefully this week's will be up on the FCN site shortly.

CARPE DIEM 12-29

It’s a hard lesson that has been learned ad nauseum over the years in any number of “negotiations:” in order to get someone to do what you want them to do, hit ‘em where it hurts. Historically, it’s usually been the people with the deep pockets who are able to pull this off.

But the striking Writer’s Guild of America has taken the lesson to heart, and despite being out of work for the past seven weeks, has declined to issue a waiver for its members to work on either of the year’s two biggest awards shows. They have also denied a request for free use of film clips from movies and past awards shows on which Guild members worked.

As of now, the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes will go on in some form, according to organizers. But without the support of professional writers and Hollywood glitterati sympathetic to their cause, it remains to be seen what sort of presentations the studios and their self-congratulatory awards shows will be able to pull off. What the waiver denial means in real terms is that there will be no scripted monologues or presentations at either show—at least none written by Guild writers. It also means that the star power of each show will be severely dimmed.

For instance, prior to the strike Jon Stewart had been tapped to host the Oscars again. But given his sympathy for the striking writers, it’s unlikely that he would cross picket lines to host a show that is essentially a four-hour advertisement for movies that will put more money in the already overstuffed pockets of the heads of Hollywood’s major studios. And if Stewart somehow did end up crossing the picket lines and hosting, as a Writer’s Guild member he would be prohibited from writing--even for himself. He’s but one of a long list of front-of-camera talent that has shown strong support for the writers’ strike, as has the actor’s union itself, the Screen Actor’s Guild.

Needless to say, the spectacle of A-list actors crossing picket lines to attend the shows would not escape notice in the bitchy little fishbowl of Hollywood.

But the duration of the strike and intransigence of the studios and networks to even negotiate in good faith with the scribes who generate all that money is making some people antsy. Late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno announced last week that they would be returning to air on January 2—without writers. As Guild members, the hosts are forbidden from writing monologues for themselves, but can talk off-the-cuff and conduct interviews with celebrities. Stewart and Stephen Colbert followed suit shortly thereafter, announcing that writerless shows would begin airing on January 7.

But all the talk show hosts expressed a certain amount of distaste for the arrangement, despite being able to circumvent the Guild’s rules. With their shows dark for the past seven weeks without writers, the three aforementioned hosts have no doubt been under tremendous pressure from the networks to put SOMETHING on the air to fill that pesky space between commercials. They have also watched as their non-writing staff was laid off. According to several reports, the hosts themselves picked up the tab for their crews’ salaries in the interim. That’s a reported staff of 100 for Leno and 80 for O’Brien who have been without work as an indirect result of the strike.

It remains to be seen if the writers’ refusal to participate in Hollywood’s big annual moment of auto-fellation will get the studios to return to the bargaining table. For now, the shows will go on, somehow. And although you can expect your talk shows to come back, don’t expect miracles from the hosts, most of whom regularly employ writing staffs of 20 or more.

Perhaps Stewart and Colbert put it best in their joint press release acknowledging their decision to return to the airwaves:

“We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”

(For an overview of the issues involved in the strike, go here, or go to the writers blog about the strike here. Wikipedia also has an exhaustive breakdown of the strike issues.)

Happy War on Christmas, everyone.

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