Friday, November 02, 2007

Looks like the WGA is going to strike.

My prayers are with you guys.

It's amazing to me that writers manage to strike. We have a big disadvantage over, say, the Teamsters, in that it takes a while for lack of scripts to result in lack of production. Especially when writers scramble to finish their projects right before the strike! Jon Stewart may be out of jokes on Monday, but features can plow ahead, especially when scabs like Vince Vaughn offer to polish their own dialogue. Also, writers work alone and aren't habituated to depending on each other like, say, coal miners.

But the writers do strike, and they can win if they have enough spine (and big enough bank accounts), because it turns out that you can't shoot anything fictional without a script.

Most people don't realize that a strong writer's union benefits everyone. It makes it possible for writers to devote themselves to writing. Writers get paid not only for the time they write, but the time they spent learning how to write, and the time they spend waiting for someone to hire them to write. When you add up all the hours most writers have spend over their career not getting paid, if writers didn't get scale, no one talented would bother to become a writer. A strong writer's guild creates a pool of skilled writers that producers can tap when they need a script. It would behoove them to let writers share in the new sources of income -- DVD, internet -- that they're benefitting from.

Labels: wga

8:34 AM

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