Support the Hollywood writers!
There is little time to write before I leave for Assisi on Wednesday, but I did want to get in a word about the writers’ strike in Hollywood.
And that word is: support the writers! The writers may be the most neglected people in Hollywood, but they are the most important. No TV show or movie exists without them. The director has no “vision” to put on film without us. Costumers and set designers and cinematographers have no work without us. I say “us,” of course, because I someday hope to be among them. But whether you are a writer or not, you are affected by this. The quality of the TV shows and movies you watch depends a good deal on the writers.
The issues at stake might seem small, but are really all-important for the future. Back in the 1980’s, when the home video market was first getting started, the WGA (Writers Guild of America) agreed to give up a good part of their residuals or royalties, for video sales of the movies they wrote, in order to help that budding industry get off the ground. Twenty years later, DVD sales make up the largest percentage of most movies, more even than they make in theaters, and the producers and studios have never made up that money to the writers or changed the rate.
Now the Internet is fast becoming a major delivery system for TV and movies. And the producers are once again refusing to pay the writers their fair residuals for this media, but rather the 80% off rate, and for those sites that allow viewers to watch TV episodes on line free, they are giving the writers nothing — on the flimsy excuse that content delivered this way is “promotional only” — though the studios are making millions of dollars of advertising on those sites, just as they do on broadcast TV.
This is blatant hypocrisy, since the studios have insisted since day one on getting their fair share of internet revenue and preventing piracy, or downloading their internet content for nothing. Now they are doing the same thing themselves to the writers.
Most writers in Hollywood are not rich. They might write one or two movies or TV shows a year, if that, and the rest of the time, to pay their bills and care for their families, they have to rely on outside jobs — and on residuals. There are some people I know — including my screenwriting professors at Act One — on that picket line. And they now have the support of a great deal of Hollywood behind them — look at the number of famous actors on the picket lines. Let’s hope the writers will finally get their due.
The writers need our support. You can sign a petition to send to the producers here. There are already more than 13,000 signatures. Mine is there. I hope yours will be too.
(As I update this on Saturday, there are some 35,000 signatures there!)