Did anyone read all that? 

Choad, you lost me at "Forgive me".  Where the hell do you think you are?

Everyone needs an editor. Everyone.

Ok, ok, I thought was interesting and I was wrong.

I do feel for the guy.  I'm sure the media will play this up like it's the baseball strike all over again.

Well I thought it was interesting.  It was long, though, so don't expect the people who actually read it to respond right away.

jackie treehorn wrote:

Hi Roger,  I only know Choad from cruel.  I was trying to be cute.  The "book" that I was refering to was the post itself.

Yes, I realized that about the "book".  However, I was just acting sarcastic and 'childlike' to highlight my ADD.

George Orr wrote:

choad wrote:

Ok, ok, I thought was interesting and I was wrong.

No, you're wrong now about its not being interesting.  As an entertainment junkie, I've been reading a lot about the strike, but never come across any attempt at explaining what the whole fuckaree is actually about--so I appreciate this.

If they actually do go on strike, it'll be long and bitter.  Brace yourselves, America, for a load of "reality" teevee and reruns.

I got an idea...READ A FUCKING BOOK, take a walk, pick up a hobby, join highstreet.org...the world will go on without new TV.

PS -- I do undertstand that the writers are being fucked over (just like every other American worker), but in the grand scheme of things, it's really not a matter of grave importance.

choad wrote:

Precisely my first thought. Then it dawned on me these same asswipes robbed me more than once, too, which was the reason my friend sent it in the first place. And it SHOULD trouble me I've become numb to the horror. Anyway, again, that's just me.

You know, you have to pick your battles.  Sometimes becoming numb makes more sense than fighthing.  There's money out there that I'll never recover from cliients because its too much of a pain in the ass.  The process will cause me more stress than the actual recovery.

headkicker_girl wrote:

Sometimes becoming numb makes more sense than fighthing.

It's the accompanying long-term anger that's most disabling. That describes a fair share of a lawyer's clients, doesn't it?

orangeplus wrote:

headkicker_girl wrote:

...join highstreet.org...

is a completely different place

I think the Lord was sending a message to all of you heathens through my typo.

choad wrote:

Forgive me, a good friend emailed this morning and I realize it's long. Hope it'll prove of interest to some, though...

The Great Writer's Strike of 2008

From what I have heard this weekend, it looks like an "impasse" will be declared between my union, the Writers Guild of America, and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (aka "the suits," "the scum", "the thieves," "the robbers," "the crooks," "the war criminals," "the Hollywood bastards" and any number of other epithets they have thoroughly earned in the 100 years there have been movies) will be declared on October 31, and a strike could ensue at any time thereafter.

I've been avoiding thinking of this, doing my best to keep it from happening, telling everyone I could they would be idiots to do it - basically replaying everything I said during the run-up to Georgie's invasion of Poland, back in 2002.  There's a reason why major wars are only fought every 20 years:  you need a new generation of idiots to volunteer to be the cannonfodder who don't know how bad bad is.  I survived (if you can call it that) the last one in 1988, at the outset of my career, which derailed some major personal/professional success that was just on the cusp of happening (which I can assure you would have transformed my life if only one had worked out), and which turned the world of writers in Hollywood upside down when we finally "won" after six crucial months what we could have settled for after six days.  The issues that caused that have never been resolved, and have instead festered like a splinter under your fingernail you can't get at, till the pain becomes such that it causes the current eruption.

I think I know now how Sir Edward Grey, foreign minister of England, felt in the summer of 1914 as he watched both sides lurch toward a war neither wanted, until he finally wrote on August 1, 1914 that "the lights are going out all over Europe, I do not believe they will be lit again in my lifetime."

We've had the "benefit" of a "leadership" - "Writers United" - elected to "promote the union" who have failed at each attempt to increase our operations, and who were as eager for war when they were elected as were Little Georgie and Big Dick.  Back in January, the AMPTP contacted them to negotiate the contract and they said "not now."  Same thing happened in March and May and July, so finally in September they sit down and after six sessions they come and ask for a strike vote "to give us something to use."

Voting for the strike was like being a Democrat in Congress in 2002, voting the AUMF to Bush and hoping he would use it to "pressure" Saddam.

However, unlike Bush and his "weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a crazy dictator," the other side really has decided to threaten us on a point we can't give up.

Remember May a year ago, when I told you all you could watch the Sciffy Channel and see my movie "The Terror Within," the only movie I ever wrote that got made that I admit to?  The one that was on their broadcast as a "cult classic"?  Well, as a result of that unexpected broadcast of that old movie, I got a check this past January that kept us from becoming homeless for three months - and I really didn't have an alternative at that time, so it was really welcome.  It's called a "residual check," and you get one any time something you did - as actor, writer, director - gets shown; it's a percentage of what you were originally paid for the work.  That money from residuals is commonly about 60% of the money we writers get (it's even more for actors, who work even less than we do).

So, right now, when you download a show you didn't catch at original broadcast on the internet - which is a "broadcast" and should generate a residual check to the creative folks concerned who brought it to you - nobody gets a dime.  Not even a centavo.  The last time we negotiated a contract, nobody knew this existed.  We'd like to have the studios pay the same way they pay every other time that show gets broadcast anywhere else.

According to the AMPTP, this is an "emerging market" and they don't know if it will really last, and so therefore they shouldn't have to pay anything until they know for sure that you folks want to download shows, and blahblahblah.

Not only that, but as long as we're talking residuals, the industry that pays its low-end executives multi-million dollar salaries is so financially strapped that they need to renegotiate residuals, so they would like us to drop our residual payments everywhere else, until the various shows are declared to be "in profit," at which time we can all fairly share in the pot.

Folks, there is only one television show that has ever been made that has ever been declared to be "in profit."  That is "The Rockford Files," and the only reason that happened was because James Garner sued Universal for six years 20 years ago, and proved in court that the books they called "public" and the real books were two different things.  The only movie ever made that was ever declared to be "in profit" was "Star Wars" (the good one - the first one), which made so much money so fast they couldn't hide it quickly enough and George Lucas knew to hire good accountants. (Do you remember at the outset of this rant that I called the other party "scum," "robbers," "thieves," "murderers," "war criminals" and oh yes, "crooks"?  It's events like this that give vent to such emotional outbursts).

You can see why, given this history, we might look askance at such a proposal.

Now then, I know what people will say:  "Folks in Hollywood make lots of money, what's a few thousand here and there?"  Let me take a minute and tell you the real dirty secret of Hollywood:  The number of people who actually make all the money everyone thinks everyone in Hollywood makes can be counted on your hands and feet.  Without using all your fingers and toes.

In fact, the WGA today likes to tout the fact that the "average union member" makes $60,000/year (which is only $15,000 above the average median wage in America).  That sum is arrived at by dividing all the money paid to writers by the number 8,000 - the number of members in the WGA.  20 years ago, at the outbreak of the last war, they liked to tout that "the average union member" made $50,000 year.

These are interesting numbers, and even more interesting when compared with some more relevant figures.  For starters, $60,000 per year today as compared to $50,000 20 years ago isn't even keeping up with the 7% loss in income that the average American family (with inflation taken into consideration) has suffered in that period.  It's about a 12% loss adjusted for inflation.  So for starters, even with the best figure they can find, rich we ain't. And poorer we're getting.

A more telling set of figures comes from who qualifies for health insurance.  You get a year of health insurance from the WGA if you sell the equivalent of a 30-minute sitcom script at "guild scale" in any financial quarter.  Currently, this is $26,000.  20 years ago, that number was $14,000. (You'd think on that basis that we had beaten inflation, but read on).  20 years ago, 80% of the membership qualified for health insurance at any given time (and it was a gold-plated plan the like of which no one will ever see again).  Today, 80% of the membership does not qualify for health insurance (a plan that is a mere shadow of its former self so poor it makes me damn glad I now qualify for the VA).  Let me make the point clear:  80% of the membership of the Writer's Guild of America does not make $26,000 a year from writing.  Yes, there are writers who get a million dollars plus, and you read about them, but like I said, I can count them all on my hands and feet without using all my digits.

As was said before, rich we ain't.

Not only that, but 20 years ago my 74-year old writing mentor Wendell Mayes ("The Spirit of St. Louis," "The Hunters," "The Enemy Below," "Anatomy of a Murder," "Advise and Consent," "In Harm's Way," "The Poseidon Adventure" - for which he won his Oscar - and "Go Tell The Spartans" among many others) was an active member who looked forward to more creative years (he died at age 78 in 1992, six weeks after writing the last script he was hired to write).  Today, anyone over 45 who is working at all (even if they made them as much money as William Goldman did - and he made them millions) is an object of awe.

20 years ago, we went up against stand-alone studios run by people who actually liked movies.  This time we are going up against minor arms of major intergalactic corporations, whose leadership think of movies and TV as widgets (which is why you hate most of what is offered so much nowadays).

The truth is, we're just a bunch of people stupid enough to think we could make a decent living doing something we actually like, who are out to save what little is left.  Whatever you hear (and I am sure we'll get slimed like the Frost Family did over S-CHIP) about what an unreasonable bunch of greedy overpaid bastards we are, this is the truth.  And the overpaid ones working on the shows you like are in truth one cancellation away from working in a telemarketing center to keep the roof over their head (since trying to hide significant gaps in your resume where you would have to write "independent artist" - a career killer in Corporate America.- limits your alternative career choices).

Please remember this as events proceed to their inevitable conclusion.

Best,

TC
reluctant warrior

P.S. I quoted that just to be a prick.

orangeplus wrote:

Wow, that would likely make you the evilest person on this board. Congrats!

Hey, I did my time trying to help the downtrodden...2 years as a legal aid attorney and 5 years in general practice doing Plaintiff's work.  I've earned the right to be "evil."

I read the whole thing because I have a close relative who is a member of the guild.  He made a very good living until he was in his early forties, then all of a sudden the work dried up.  The article writer is correct that writers are discarded when they are over forty and screwed over when they are young.  Like HKG, he has money out there he will never see because the expense and emotional toll of collecting it is prohibitive.  He is one of the lucky ones; he has been reduced to a middle class income. He scrapes by on inherited assets, collecting a very early guild retirement, and has done a few low-end projects that are a far cry from the well-known work he did when he was younger.

Choad, at least, might be interested in reading this (from the bright young things at Pajiba):

http://www.pajiba.com/the-looming-hollywood-strike.htm

Last edited by George Orr (2007-10-26 18:57:32)

Is this good news or bad?

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111797 … id=18&cs=1

If Lost does not return on time, and run as planned, I am probably going to go on a murder spree.

I like Lost and I wanna see how it comes out.  I've been waiting for more since May and I'm jonesin'.

Howdy, MSG_Dhal.

People who watch American "entertainment" have been raised to enjoy the flavour of shit. Not surprisingly, it's in the nature of shit-eaters that the worse the shit tastes, the more it's enjoyed. Americans look forward to a writers strike. They don't want no watered-down high-brow diarrhoea: they want their nightly jenkem to taste as bad as possible. As for the poor little writers, if they really are writers, they'll find ways to survive. But if all they can do is write American-style screenplays, then they aren't really writers, and they don't, as such, deserve to survive. Sad little fucks with big dreams and tiny formulae. Shit-eating tools of the great American shit-dispensing machine should shit down each others' throats and die. (ALSO - to that film production company in LA that sat on my script for two years without even paying my option fee - FUCK YOU! You think I'll come back now and be your scab? Suck my ass! Fuckers.)

choad wrote:

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

Shit-eating tools of the great American shit-dispensing machine should shit down each others' throats and die.

Boys and girls, this is not invective, it's grim truth. Wilbur, I love you. Have that operation right away, won't you?

Which operation? The one where they suture your anus to your mouth? My surgeon demurs, on the basis that it might create a perpetual motion machine. As a good canajun, he won't defy the laws of nature, eh? If I want it done, I'll have to cross the border.

phreddy wrote:

What are we to do if Lost does not run?

Eat some other flavour of shit?

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

People who watch American "entertainment" have been raised to enjoy the flavour of shit...

I have to agree, but - alas - I base my agreement on personal tastes. I love crappy movies. I can, and do, spend hours  watching shlocky splatter films and low-budget, lower-talent horror films. I continually appall my flatmates with my taste for horrendously awful movies.

I'd like to think it's because I appreciate the irony and camp; sadly, I think it's just because I have shitty taste in movies.

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

People who watch American "entertainment" have been raised to enjoy the flavour of shit. Not surprisingly, it's in the nature of shit-eaters that the worse the shit tastes, the more it's enjoyed.

Uh huh, sure.  This explains why entertainment is one of the last things that we actually make in the US that the world stlill shells out big bucks for.

tojo2000 wrote:

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

People who watch American "entertainment" have been raised to enjoy the flavour of shit. Not surprisingly, it's in the nature of shit-eaters that the worse the shit tastes, the more it's enjoyed.

Uh huh, sure.  This explains why entertainment is one of the last things that we actually make in the US that the world stlill shells out big bucks for.

LOL...you're not serious, are you? You give the natives beads and steal their land. You give the natives Hollywood and steal their brains. Then one day someone flies a plane into your favourite financial tower and you wonder why those dirty donkey fuckers are so lacking in Christian gratitude. People are stupid. By definition half of us are below average. But when the donkey fuckers wake up from their dreams of lady liberty to find Uncle Sam picking their pockets and filling their lower colons with ejaculate they begin to plot revenge. They might do the dirty work themselves. Or they might enlist the squids.
Vive le California Pyros!

                                    "Take that you arrogant Americans!"                                     "This means war, you heathen squids!"

Roger_That wrote:

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

Which operation? The one where they suture your anus to your mouth? My surgeon demurs, on the basis that it might create a perpetual motion machine. As a good canajun, he won't defy the laws of nature, eh? If I want it done, I'll have to cross the border.

Seriously Wilber, the marriage offer is out there.  I love Vancouver....

Your pic gets mine...

Kisses,

Woggah

   Mr. Wilber goes a-courtin'!