Weighing In: In Support of the WGA

Sometimes, I just can't help dropping my two cents into the wishing well of life. This time, my "well" is the writers' strike going on in Hollywood the entertainment industry. My disclaimer is that this is, of course, my opinion, and a fairly uninformed one at that. I'm not part of the mainstream entertainment industry, but I have friends who are. Actors, writers, directors, producers, story-boarders... I have had my fair share of both professional and "aspiring" industry friends. And what I've heard from separate parties has been quite interesting.

When asked what he thought of the writers' strike, our actor/food industry friend explained that he thinks it's bull (a common response from him) because he doesn't think writers should earn more than actors; it's the actors that sell the movie and make the writing "work". But as Makal pointed out to him, "Firefly"--without amazing writers in the background--would just be a neutral-tone wearing man saying "I'm a space cowboy", and an eccentrically-dressed prostitute saying "I'm a space hooker". And either way, this friend didn't really weigh in on the overall dispute--which isn't even about "earning more than actors" to begin with--but just as it possibly related to him (beyond an early end to the second season of "Heroes"). I wonder how much he's actually read of why the writers are striking.

Then on Jezebel this morning, I read about how fashion designers are calling the writers "selfish" [link to article] because their dispute is holding up so many aspects of American culture, such as the lack of red carpet events. Because yes, I've really felt an emptiness without watching awards ceremonies, and looking up the results on IMDb the same night is just not as rewarding. Again, it was a view of the strike and how it directly relates to actors, and indirectly relates to the people making the statement. "OMG," I cry, "a tiny section of our population is no longer being dressed in absurdly priced, questionably cut fashions, and impacts how the designers' artistry 'trickles down to retailers, how it trickles down to restaurants, how it trickles down to the community.' Community?! That's me! God, what will I wear next time I go to a restaurant? Well, I heard that Blue Iris is in..."

Yeah, so far all I've heard on this is how these very selfish writers are creating difficulties for actors, and that we the people are being limited in the availability of our favourite programs and amazing movies (and soon-to-be-favourite fashions). I've yet to hear a gaffer or crafts person weigh in on the situation; if this is a dispute about "the little guy" that writes, where are all the other "little guys" that are also part of creating entertainment and are also impacted by the strike? (Maybe supplementing their income by shooting anti-piracy commercials...) But then, to say those are the only perspectives I've heard would not be fully true, as we of course are hearing how much this dispute is costing production companies and corporations, and how it's impacting their annual income.

Well cry me a Blue Iris river; if I believed everything I heard from production companies about entertainment in our modern era, I'd think that every aspect of modernity was a negative impact on their revenues. I mean, they did initially think that television would be the end, because people would no longer pay to see movies in theaters. But they adapted by creating a new technology (VCRs) and a new method of distributing movies to financially benefit from the introduction of a (essentially) free medium. Yes, selling VHS copies of movies was an "unproven" market, but the writers went on strike then in 1988 (for over 22 weeks I might add--more than double the length of the current strike as it stands), negotiated what seemed like a fair deal, and production companies continued to do just fine. Though it was soon questioned whether the deal agreed to was really that fair for writers in the long run. Such is the nature of unproven markets.

Now, I'll take a moment to point out that yes, I support the writers and writers' guilds involved in this dispute. There are a lot of aspects to it that would take too much time to touch on, and that I'd probably do a feeble job of understanding anyway. But my nature is that I think everyone involved in a project should get reasonable and rational compensation. I guess I could say that I think everyone's name in the credits should be in alphabetical order and displayed with the same font size. If any single person's skills were important enough to bring them into the project, then theoretically the project could not have had the same outcome without them. It seems ridiculous to give a certain segment of those involved a higher percentage based on their face time, or which office they work from, or which college they attended (if at all!).

Not that I think every person involved in the creation of a movie should get equal percentage of profits; that too would be a tad ridiculous. And really its impossible to monitor how any single cast or crew member's contributions affected the profits. But I am fairly certain that no production (of any medium) would be possible without writers. Yeah, they'd be impossible without actors too, or cameramen, or whatever. But writers? Seriously, that's how a project starts. Without a start, there can be no final product. And no final product means no profits for the fat cat at the big desk, nor the little guy in the sound editing studio. If a group of writers want eight cents ($0.08) per DVD sale, instead of four ($0.04), and you stand to lose billions of dollars otherwise, maybe you should make a deal.

Makal and I have approximately 60 DVDs in our collection that were produced for distribution in America (not including our anime titles, or British films). Movies like "The Matrix", "The Royal Tennenbaums", "Lucky Number Slevin"; I've no idea how many writers worked on each movie we own. But writers for those sixty DVDs have had to split the lofty $2.40 between the lot of them because of the percentage they've been receiving since the strike in '88--I wonder what percentage production companies get? Is it really so outlandish that writers request to double their residual sales percentage? Then our 60-DVD collection would have earned involved writers $4.80 to split however many ways... what a drastic change.

I shan't even begin to discuss the newest "unproven market": The Internet, digital downloads, and online streaming. That... is a whole new argument for me. Another time.