The Dotted Logline

As someone who hopes/plans to be a member of the WGA one day, I’ve been following the negotiations and the strike very closely. And the reaction of the public, which has certainly been mixed. There are plenty of wonderful articles and blogs out there about the issues (United Hollywood is a great place to start), but I thought I’d toss my hat into the ring as well.

There’s a misconception floating around that Hollywood writers all pull in six figure salaries. That seems to be one of the main arguments from people opposed to the strike, but there’s a significant flaw in the logic there; if this were the case, why would the writers put all those big bucks on indefinite hold to essentially nickel and dime the studios?

The fact is that being a working writer doesn’t always mean that you’re working. TV shows get canceled. Freelancers struggle to find gigs. Feature film projects get trapped in development hell. According to WGA reports, 46% of the current guild members in 2005 were considered unemployed. And that’s exactly why residuals are important.

If people don’t have a problem with a novelist or musician earning royalties while working on a new book or recording a new album, why are they so angry at screenwriters for needing residuals while they’re working to get their next project going? Just because television and film are collaborative arts designed to be palatable to the public doesn’t mean that the writing is any less strenuous or valuable. Those nickels and dimes the writers are fighting for can mean the difference between paying the bills and starving. Maybe not for the writers whose names you know, but those big earners are a very small minority.

And that’s the other big misconception about the strike. Writers aren’t fighting for more money. They’re fighting to keep their income from dropping off in the future. Already, there have been shows like Lost that have streamed episodes online as opposed to airing reruns on broadcast television. Writers (and actors) receive residuals for the latter but not for the former, even though both include the entire episode and paid advertisements.

The Internet is the direction the industry is going, and writers don’t want to make the same mistake they did with videotape/DVD: accepting a reduced residual rate (0.3%) on a new, unproven technology. DVD residuals, of course, are the other negotiation sticking point that has received a lot of attention in the media. And although new media is the biggest issue, the numbers related to DVD residuals are pretty painful.

* In 2006, WGA members received $56.6 million in DVD and VHS residuals. The same year, Tom Freston received a $60 million severance package when he resigned as chief of Viacom. That means that a single individual was paid $3.4 million more for leaving his job than 10,000 writers earned for the sale of their work. Figures taken from the L.A. Times.

* Pretty much anyone can go to Amazon.com and sign up for an Associate account to earn referral fees starting at 4%. That means any schmuck (and I include myself here) who can cut and paste a bit of text to a website or blog can earn more than 13 times the amount the actual screenwriter receives for the sale of a DVD. Members can now earn referrals on digital downloads, for which screenwriters currently receive nothing.

The problem is that concerns like respecting the contributions of workers and their ability to put food on the table don’t really factor into the corporate equation. It’s a numbers game, and the important thing is that bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Workers are human resources. It’s the age-old problem of the people with the money having a completely different world view than the people who do the work, and it’s exactly why unions and strikes are still relevant.

I wasn’t old enough to really care about the 1988 WGA strike and don’t really know what public opinion was like back then. However, it’s clear that technology has changed things in the last nineteen years. Thanks to the Internet, today’s audience has access to the screenwriters. Writers post to fan sites and forums. They write in personal blogs and show blogs. They connect to fans through MySpace and LiveJournal. They have fans now, fans who will follow them from project to project, who know their names. Fans who care. Fans who are angry (and if anyone is good at being angry, it’s fans.) And fans with a mission are a force to be reckoned with, especially when they get organized.

The first day of the strike, Joss Whedon devotees from the fan site Whedonesque delivered pizzas to the writers picketing Universal, including one with anchovies for Jane Espenson (yes, screenwriters have fans who are devoted enough to care about their favorite pizza topping.) Similar food deliveries from other fandom groups followed. By day four, a website had been launched to coordinate a wide range of fan efforts. It remains to be seen just how big an impact the fans’ actions will have on the strike. In all honesty, I hope negotiations resume before we’re given the opportunity to find out.

And on a personal not, since I’ve been asked this several times, I will not be scabbing. I honestly never even considered it. I have far too much respect for my fellow writers and for my own work. I have no respect for anyone who would scab knowing that it could prolong this strike and cause further hardship for thousands of people aside from the writers themselves. I want to break into the industry by honest means and have an actual career doing what I love. And I want to be paid fairly, which is exactly what the writers of today are fighting for. I can never thank them enough for what they’re doing.

I just got back from a screening of Slither, a fantastically funny horror film starring Firefly/Serenity’s Nathan Fillion. I wasn’t really familiar with James Gunn (the writer/director), but I’m definitely a fan now.

The movie had, in my opinion, perhaps the best balance of comedy and horror I’ve seen in a movie, though it definitely tipped towards the comedy side of the fence. The dialogue was great (almost too good for such a campy film) and everyone’s timing was just dead on. I had been warned about the gore factor beforehand but I didn’t think it was really that bad. In fact, I went in hungry, and left craving steak and marzipan (don’t ask.)

There was also a great little Q&A afterwards with James, Nathan, and Michael Rooker (the heroine’s husband turned alien cannibal squid flesh katamari thingie.) It was very informative. Apparently Gunn’s cat gets a “little girl being molested” look when it has to go to the vet, Nathan spent most of the film doing nothing and does a great impression of a 1920′s film director, and Michael got to manipulate a prosthetic alien vagina with his foot (when the prosthetics weren’t causing him pain… Ouch).

Slither made me think of Shaun Of The Dead, though I felt that overall, it worked better. The latter tried to cram too many genres in, and I found the pathos of Shaun’s mother and best friend dying to be rather depressing. Slither is much more upbeat. When cute little girls convulse horribly and die, it’s funny! Plus, hive-mind alien zombies are so much cooler than regular old boring brain-eating zombies. I never got the zombie thing myself.

I was also reminded of Monster by Christopher Pike (I had every book by Christopher Pike as a kid) due to slight similarities in the plot (small town flesh eating alien possession.) That book always made me crave steak too.

One of the cool things about living in Hollywood is that you can go see a movie (say, X-Men: The Last Stand) at a well-known theater (say, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre) on opening night, and find out that the director was at the same showing. Of course, not knowing what Brett Ratner looks like, I couldn’t pick him out of the group he was in. But still, pretty cool.

As for the movie itself, I think it might be the first time that I wanted more action and less story in a movie. Because really, the story part was quite depressing. Although hearing Juggernaut say “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” did a lot to cheer me up.

I’ve seen many a positive reaction to a trailer in movie theaters, but nothing quite like the frenzy during the preview of Snakes On A Plane. Wackiness all around.

Hey, I’m still alive! I know it’s been a while since I posted here, but life in CA has far busier than I anticipated. And let’s face it… hardly anyone reads this thing anyway.

I rather like living in LA, as long as I focus on the fact that I’m surrounded by many creative and talented people and ignore the fact that many of them are floundering in desperation at all of the closed doors, the inability to do what they really want with their lives, the fact that they can’t afford food, etc. Luckily I’m not quite suffering from the third one myself. Currently, I’m working in photography/web design for a plumbing hardware distributor (printing orders for faucets and printing labels to mail said faucets most of the time.) It’s a job. It’ll do for now.

Writing wise… Overloaded on projects as always. Working on a screenplay adaptation of my first stage play Goodbye Dolly (finished a rather pathetic first draft of that, but have some excellent plans for the rewrite), stage play #2 that sat around dormant for a year and is now seeing some action, and what WAS formerly screenplay #2 that in the past few days became TV series pilot #1. Will probably be renamed from Project Changeling (which sounds too much like Project Runway) to Chimera (which no one can say correctly.) There are a smattering of other projects on the backburner, but I’m pretending they don’t exist at the moment, lest I give myself an aneurysm.

Hollywood is interesting. I like my neighborhood… easy to find parking compared to the surrounding areas and the Scientologists have security people standing around at all hours (I THINK that makes me feel safer, though I’m not 100% sure.) Movie tickets are hella expensive; unless it’s a big event, best to go to one of the surrounding cities and pay $8 instead of $15. I’ve been to the Arclight, Gramanns, and El Capitan in Hollywood. The latter was to see Chronicles of Narnia, and as they had all sorts of costumes, props, models, production art, etc on display, that was the ticket I most felt was worth the price.

Other randomness… In & Out Burgers are very good, though the fries caught fire in my microwave. Target is a great place to buy a new microwave. Upright Citizens Brigade has some great shows, and many of them are free. Traffic isn’t as bad as I expected. The price of food is worse than I expected. Drinks are even more expensive than food, so best to do your drinking before you go out. Having a boring job unrelated to what I want to do with my life means I’m still doing better than a lot of people out here. I’ve lost my fear of earthquakes and gained a fear of being trapped in my car for hours, unable to find a parking space.

I enjoy The Onion as much as the next person with a sense of humor, but this story hits a little too close to home. Home meaning my new apartment in Hollywood where I’m still looking though job listings.

Fortunately, I have a nice view of the Hollywood sign from my street.  Should I ever need reassurance, all I have to do is step outside to confirm that it’s still there.

How appropriate that the fist day I get to LA, I go see a movie. I was determined to see Serenity on opening night and luckily a friend was going with a big group and was willing to give me a ride.

I have to say the Arclight is easily the most gorgeous movie theater I’ve ever seen. More of a theatre than a theater. It’s located around Sunset and Vine and has its own gift shop and bar. Very hoity toity.

As for the movie, I think I need to see it again before I can form a definitive opinion. I avoided as many spoilers as possible, so I wasn’t expecting Serenity to have as noticeable a time gap from the end of Firefly as it did. The movie was heavier on the sci-fi and lighter on the western than the TV show, which I found a bit disappointing (though it makes sense when trying to appeal to the mass moviegoing public.) And lets just say that at least one of the deaths is quite painful for fans of the show.

The one thing I can say definitively is that River kicks ass. In fact, River kicks an astonishing amount of ass. River could probably tear Buffy into tiny pieces and look delicate and graceful while doing so. The DVD purchase price will be worth it just for the fight scenes.

My hesitations about moving to California are slightly abated due to the fact that I somehow managed to find a beautiful studio apartment in a nice neighborhood right in Hollywood in my price range and purchase almost all the furniture to fill it up in about three days. A lot of that has to do with my mother, who is very good at this sort of thing, but it is still a very positive omen.

So it looks like in less than a month, I’ll be one of those people who walks around with copies of my script (in PDF format on CDs) hoping to bump into someone influential. And since I am right across the street from the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centere and the closest grocery store to the Hollywood Hills, that isn’t very farfetched.

It looks like my move to LA is going to become a reality. I’ve scheduled a trip there with my mom on Labor Day weekend. I’ll be looking for a place to live and hopefully head back out for good on Oct 1st.

I haven’t been to California since I was 2 or 3. Other time zones scare me. Earthquakes really scare me. Having to find a job… well, you get the point. But otherwise, it’s pretty exciting.