The Writers Guild of America officially went on strike and began picketing this week.
Their hiatus will effectively halt a lot of movie and TV projects in the pipeline across the entertainment industry.
One particular event KFC highlighted was how late-night talk shows suffered during the prior strike.
Conan O’Brien was a notable exception thanks to his extensive writing background and comedy experience.
He made spinning his damn wedding ring surprisingly watchable:
Conan is the fucking man.
That was because Gilroy couldn’t do any more writing work once the strike began.
Gilroy got it done under the wire.
That ran from November 5, 2007, through February 12, 2008.
Most major movie productions aren’t so lucky asAndorwas with Gilroy when he hit the pre-strike deadline.
How the screenplay is ultimately written can change based on studio feedback from the initial pitch.
To be clear: So many spontaneous script modifications turn out to be masterstrokes.
It’s not a “change something, automatically bad!”
It’s just that, generally speaking, you’re pushing your luck the more you tinker and tweak.
Doesn’t help not to have the foundation of a great script in the first place either.
The value of writers!
We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it.
I say to myself, ‘Never again,’ but who knows?
There was me trying to rewrite scenes and a writer I am not."
All those obstacles led to the plug being pulled on the project.
It was cast and everything!
The way to go is to be a kick-ass writeranddirector, right?
But to get to that point is an uphill battle to say the least.
With streaming entering the equation for both TV and movies, the wages are much lower.
Building a career from the ground up is even harder.
More workload to pull.
Less pay than before.
It’s a mess.
you’re free to start to see why writers are taking to the streets in protest.
Then there’s the whole AI thing.
That sounds like a bad science fiction flick.
Not even gonna touch that one.
Pretty much runs counter to any form of creative human expression.
Now for a little story time, followed by more from the striking WGA writers.
This will hopefully illuminate how hard it is for many folks to be a writer in LA.
I lived there from 2015-16 with one of my buddies.
I had vague ambitions to continue my pursuit of acting/screenwriting while still working a full-time job.
But this ain’t really about me.
It’s what I saw my friend go through in chasing his dream of being a screenwriter.
It premiered this past August.
About a decade of development hell.
Miniseries storytelling and the birth of a new streaming service finally gave it life.
Ah, the double-edged sword of the streaming era, eh?
Not the Billy Bob Thornton-led show on Amazon Prime Video.
This particularGoliathwas being simultaneously developed alongside either one or two other shows.
It was a Darwinian survival of the fittest.
Quick aside:Kajganich is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet in the industry.
It’s a minor miracle a competent, good movie or TV show is ever assembled.
We’re talking about a very successful, accomplished writer here!
Anyway, it took some hustle for my roomie to find another gig onceGoliathwasn’t picked up.
He found a role as a freelance reader for a production company.
He was the first line of defense to read a manuscript, pilot or screenplay.
It’s a pretty damn grueling job to be a reader, believe it or not.
Think about how long it takes you to read a novel.
Or if you had to sit down and rifle through a full movie script.
Then think about how many of those, at the initial litmus test level, are shitty scripts.
It can mess with your mind to read bad writing so often.
On top of all that, my roomie was writing his own screenplays on his own time.
And helping me as a scene partner with my successful audition into graduate school.
The story I shared isn’t meant to be some all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all experience of an LA writer.
It’s more of a glimpse into one of many unique perspectives.
In short: ain’t easy to break in out there.
Even when you’re really, really talented and a good human being.
Even writers who’ve “made it” have serious challenges.
They’re more or less hired guns, viewed as disposable or recyclable.
You have to prove yourself all over again on every single job.
You get your heart broken all the time over false starts and scrapped projects.
Creates an exploitative power dynamic.
That’s self-evident at this point.
Again, I don’t mean to make any blanket statements on a writer’s life in LA.
Everyone’s experience is singular.
We’re seeing a lot of individual stories from WGA members adding up to a categorically unfair working situation.
Seems like pretty modest and reasonable demands are being made overall.
Shoutout to all the entertainment writers out there fighting for what they deserve.
