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Writers' Strike 2007: Day One

By Peter Clines

It's an old joke, but what's black and white and red all over? A Writers Guild picket line, of course. CS Weekly goes out to talk to striking screenwriters—who've donned red T-shirts and are hosting red, black and white signs—to find out what they're holding out for and how things came to this.

For Creative Screenwriting's WGA Strike FAQ, click here!

Monday, November 5th, marked the beginning of the Writers Guild of America strike that has been all over the news. At stake are the residuals screenwriters receive from DVD sales and the as-yet-unestablished guidelines for what most everyone agrees is the future of the entertainment industry, the internet and downloadable content. Many studios and networks have already begun shifting their material to various online forms, and to date screenwriters haven't seen a single cent. Unable to reach an agreement after their contracts ran out on October 31st, the WGA set a deadline for a strike. Hours before that deadline was reached, the representatives for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) walked out of negotiations—and loudly declared that the WGA had given up on the talks.

"I'll give you an example—the series Heroes," said Bernard Lechowick. A member of the WGA for almost 30 years, Lechowick has worked on shows including Knots Landing and That's Life. He walked off his job on The Young and the Restless to join the picket lines in front of Paramount Studios in Hollywood, where he's become an unofficial spokesman for the strikers there. "The writers and creators of Heroes earn nothing in reruns," he said. "Nothing. Because there are no reruns on television. They're all online, and in the past year tens of millions of people viewed the show in reruns online, and each of those tens of millions of viewings had paid advertisement on it. And the writers earned nothing from that. Not a penny."

For most screenwriters, the residuals they receive from reruns and syndication are a life preserver during the lean times between projects. Despite the stories of multi-million-dollar pitch sales and six-figure-per episode salaries enjoyed by a small percentage of writers, most professional writers in Hollywood are very middle-class people. The majority of the WGA's 12,000 members are unemployed at any given time, and median earnings are about $25,000 a year.

As studios move toward constantly showing more new material and reality programs, many screenwriters have watched the number of reruns shrink. "DVDs seem to be the new residuals," says television writer David Graziano (Swingtown, Felicity) as he holds a picket sign in front of Paramount. "Things aren't airing on TV anymore. They're either on the internet or they're being released on DVD." But with the contract agreement reached in 1988 setting rates at a mere four cents per DVD, many screenwriters are seeing less and less income from this source. (For a visual representation of this, go to Target, Best Buy, or perhaps your own shelves and gather up two-dozen DVDs. That's a stack almost a foot and a half tall. If every single one of those movies or television shows in your pile was written by the same person, the screenwriter would not even make a dollar from that enormous purchase).

Among the first to hoist a picket sign in front of the Sony gates Monday morning was Steve Skrovan, who walked off the Fox sitcom Til Death. Skrovan also enjoyed a nine-year run on the writing staff of Everybody Loves Raymond. He said he had no hesitation about joining the strike. "Other writers made sacrifices and risks so I could have the career I have," he noted. "It's a feast or famine business. We need to support each other."

Sibyl Gardner, a strike captain on the Sony line, said she believed that "the transparency" exhibited by WGA president Patrick Verrone during the negotiations had played a big part in creating solidarity. "We know he's on our side and he's not selling us out," she said of the union leader.

Among the higher-profile writers walking the walk at Sony was Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), who said that despite his hyphenate status as a writer-producer, joining the walkout was "no conflict for me. I'm a writer first.

What the studios are trying to do is clearly unfair, and I think it's important for writers to stand up at this moment in time," he said. "I've had the benefit of sacrifices other writers have made, and now I'm happy to do my part."

Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Paul Haggis (In The Valley of Elah) also walked the Sony lines, having stepped away from final notes on the latest James Bond script. While he also claims producer titles on many projects, he has no hesitation about where his loyalties are. "Even if I weren't a writer, if I was just a director or just a producer, I'd understand that the people who create this stuff deserve a small piece of it," says Haggis. "I mean, it should be self-evident."

Even a writer of Haggis' stature is aware of the meager returns writers get from DVDs, pointing out that his DVD residuals are "infinitesimally small amounts. I think Crash was the number one on Netflix, and we've seen almost nothing from that. I don't recall seeing much on Casino Royale at all." He was also stunned by the stonewall refusal to double DVD rates to a still-tiny eight cents per sale.

"They're saying it's impossible after making record profits on DVDs all these years. They have no problem taking this money all this time, and now it's 'impossible' to give us anything, and on the internet it's 'impossible' to give us anything. It's stunning how they can be blinded by that much greed." The day-one red T-shirt brigade at Sony also included writers from Grey's Anatomy, Law & Order, Jeopardy, and The Cashmere Mafia.

At CBS Radford in the Studio City area of L.A., Matt Greenberg (1408, Reign of Fire) walked away from a Warner Bros feature project and joined the picket lines, where he offered his own observations on the future of residuals. "I don't think DVDs will totally die out. However electronic or digitized things become, people always need something physical to give at Christmas," he said with a small chuckle. "I mean—'Here's the gift certificate for the download I got you'—?"

He also recalled the reaction from WGA members when they were read some of the AMPTP's demands at a meeting last Thursday. "They basically said they had the right, for promotional purposes, to show an entire episode or an entire movie for free without compensating the writer. There was this nanosecond gasp of disbelief followed by a minute of full-on laughter at how ridiculous this was."

The staff of Ugly Betty immediately joined the picket lines Monday morning. The hit series exemplifies the internet issues faced by writers, with a month's worth of episodes replaying constantly on the ABC website (where other hit shows such as Lost have just shy of entire seasons available for viewing).

The writers were picketing at the show's Raleigh Studios home in Hollywood, and also across the street at Paramount. Between filming set-ups, lead actress America Ferrara ran out to walk the lines with them, holding a sign alongside showrunner Silvio Horta. Over at Paramount, Henry Alonso Meyers, another of the show's writer-producers lamented the situation. "An episode aired last Thursday," he said, "and you can already watch it online with ads, and I'm fairly certain those ads aren't being given for free."

Veteran television writer James Parriott (Grey's Anatomy) took a short break from walking and recalled the moment he saw the shift, while watching the results of some Ugly Betty test audiences and focus groups. "In each room there were 10 women," he says, "and two of the women in each of the rooms, 20%—I think in one room it might have been three women—viewed the show regularly online. And they weren't young. They were all over 30, one was 50, and they were watching online and not off the air at all. And that was shocking even to the researchers."

Another veteran guild member, William Lucas Walker (Frasier, Will & Grace), was also picketing at Paramount. "In five years, they're probably not going to be running any of those shows on television," he mused, "they're going to be running them on the internet. It's obviously where everything's going, and they're pretending to be stupid about it and going, 'Well, we don't know what's going to happen.' The same things they said about DVDs and VHS back in the '80s. They're already making money off commercials on the internet, and they're trying to call that promotion. Well, that's the only place a lot of people watch the shows. I'm sure when my kids are teenagers television as we know it isn't even going to be around. It's going to all be on the internet."

Haggis said he is also stunned by the studios' insistence at claiming 100% of the online revenues. "It's just another example of extreme corporate greed," he said. "It's the Wal-Mart-ification of Hollywood, I suppose." The picket lines grew slowly over the course of the first day. By 1 p.m., there were writers with signs at almost every gate leading into the sprawling Paramount complex. The main entrance on Melrose had more than five-dozen people circling.

Bullhorns were passed around, and each picketer got a chance to rally the group with phrases and chants. Underlying it all, however, an observer could detect a faint sense of worry, particularly among writers who remember the last time they walked these lines. "It's going to be very much like the last strike," said Parriott, but added, "I think the Guild is more unified than it was in '88. I think this is a pretty hard line we're taking, and I think we need to keep a hard line." He said he feels the strike could stretch out as long as six or eight months, especially since both sides seem to have planted their feet down.

Lechowick agrees. "Certainly no one likes a loss of income," he said, "but when you join our business you should learn how to budget. I say that as a 30-year member who's been through the ups and downs, who's experienced periods of no income. I don't think there's anyone in the business at any level who hasn't been through that." Dailyn Rodriguez walked away from Cane on CBS to join the Paramount lines. She dreads a months-long strike, but is prepared. "I'm a ridiculously frugal person," she said with a smile, "so I'm okay if we do go for that long, but I'm sure a lot of writers aren't."

Dana Klein (Friends, Becker), who was picketing nearby, is a bit more uneasy. "Financially, it makes me very nervous," she admitted. "My husband is an actor, and SAG is probably going to be joining us. It's definitely scary, but I fully support the Guild."

 "I think it's going to be a long and bloody strike," said Haggis. "I think it could easily go seven or eight months, and a lot of people are going to get hurt, because of the very cynical nature of these corporations that just care about their bottom line. The corporate mentality," he said, "is 'we made a shitload last year, now we have to make a shitload plus 20% this year, and it doesn't matter who we hurt or if it's fair or not. But I think if the studio mindset can be altered, can be shifted into saying what's fair…I think if a few of the producers and studio heads who I truly admire can get together and push it a little further away from the greedier aspects of corporate media, if they just gave us a small and fair amount, this would be over very quickly. If they just stopped thinking like…well, I've said it 10 times," he said, laughing.

Two of the youngest screenwriters on the Paramount picket were Matt Lazarus (Isle of the Dead) and Josh Finn (Pandemonium), walking side by side and chatting between turns on the megaphone. Lazarus has been a member for only a few months, while Finn is not yet part of the guild, having turned down the two assignments that would've earned him membership for a place in the picket lines. Both men take the strike in stride. "I kind of feel like one of those Irish guys who got off the boat and went to go fight for the North," laughed Lazarus. "This strike benefits me as a young writer more than anyone else on this line. I have a 30-year career ahead of me, and the gains we make now apply to me exponentially more than it applies to anyone else."

When confronted about the possible length of the strike, they both remained positive. "It's going to hurt a little bit," said Finn, "I have a day job. Hopefully that'll keep me afloat." If all goes well, he may be heading overseas in a few months to film one of his earlier scripts with a non-struck company. "I'll survive," said Lazarus with a grin. "I'm used to being broke."

Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

Additional reporting by Amy Dawes.