Brian K. Vaughan’s posts across the internet about the Writers Guild of America strike have started quite a few interesting conversations, as well as pointing out BKV’s grammatical errors:
A friend says my post also got linked to Atrios, where a talkbacker (deservedly) makes fun of me for my particularly horrific grammatical sin: “writers like I,” for which my mother-in-law already yelled at me.
Overall, the mood is supportive – as in this Bendis Board thread – but there are dissenters, such as Jim Ohara at Millarworld:
[T]he writer these days is less an artist who breaths creation, and more a functional part that through training adds their element, just like costume creators and make up artists. Should the Disney designer who designed Captain Jack Sparrow get 5c of every action figure made? Unless writers are selling their own original story (like Millar on wanted) then they’re just work for hire, and know what they’re getting into. If it is their own stuff, then that’s down to the deal they strike up front. The reason Marvel doesn’t pay as well as the independents is that Spidey will sell 100k copies because of it’s installed base as much as anything else. Just as my sales guys can sell $5mil because the company spent 100 years building up the brand and establishing an installed base.
Similarly, Mike Costa on the mothership:
One of the things no one thinks about in all the talks about this strike is all the “little people” that get hurt by it. The assistants, PAs, and all other non-union support crew that make up dozens of the kids who will be put out of work per production. Not to mention the assistants that will be taken off the desks of lit agents and managers who suddenly have no more revenue stream.
I am pointedly aware of this, because this is exactly what most of my friends do. In the next week, at least 20 people I know will be out of work because of this. That’s like 80% of my closest friends (okay, so I don’t know a lot of people. ____ you for noticing.) And we’re talking people that make maybe $600 a week, before taxes. In LA, that’s not a whole lot. It’s not like they can afford to miss a few weeks (much less months) of paychecks.
Look, not to belittle the exploitation and prima facia injustice of royalty payments to writers regarding DVD and online content sales… but we also can’t forget the issue of scale either. The average TV writer on a union show is extremely well salaried. Indeed, a teleplay itself has a baseline price of around $30K, and that’s independent of the weekly salary, to say nothing of the additional monies already collected through royalties. That affords writers and producers quite a long time to live off the fat of the lamb, provided they didn’t blow it all like idiots (which obviously many do.)
Contrast that to the people who work for them and literally won’t be able to make their rent on their ______ apartment in North Hollywood. Those people don’t have unions to stand in solidarity with. And while they most likely support their bosses and their cause… how exactly are they supposed to live? Suddenly their faced with leaving their dream job (in production or in a writer’s room, working their way up) to find other work in job market suddenly flooded with kids just like them looking to snatch up what slim pickings there are. Add on top of that the stress of praying that your job is still there for you once the strike is over – that however much time has elapsed doesn’t require a re-structuring of your position. It is insanely hard to get a job working in a writers room or for an executive producer on a show. These aren’t opportunities that come by that often. It’s hard not to feel bad about the massive collateral damage caused by a lot of rich people squabbling over who should be enriched even more and why.
For those not up to speed on why the WGA is striking, read BKV’s original statement for a quick catch-up, and go to CBR for a report on how the strike may affect comics. JK blogged a quick round-up of the situation on Monday, but Entertainment Weekly’s Hollywood Insider blog is a good place to look for updates on the situation.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Mike Costa’s arguments are terrible.
1) “The average TV writer on a union show”, whatever he or she makes, is not necessarily the average WGA member. And in any event, it has nothing to do with whether the writers deserve to be cut in on new media revenues, a greater share of DVD royalties, etc.
2) If their jobs are that fragile, Mike Costa’s friends *ought to unionize* rather than, like Mike, implying that the writers should take shitty contracts and allow themselves to be exploited in order to keep everybody employed. Why is it the writers objecting to the terms who are responsible for Mike’s friends, and not the producers and owners who set the terms? Workers in any industry only get things by fighting for them. Depending on the benevolence of the bosses is a terrible strategy.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Agreed Cole. And most of the writers in a writers room are exactly the WGA members that are being fought for. This isn’t about the rich getting richer, this is about helping the struggling up and comers.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:34 am
John Rogers (Blue Beetle, Transformers writer) has an excellent and hugely informative post about the strike up on his blog. Well worth a read:-
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-strike-ii.html
November 8th, 2007 at 4:36 am
Also, this:-
” then they’re just work for hire, and know what they’re getting into”
smacks of not undertanding the reason for this strike, which is that the terms of writers’ contracts are being renegotiated, so no, nobody ‘knows what they’re getting into’.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
“This isn’t about the rich getting richer, this is about helping the struggling up and comers.”
…but at the expense (literally) of the thousands of technical and support people who will soon be out of work. I don’t see any justice there.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:14 am
The support people do take a hit here, no question. But again, if the writers (and next the actors and directors) don’t fight for acceptable contracts when they can, eventually all of those support people will lose ground as well as everyone gets painted further and further into a corner. I find the “think of the boom mike operators” argument completely disingenuous–playing a group with a bad deal against a group with no deal; a calculated pro-management tactic to divide workers with common interests. It presupposes that the producers only set the contract terms that they do in order to nobly ensure that everybody has a job in a business that’s barely hanging on–or that it’s somehow immoral to demand fair consideration when someone else in the world is in an even more tenuous position. The writers formed their union in order to be responsible for one another. Why should they be also held responsible for the livelihoods of all the other professions in their industry in a way that the producers clearly are not?
November 8th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
“Why should they be also held responsible for the livelihoods of all the other professions in their industry in a way that the producers clearly are not?”
Because actions have consequences…even actions with the loftiest of intentions.
Producers set the contract terms because they’re the ones making the financial risks…and writers needn’t accept those contracts if the working relationship doesn’t suit them…but not shutting down the entire industry through the childish, counterproductive, and deeply damaging actions of a strike.
But, in the ivory towers of self-righteous narcissism, I guess none of that matter.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
From the clips I’ve seen, the writers seem to have quite a bit of support from the tech folks. Just because the writers decided that they had to strike doesn’t mean they failed to consider the consequences, that they’re babies, or that they’re callously indifferent to people they work with every day. It may mean that they consider the consequences of not striking to be worse–not just for their own narrow interests but for workers in general.
As Duncan Black just said at Eschaton:
“Certainly one can always find a more worthy cause, a more desperate case, someone more “deserving.” But ultimately this is about whether management gets to screw workers, and that’s something we can all be concerned about whether it’s janitors, Hollywood writers, or even millionaire baseball players.
The main issues for the WGA are rather simple – when the studios repackage their work until the end of time in new and exciting media formats, how much residuals should they get (if any). If you fail to “sympathize” with striking writers, you think that management should just expropriate the value of their work forever. In other words, you sympathize with management.”
…and you’re likely to call defending one’s livelihood via a union “the ivory towers of self-righteous narcissism”.
Mark, you say that the writers “needn’t accept those contracts if the working relationship doesn’t suit them.” Fine. Isn’t that precisely what the writers are doing now? They have their chance to renegotiate after the end of the last agreement set in 1988. Or do you mean that they could work at Tire Warehouse if they don’t like the terms dictated by the producers?
How does one become reflexively pro-management? On The Simpsons, do you root for Mr. Burns? Do you feel that Mr. Potter was the misunderstood hero of It’s a Wonderful Life? Mark, if you don’t care whether or not the writers get completely hosed by management, why are you so concerned about the plight of the tech crews? I really can’t make sense of your selective sympathy for the worker.