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ShareOn Monday, the people who write the scripts for your favorite TV shows put down their laptops and took up picket signs, going on strike against the studios and networks who employ them. Among those hitting the pavement in protest were heavyweights such as Tina Fey of “30 Rock,” and Marc Cherry, the brains behind “Desperate Housewives.”
Like most labor wars, this one is fraught with compensation-related complexities, but what it basically comes down to is that the writers working in television - and in movies - want a fair cut of the residual revenues being generated on the Internet and other fledgling new-media platforms. Many viewers undoubtedly will find it difficult to sympathize with those on the picket line. They perceive writers to be whiney Hollywood snobs who get paid outrageous sums to play make-believe. And in a few cases, that’s pretty accurate.
But what most people outside the industry fail to realize is that the scribblers who strike gold in Hollywood represent only a small portion of the Writers Guild of America’s 12,000 members. The majority deal with irregular incomes and have to constantly bust their behinds to keep their heads above water in a ruthless business.
“I think most people see the Hollywood writer as a latte-drinking, BMW-driving, mansion-dwelling, spoiled artiste,” says Gregg Rossen, who currently has a sitcom project set up at Fox. “They see someone who’s just kicking back and phoning things in.”
But the truth, says Rossen, is that a “vast majority” of writers have to deal with the “sporadic and indeterminate nature of the business and are out there slogging from week to week to get their projects sold.”
Indeed, even the man who hit big with “Desperate Housewives,” wasn’t always riding high. Legend has it that, in the summer of 2001, Cherry, about ready to turn 40, was flat broke and without job prospects. Before he sold his “Housewives” script to ABC - on spec - he was forced to borrow $30,000 from his mother just to keep paying his bills.
There are countless hard-luck writers’ stories such as this one. And Matthew Carnahan, who writes and produces the Courteney Cox drama “Dirt” for FX, certainly can relate.
“I’m incredibly grateful and lucky to be doing what I do,” he says. “But for a lot of years there, I bused tables. I worked as a landscaper and in construction while trying to get my stuff sold.”
He theorizes that, if you average out a writer’s salary over the lifetime of his career, the hourly rate - in most cases - wouldn’t be all that impressive.
“I started writing when I was 18, and now I’m in my mid-40s. I really didn’t start making a living at it until I was in my 30s,” says Carnahan, who drives a Honda, not a BMW. “If you average that out, it might be right around minimum wage.”
On the other hand, says Carnahan, “your CEOs in Hollywood make $65 to $75 million a year, or more. ... What we’re fighting for is a teeny-tiny sliver of the obscenely massive amounts of money they bring in.”
For his part, Nick Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, likes to inform the media that working screenwriters on average earn more than $200,000 a year. What he fails to add is that many writers aren’t working (at least consistently) and that the ones who do - especially in television - often log insanely long hours.
And unless you happen to have the clout of a David E. Kelley, the job doesn’t exactly carry a lot of juice. Hollywood, after all, has long had a tradition of disrespecting and/or abusing its writers. Jack Warner, the old head of Warner Bros., even went as far as to call his scribes “schmucks with Underwoods.”
“It’s pretty well-known that writers are often treated like second-class citizens. There’s not a whole lot of glory in it,” says Will Forte, a “Saturday Night Live” cast member - and writer - who spent much of Monday picketing in front of NBC’s New York headquarters, along with Fey and others.
That lingering sting of disrespect is no doubt a major reason why the WGA writers seem to be exuding such intense resolve going into the strike. They also believe they got a bum deal in 1988, the last time they went to war with the producers.
The bottom line is that great writing lasts forever, and the people who provide it are justified in wanting to be compensated forever - or as long as their work is making money for the big shots.
“Without writers, there would be no shows, no movies,” says Forte. “These things are your babies. You work really hard on them, and you have a sense of ownership with them. So there’s nothing wrong with wanting a fair deal.”
