Writers Guild of America: Waiting to write a dream ending

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/stories/MYSA012508.03F.orourke_strike.19b26ff.html

Web Posted: 01/24/2008 11:39 AM CST

Michael O'Rourke
Special to the Express-News

The Directors Guild of America was able to make a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. So that means they should be able to make a deal with the Writers Guild of America, right? I sure hope so.

Like expectant fathers in the hospital waiting room of some 1950s black-and-white movie, the rank and file of the Writers Guild of America, myself included, wait for word. Instead of birth announcement cigars, we are carrying picket signs. And instead of pacing back and forth in a small smoke-filled room, we are walking back and forth in the smog-filled air of Los Angeles in front of various television and movie studios. But like expectant fathers, we eagerly wait for information.

Negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the movie and TV producers began last summer. In the heat of the summer, some of my colleagues told me they felt a strike was coming. "Start saving for a rainy day," one told me, "because I don't like the looks of those clouds."

I dismissed their warnings, chalking it up to the usual pessimistic grumblings most writers espouse anytime they aren't actually writing. That is, until I received a strike authorization ballot in the mail last October. I voted "yes." So did 90 percent of my union brotherhood. What good is waving around an unloaded gun, right? Strike authorization is a negotiating tool. If the rank and file doesn't back up the guys at the table, they have no chips to play.

The writers guild contract expired at midnight on Halloween. Even as I trick-or-treated with my kids, I thought the strike would be averted. I jokingly told my kids to get extra candy in case we had to survive on it all winter. I should not have been so cavalier. The next day my union announced the strike would begin Nov. 5. I guess I still hoped there would be a Hollywood-type ending to the negotiations. The kind of ending so many of my fellow union members had written.

Heck, that is why I became a writer in the first place. I write because I like it when Rocky goes the distance, Rudy gets to play in a game and Ray Kinsella plays catch with his dad. Unfortunately, Sylvester Stallone, Angelo Pizzo and Phil Alden Robinson (the screenwriters of "Rocky," "Rudy" and "Field Of Dreams") weren't penning this. This was real life. The very thing I became a writer to avoid.

FULL story at link.

[angrycarpenter]

1. Behind them 100%

I have quit watching tv until this is over. I hope others are doing the same. Lower ratings is a strong incentive to settle this mess.