Why We’re On Strike
We know that the economic boundaries of the Internet are not fully known. That's why we're asking for the simplest and fairest thing, a percentage of what the companies make. If they don't make anything, neither do we. But if they get paid, so should we. It's not a matter of pride. A residual is the difference between solvency and panic for a lot of families: it helps us make our rent, car payments, tuition and health-care costs.
The support within the union for protecting our residuals is very deep. The marches and rallies in L.A. have closed the streets, bringing out thousands of writers. In New York, where I live, the community of film and television writers is much smaller. We have more like a hundred or so people marching each day.
I was marching at Rockefeller Center last week, and two ladies from Indianapolis asked me what the strike was about. I told them. On learning that a lot of our writers were from tony comedy shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show," one of the women asked why our signs weren't funnier. Her friend, who was eating a pretzel she'd bought on the street for a price I'm estimating at 100 times our current DVD residual rate, understood why. She said, "Because this isn't funny."
Douglas McGrath is the writer/director of "Emma," "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Infamous" and the co-author, with Woody Allen, of "Bullets Over Broadway."
© 2007
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Member Comments
Posted By: Beeviejus @ 01/14/2008 11:41:22 PM
Comment: You know what you can do? Have the unemployed Mexicans learn to speak at least some English and fill in the striking writers' jobs. Most of these people would have no trouble doing those open positions, plus while the money involved may not meet the striking writers' standards, at least some extremely poor people would be able to have food on their table. Also, remember: the writers and others chose to work in this field of the media, and personally I think they get paid enough. There is a high price for CDs and DVDs, which in the long run, may bring in less money than anticipated.
Posted By: hopif @ 11/27/2007 3:05:05 AM
Comment: Writwrs Guild should show your might in writing and not by stop writing since the old saying Goes"Pen is mightier than Sword!"We have a True story of 1850, where in a British army officer under the instructions from the queen had to go aganst the wishes of the queen ,for onlt to have fallen in love with the Indian village Girl!, We want to cast Leonardo Di Caprioas a hero in the film unddert some superior Director and representation from Writers union to give a Hollyeood Touch and create a Budget as per Script!
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Posted By: isingformysupper @ 11/21/2007 2:26:58 PM
Comment: There's no point arguing with people like neshckr. The people who believe that writers are overpaid (I'm an award-winning, working screenwriter who lives in a $680/mo studio and can't afford a car), or that our 16-hour days of exhausting, migraine-inducing work are actually "play" because we're required to be creative, or that the 10-plus years of poverty we endure in the hopes of maybe, possibly, breaking in are really just years of slacking, or that we're hacks because so much of our work is destroyed by meddlesome committees of bean-counters who inject inane trash into our carefully crafted scripts so they can appeal to the lowest common denominator...the people who so vocally claim to believe such things must know on some level that they're not true. Otherwise, why don't they just go bang out a script this weekend and sell it for a million bucks on Monday? That's all it takes, right?