joesmiling.jpgNarc director Joe Carnahan asked me to run his apology for his recent blog comments which I posted at On The Line: Writers Strike News, Day 3 (see third item down). He tells me I wasn’t the only one who reacted negatively to them:

“First of all, let me clear the air from that obviously ill-timed and totally misunderstood blog entry I dropped the day before last. I was responding to what I saw as a certain portion of the entertainment community’s never ending ability to undercut something as dire and as urgent as an industry work stoppage with fawning and preening and playing for the camera. I found some of that stuff deeply disingenuous and insincere and that’s what I wanted to address. I’m sure there are completely well meaning folks and those who truly empathize with the writer’s plight but I didn’t see them and I reacted (perhaps poorly) to what I did see and it pissed me off. Those folks out there busting their asses and walking that picket line are fighting for something a lot more precious than a few fleeting seconds worth of soundbites on Access Hollywood.

“And in no way, shape or form was I advocating attacking that picket line with bats and/or chains. That passage was intended to be purely facetious. I was trying to squeeze whatever humor I could out of an otherwise horrible situation that is growing more so by the day. I wasn’t around this business to experience what happened with the last big strike in ’88 but that damage remains distinct and indelible and you can see that in the collective shiver of those who weathered it.

“We’re at the tipping point now and resolution is the only thing anybody gives a shit about. The onus on both parties is enormous. People’s creative and professional lives are being marginalized, suborned or shut down entirely and as some point common sense must prevail. For both the WGA and AMPTP, forget whatever apathy, animus or entrenchment exists between you two: Pissing matches and polemics must now yield to practical, progressive solutions. Call me on my bias but what the writers want in the end will wind up being fractional to the amount of money being made by the producers and studios. And let’s never forget that the script is the first brick in any building. It’s the catalyst off which the rest of the creative process fires and without it, we would all be wandering blind.

“So to both sides… shut up and deal. Find a mutually approved place with a lot of leg-room and lock it down… Bolt the doors and don’t emerge until a deal is done and the ink is dry. We all love this business and we’re lucky as hell to be in it. So in the spirit of that, let’s end all this nonsense right fucking now.”

Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.