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I’m receiving a lot of reports of TV showrunners and hyphenates choosing not to work on their shows during the WGA strike. I’ll update this post with names as I receive them. But here is an email sent around this morning by Shawn Ryan, the showrunner of The Shield, The Unit, and The Oaks and also a member of the WGA Negotiating Committee, explaining to fellow showrunners and TV writers what decision he’s reached and why:
“As you all know by now, we are on Strike. It’s sad that we have arrived here and I don’t know each and every one of your opinions, but I wanted to share my personal plans for what I intend to do until we have a fair contract.
I am currently quoted in today’s Hollywood Reporter as saying that I will do some producing work, but won’t do any editing as I consider that to be writing. While I said something similar to that earlier last week (I’ve learned you can’t trust a word of what these trades report), that was before I went to the Showrunners Meeting yesterday and became very crystalized in what I need to do. Like many of you I have spent the last week contemplating what to do in case of a strike. What are my responsibilities to my writers, my cast, my crew, my network and my contract? How do I balance these various concerns?
At the Showrunners Meeting it became very clear to me that the only thing I can do as a showrunner is to do nothing. I obviously will not write on my shows. But I also will not edit, I will not cast, I will not look at location photos, I will not get on the phone with the network and studio, I will not prep directors, I will not review mixes. These are all acts that are about the writing of the show or protecting the writing of the show, and as such, I will not participate in them. I will also not ask any of my writer/producers to do any of these things for me, so that they get done, but I can save face.
I will not go into the office and I will not do any work at home. I will be on the picket line or I will be working with the Negotiating Committee. I will not have an avid sent to my house, or to a new office so that I can do work on my show and act as if it is all right because I’m not crossing any picket lines.
I truly believe that the best and fastest way to a good contract is to hit these companies early, to hit them hard and to deprive them of ALL the work we do on their behalf.
How do we ask our staff writers to go out on strike as we continue collecting producer checks? How do we ask the Teamsters to respect our picket lines if we won’t ourselves or if we’re sneaking around to do the work off-site?
Just so you all know what I am prepared to give up….
Tomorrow, we begin to film the Series Finale of The Shield. I think it’s the best script our writing staff has ever written. This is the show that made me. This is the show that is my baby. If the strike goes on longer than two weeks, I won’t be able to step on set for the final episode of the show. I won’t have a writer on set, as I have had on every episode since the fourth episode. I won’t be able to edit this final culminating episode. I won’t go to the wrap party that Fox TV and FX are paying for. You can’t tell me that any episode of television is more important than this one is to me, and I am ready to forego all those things in order to strengthen my union.
Tomorrow, we begin filming a new pilot, The Oaks, that I am Executive Producing. It’s an amazing script that David Schulner wrote and I signed up to help him make this show. Until we have a fair deal I cannot do that now and it kills me.
We are currently filming Season 3 of The Unit, a show that does fairly well, but against House and Dancing With The Stars, usually finishes in 3rd place. We have no guarantee that we will back for a 4th season. I just gave a director friend of mine his first TV directing gig. I’d like to see him succeed. He’ll have to finish the show on his own now without a writer on set, or my help in the editing room.
Some people have made the argument that if they don’t do this producing work or this editing, that someone else will do it, and this act won’t hurt the companies. I respectfully disagree. If we ALL stop ALL work tomorrow, the impact of this strike will be felt much more quickly, much more acutely and it most likely will end sooner, putting our writers, our cast and our crews back to work sooner!
I spent nearly 12 hours today in the Negotiation Room with the companies. I watched our side desperately try to make a deal. We gave up our request to increase revenue on DVD’s, something that was very painful to give up, but something we felt we had to in order to get a deal made in new media, which is our future.
I watched as the company’s representatives treated us horrendously, disrespectfully, and then walked out on us at 9:30 and then lied to the trades, claiming we had broken off negotiations.
I can’t in good conscience fight these bastards with one hand, while operating an avid with the other. I am on strike and I am not working for them. PERIOD.
You will use your own instincts and consciences to decide your own actions. But if you would like to follow in my footsteps (and those of many, many others who made this pledge at the showrunner’s meating on Saturday), I encourage you to sign the trade ad that the WGA will be putting out on Tuesday by the dozens and dozens of showrunners who will simply not work at all beginning in the morning.”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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The real test for Mr. Ryan will come when the AMPTP member companies (Fox/Sony in this case) decide that Mr. Ryan is in breach of his contract and pursues him for damages. That day, however, will most likely never arrive. Mr. Ryan’s actions are a smart and calculated risk.
This is a terrible situation, and Mr. Ryan is correct that it is in everyone’s best interest for this strike to hurt the AMPTP member companies hard and fast. So here are a few suggestions for Mr. Ryan:
1. Convince your cast members to act poorly (not in their trailers, in between “action” and “cut”).
2. Although the WGA doesn’t condone it, use whatever influence you have with your execs to keep the pressure on to make concessions. If you don’t have their home phone numbers, ask Nikki.
3. Tell Ari and the rest of Endeavor to encourage outher showrunners to not cross the picket line. As them to support the writers by cancelling lunches and dinners with execs until the strike is over. Or at the very least, make the execs pay.
4. This strike will never be settled in a public forum…no matter what happens, the public will never feel compelled to join in or sympathize with the writers in their quest. Use your clout in the negotiating room…not in the media room.
Julius,
If contracts are so indestructible, how come they evaporate into thin air when a show gets cancelled as quickly as two episodes in (a la VIVA LAUGHLIN)?
No doubt Hugh Jackman and Melanie Griffith were less than thrilled at suddenly not getting a paycheck but they know that’s the way the biz goes.
In scripted TV, the axe can drop any second.
I hope someone can explain the importance of “New Media” in this negotiation. Obviously, digital delivery will be a major method of distribution in the future; however, we’re still in a period of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Aside from iTunes, what delivery method has met with any consistant success? Even iTunes has yet to turn into a legitimate revenue stream for studios.
Is there really a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow or is there just a feeling of “we won’t let them screw us on this like they did with VHS”?
First, good for Shawn and all the other showrunners like him. His decision may be inconvenient for many others (and that’s certainly an understatement), but his allegiance and responsibility are first to his Guild brothers and sisters walking the picket lines. I’m sure it is very, very hard for him to know that his decision is one that will cost so much to so many people who have so much less than him. But anyone who thinks this strike was caused by anyone other than the studios has his or her head in the sand. If you want to blame anyone, blame them — not the few writers with actual power (almost all of whom are hyphenates) who are willing to use it to benefit the rest of the writers who do not. Hopefully it will be the courage and sacrifice of people like them who will undue the damage that John Wells caused because he was unwilling to risk his own personal fame and fortune for the benefit of the others.
Second, the DVD residual issue was a relatively easy give. It doesn’t take any $$$ out of writers’ pockets, it just doesn’t put any more in them. And DVDs will soon go the way of the VHS (remember those?). Electronic rental, electronic sell-through, and internet broadcasting are nearly the current, and hardly the future. Just look at the recently-debuted hulu.com and the several years-old movies.com to see that the commercialization of new media distribution has already begun.
Finally, SAG and DGA can’t officially strike because to do so would constitute a breach of their CBA and the individual members’ agreements with the studios. But they can (and already are) expressing their support, as well they should.
Sir Carl (and who the hell ever knighted you).
Writing is absolutely everything.
I don’t care what trade in this industry you are in, without folks like us, you’d just be a swell bunch of guys, standing around waiting for Godot.
Or doing “Deal or No Deal” (which, by the way was thought up by someone, so that’s writing too, n’est ce pas?)
First there was the word. Try dressing a set without a description or pulling focus on a group of actors with nothing to say.
We are the womb and the sperm and the egg.
Remember that next time you collect your paycheck in this industry. Guys like us wrote it.
I’m up here in Canada getting cancer treatment and looking after dying parents (dad went last month, mom soon) but don’ think I haven’t had to be locked in a room to keep me from being down there with my fellow writers.
And hey, since you’re going to be standing around, could you raise a plackard for me?
Sir Carl – without writers there’s no script, nothing for the actors to say, nothing for the directors to shoot, the editors to edit. The writing alone, as you say, may not be the single most important part of any production but without it, there is no production.
Shawn, I want to thank you for the conscientious, righteous decision you’ve made. If more showrunners took your position, we would actually have a shot at resolving this quickly. Being on the picket line today was at once energizing and enervating. This is not where any of us want to be and yet here we are hoping for the best and praying for a speedy resolution.
I am sorry He has an obligation to do the job he is under contract for and not doing it is wrong no matter what job you hold. People should be acontable to do what they agreed to do. I also think that both sides are forgetting the people that really matter the viewers because without us. Just stop whinning and both sides get back into negotiations because no progress can be made without negotiations.
This baring of heart and soul brought tears to my eyes. It’s easy to see why Shawn is such well-respected writer. Even if I have to take a day job to survive a long strike, I will do so, knowing that these hard steps must be taken to ensure our future survival.
Hey Chris Darling
Hop off the horse and get down here with the real collaborative world.
Every aspect of the process is important, shall I go through it for you, you egotistical fuck.
Without the casting dept there would be no actors for you to blame for messing up your lines
Without the Director there would be no one to blame for misreading your tone
Without the Camera Dept it would be Radio
Without the Electrical Dept it would be too dark to see anything, and no power for your laptops on set or the espresso machine
Without the Grip Dept there would be no one to push the dollies and set the cameras, as well as set the courtesy flags to keep your bald head from burning.
Without the Art Dept there would be no one to design the set from scratch, even when you brilliantly describe it “it was a run down tenement on the bad side of the tracks”
Without the Craft Service Dept there would be no one for you to blame about the free snack choices
wow a lot of idiots here. Shawn Ryan is RIGHT. First of all, just cause he has money now means he should be in the pocket of the studios and let them screw over lots of people who aren’t as well off as him? WHAT? where’s that logic. plus, the whole point is that agreements are cut off… it’s obviously MUCH harder NOT to do your work than to do it, esp for someone like Shawn Ryan. the series finale of your own show (and the one that made you) is more important than a check, and really people in his position are not fighting so much for more money for themselves but more respect and power for everyone in their profession. writers really get screwed over a lot in Hollywood, it’s really sad.
Dear JW – Thank you for your comments. I agree wholeheartedly.
As a young freelance crew member in Hollywood, I fully support the writers who are on strike. However, I feel that producers should reserve the right to fulfill their producing duties without bullying from the WGA or any members of.
I sincerely hope that the WGA returns to negotiations as soon as possible, and that many producers chose to fulfill the duties they are allowed to fulfill while also supporting their union brothers and sisters.
oh and to SAD TIMES ARE HERE, I would say I know where you’re coming from, except that he never said any of that. he simply stated that WITHOUT writing, you can’t have any of the rest of it. you need EVERY single department, and he’s defending writing because it seems a lot of people seems its not as important as the other stuff. it’s all EQUALLY important, this would be just as bad if actors, directors, production designers, whatever, went on strike.
In reading the comments here I was in agreement with one comment that if you wanted the support of the teamsters you would start your picked lines at 6AM when the crew shows up for work. I thought that would stop production right away. But in another note says the WGA made a side deal with the teamsters not to picket until 9am when it would not affect the teamsters!
Are the teamsters a bunch of pussies? They say they support the strike and then say please don’t strike until we are already at work so that we don’t have to cross the picket line?
I’m an IA member and I support you guys- I’m sorry that our union President doesn’t!
FishyHotWheels-
Some years back the writers agreed not to take but a tiny pittance on a new media called video tape. Producers worried that they didn’t know if they’d make money on it and suggested that once they did it could be renegotiated. Of course it never was.
There is a general sense that this is the same sort of situation with streaming or other new media. The writers are just trying to assure that if producers get paid, the writers get paid a percentage, even if no one yet knows how that will work or how much it will come to.
Shawn Ryan:
Ray Richmond with The Hollywood Reporter here. I’m sorry you felt compelled to take a shot at my publication for having quoted you accurately (as you essentially said yourself in your otherwise strong and impressive declaration). What I wrote in my piece today is only what you told me — on Friday. It was obviously out of my control that your resolve was further steeled by your colleagues at the Sunday meeting of showrunners. But I’d have had to be a mindreader to know this, and please understand I was only trying to make you look like the moral and principled professional that you are.
If you have a change of heart that further strengthens your position against doing any strike-time work, I obviiously respect that. But why attack the messenger for accurately reflecting your feelings two days before?
You’re a stand-up guy and a man of integrity, Shawn, and you’ve always been quotable and gracious with me. I wish you and all WGA members the strength to persevere through what’s shaping up as a fight to the death.
RR
Hey, Sad Times,
I’d love to be down there and maybe you didn’t read all of my post (try again brother) and you’ll see that I have a small health problem keeping me away for a while. Given a choice between picketing and dying, I had no other choice but to come back to my home country for a while and get my life saved (because my WGA health care ran out, guess I’m not that successful, huh?)
However, I wasn’t really pissing on other crafts as much as certain individuals who take every opportunity to belittle writers. Maybe that’s not you, maybe it is.
And since you took the time from joining my brother writers on the picket line, probably in the Starbucks aholes like you spend most of your time in, just think about this… film making is a collaborative effort. And we writers have contributed for twenty uninterrupted years, so there’s a goodly pile of anger built up there.
And there’s a few scripts on the table, ready to shoot, so go ahead and film then.
Then let’s see what you do. If the pile of scripts is used up, you’ll have nothing. Absolutely nothing. And you and every other union member, our brother unions, will have nothing at all to do. Zip. Nada. Try collaborating on that.
Put the fucking Capra touch on that.
Damn, that last note needs major re-write. Spelling and syntax errors. And of course, I let a little Ahole bait me.
Sorry.
Pencil is down so no re-write is possible.
This is such garbage. For starters, this “showrunner” doesn’t even explain why he’s on strike, contrary to the article’s title. It sounds more like he’s just fighting the big, bad corporation and “sticking it to the man” like the WGA would tell him to.
Jesus christ, like these people are being exploited in writing sweatshops 18+ hours a day. Unfortunately, you can hold your labor as a bargaining chip — I only wish the union could be broken so that no one would have to deal with this garbage in the television and film industry again.
This is absolute lunacy! Yes, Shawn Ryan is a hero – a very idealistic and riteous man. It easy to be idealistic and riteous when you are under an $8.5 million overall at Twentieth Century Fox Television. No, you read that right $8.5 million dollars guaranteed to him for 3 years and undoubtedly this is only a small portion of his income. While people are losing their $850/week jobs, Shawn Ryan can sleep soundly knowing he has done his part to slay the evil beast that made him a multi-millionare.
I just finished rolling around on teh ground after reading someone above that argued that writers are not that important to a TV show. Where do you think Seinfeld would be? Or how about, probably the best example, Lost? The 1st season was awesome. But then the writing sucked so bad during the 2nd season that it lost most of its audience. Acting, editing, producing, etc are all important to a show. But without good writing it is nothing.
Just a quick note from a consumer point of view:
While I respect the writers and actors, they make a decent living off of the shows. However, they have every right to protect their livelihood.
I’m not a proponent of any unions – they seem to have outlived their usefulness in most situations. However, I will say that, especially with large media conglomerates such as Movie/TV studios and Major sports franchises, the owners hold all the power and tend to step on everyone that makes the product something that consumers want to purchase.
That said, in the long run, most viewers don’t really care about what is going on – we just want our shows back. While you are hurting the studios, remember that you (and the studios) are just alienating the viewers.
I truly hope that the writers get the concessions from the studios that they deserve, and that the studios suffer a bit until they give in. But I also hope that this kind of activity doesn’t prevent the consumer from getting what they deserve.
Unions have outlived their usefulness? Hmmm, I was working as a college professor (adjunct mind you) with NO job security, no access to health care, no course for redress, and no negotiating power for wages. It was all up to the whims of administrators, which come and go often. Now, thanks to a Union, we have job security, health care, better wages and other benefits. Who benefits? we do, our families, and the students as well.
As for the WGA, there are many non-multimillionaire writers who certainly could use a slice of the profits. These guys aren’t asking to to take money from anyone, they just want a percentage of profit with something they create.
Wow – did you not read my post? Pay attention to the words
I stated that they’ve outlived their usefulness in _most_ situations, not all. For the most part, the jobs that should be unionized are not, the jobs that are shouldn’t be. The people that need the absolute most help are those that have substandard wages due to the shoddy minimum wage in this country, and work for the corporations that take advantage of this. Job security? Please explain to me what that is. The only people with job security are those with contracts that have a golden parachute attached, and government workers.
Like I said re: the writers – they deserve to get their fair share, but I’m sure most make a decent living. When did multimillionaire become the standard bearer for a decent living? 70K+ per year is a pretty decent living for most folks, especially compared to those that due to their circumstances are forced to work 40 hours a week with no security, no healthcare and all for minimum wage. I don’t know anyone that can survive on less than $15k per year…
I belong to SAG,AFTRA and United Healthcare Workers -SEIU and will stand with my fellow WGA members and picket the producers. They’re afraid to lose even a little of the new media money because they feel they will lose more and more of it as the years go by. These producers are already rich some are wealthy because of the hard work that the writers do. They need to know that its the writers imagination that has kept America happy and them rich all these years. The best way to do that is to not do any work for them and get out on the picket line. Protest at their offices too. My fellow UHW members will join me on the picket line to help them get their contract.