Today’s Picket Lines Photos, WGA East

COMMENTS (3)

• Hope the writers take back DVD resid concession. This strike will go on minimum for the next couple of months regardless of any WGA concession because the studios want to clean house. Why give concessions unnecessarily – the studio will capitulate when they need to regardless of concessions.

  As already proven, when the writers zig, they will zag. The only way things might change course is if collective pressure is exerted from unexpected 3rd parties, for example actors, producers… Julia Louis Dreyfus walking off (married to writer Brad Hall, close to Kari Lizer..), Tina Fey nailing NBC, and so on.. it is interesting that the public’s impression is that writers make big bucks .. perhaps that’s because writing is so essential that an outside person would assume writers would be proportionately compensated. In a twisted way, it really underscores the writers position on their value when the public assumes they make big money.

  Comment by Producers wsith Conscience — Monday November 5, 2007 @ 1:06pm PST  Reply to this post

• I really believe that the real “work” of these industry authorities has not been done… it is their job to figure out how to make money off the internet and at the same time stopping dvd counterfeiting for the sake of the industry itself. These loss of revenue streams are way more than the measly monies on table at moment. Steve Jobs is trying to straddle this mess with his iTunes, NBC is taking a stab with Hulu etc., but NO ONE has THOUGHT THIS THROUGH with any authority. It is this ignorance that is dividing the industry and promulgating fear on both sides — when they both should be putting heads together to figure it out. Hollywood is a fragile, random economy at best. We are not garment workers nor do we manufacture tires — the creative nature of the beast is abstract and elusive.

  Frankly, I harken back to the 1915 Supreme Court decision regarding film censorship… “the motion picture industry is a business, pure and simple.” Producers and Writers need to band together and realize the business itself is threatened by downloading and intellectual theft. A famous producer once lectured me about the biz, saying that the best brains in the world work in Hollywood. Why can’t our studio and writer’s guild leaders figure out these problems and strengthen the industry instead of divisive grandstanding?

  Comment by Coopered — Monday November 5, 2007 @ 1:51pm PST  Reply to this post

• I would just like to add that when newspapers report that some writers make $50,000. That isn’t very much in California due to a high minimum wage which is above $8 I believe. Contrast that with a CEO of a major company getting $150 million for being fired, and the WGA’s cause is just.

  Comment by Jessy S. — Monday November 5, 2007 @ 9:26pm PST  Reply to this post