Current Affairs

How they think

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My friend Jack Bernstein directed me to an excellent article by a former corporate attorney-turned-writer that’s full of insights into the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy.

Regardless of what camp you fall in, everyone is grasping for an
explanation of why the studios are acting the way they are. That’s
because with the exception of a few carefully prepared press releases,
a trade ad or two, and some supposed “leaked” stories, we haven’t heard
directly from any of the CEOs about the strike. We’ve only heard from
Nick Counter – their point man. Their lawyer.

I’m here to tell
you, as a former litigator who spent several years at one of the
biggest corporate law firms in the world, that we’re all in engaged in
a huge lawyering game, and things are proceeding accordingly.

Going Too Far

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Vmcomic
TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello reports that VERONICA MARS creator Rob Thomas has considered continuing the cancelled series a comic book…but has been warned off the project by the WGA. Thomas says:

"I had a second meeting with DC comics. I heard that the [WGA] didn’t
want [TV writers penning TV-based] comic books during the strike as it
would promote a network property. We’re investigating whether there are
similar hurdles for a defunct TV series like Veronica Mars. Naturally, I won’t be writing it if the Guild doesn’t want me to, but we’re hoping that’s not the case."

I am a strong supporter of the WGA and of the strike, but if what Thomas says is true, the Guild is going way, way too far. The Guild has absolutely no jurisdiction over any writing that their members do in the publishing industry. It would be a big stretch, legally and ethically, for the WGA to call writing a VERONICA MARS comic book, or a MONK tie-in novel for that matter, an activity that undermines the strike effort in any way. 

In my case, if I used the WGA strike as an excuse not to honor my publishing contract to deliver my next MONK novel, then Penguin/Putnam, which has no ties whatsoever to the AMPTP, would sue me… and win.

(Thanks to TVSeriesFinales for the heads-up and to Aintitcool for the graphic).

The Only Golden Globes the Public Cares About Belong to Pamela Anderson

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I love Nikki Finke. In her report on the AMPTP’s inept PR efforts, she writes:

The organization trotted out the respected David L. Wolper to put his name on a Variety
letter comparing the WGA’s "boycott" of the Golden Globes and Oscars to
America’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. (This is
uncomfortably reminiscent of the time Miramax secretly penned an
endorsement of its Gangs of New York director Martin Scorsese
and attributed it to filmmaker Robert Wise. I’m sorry to say this,
because Wolper has always been lovely to me, but his article is
crapola. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The writers didn’t
even picket Brentwood.

Welcome to My Life

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Tess_photo
Tess Gerritsen perfectly captures my life in her blog today:

Night before last, I woke up in a sweat.  I couldn’t get back to
sleep because I was having an anxiety attack about my next book.  Oh,
it’s nothing new — I have these from time to time, and sometimes I’ll
lie awake for hours, mulling over what’s wrong with my plot, whether
I’ll be able to fix it, whether I’ll meet my deadline.  When I finally
do fall asleep, that anxiety follows me in the form of dreams.  Mine
usually involve showing up at school for a test and suddenly realizing:
I FORGOT TO ATTEND ANY CLASSES!  But I know what those dreams are
really all about: how the writing is going.

No matter where I am or what else I may be doing, this job is never far from my mind.

[…]I can be sitting on a beach on vacation, yet I’ll never really relax
because I know that there’s a half-written novel waiting on my desk and
I have only a few months to finish it.  I can’t remember the last time
I really, truly let go of the job.

She’s writing about herself, but she could just as easily be writing about me. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel the pressure of a book or script deadline or spent my "free time" thinking about a story I was working on or a plot I was supposed to come up with.  When I wake up at 3:30 am with jet-lag, the thoughts that keep me from getting back to sleep always involve a plot point or anxiety about meeting a deadline. I’m not complaining, far from it. It’s just nice to know that I’m not alone.

A Good Word on the Strike

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Gregg
My friend Gregg Hurwitz, author of THE CRIME WRITER, sums up my feelings on the strike better than I can.  He’s also better looking than me:

Coming to Hollywood as an author, I was amazed at the benefits and
infrastructure provided to me as a screenwriter. Health care. Pension.
Residuals. Minimums. There’s not a day I’ve worked in L.A. that I’m not
grateful for these benefits—benefits that provide for my family and
that allow me to continue to do my job. These benefits were won by the
sweat and courage of men and women who had much more to lose and who
took greater risks than those before us now. These benefits were won by
the sacrifices others made for future generations, for me.

This
membership, this year, cannot dissipate those gains. We cannot cave in
to an unfair deal that writers decades from now will be saddled with.
This is a watershed contract. Future writers will look back to this
year, to this contract, to us, every day as they live with what our
resolve and respect for writing yielded. They can look back on us with
the same gratitude we look back on those who came before us. Or they
can look back with disappointment.

We’d be well served to remember that this contract isn’t just for us.

Crime Scene Picket

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Amptp_hq
I just got back from picketing in the rain with hundreds of myPc170278
fellow TV crime writers and the casts of their hits shows outside the headquarters of the AMPTP, which we wrapped in crime scene tape. It was a terrific event that once again demonstrated how amazingly unified and determined the Guild is. The AMPTP has greatly underestimated our dedication to our cause. It was also great to see so many supporters from SAG and the DGA, as well as novelists like Michael Connelly from the Pc170285
Mystery Writers of America and Christa Faust from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. Celebs included the stars of NUMBERS, CSI, THE UNIT, RENO 911, BONES, and DEXTER and showrunners like Carlton Cuse (LOST), Shawn Ryan (THE SHIELD), Rene Balcer (LAW AND ORDER) and Naren Shankar (CSI). And there were mobs of reporters there as well, so I’m sure we got a lot of press out of the event.Rabkin_and_robert_patrick
(Photos 1. The AMPTP wrapped in crime scene tape. 2. Me and Michael Connelly. 3. CSI’s Marg Helgenberger and Rene Balcer read the indictment against the AMPTP. 4. William Rabkin and Robert Patrick from THE UNIT.Pc170281 5. Striking Writers and actor Keith Carradine listen to speakers.)

Variety Survey

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Variety is doing a survey of its readers. Here’s most of it (there were a couple of questions that I didn’t correctly copy-and-paste…but the
browser wouldn’t let me go back to get’em. If I recall correctly, one asked if I belonged to a
Guild and, if so, which one and the other asked me if I was Hispanic):

Read more

Who Says There’s Anything Wrong with a Network Affiliate Owning a City’s Only Newspaper?

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I liked Ken Levine’s observation about the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the WGA Strike:

Good news! The LA TIMES has begun its Oscar coverage with a weekly
special section called THE ENVELOPE. Meanwhile, strike coverage has
been relegated to the Business Section. I somehow can’t see THE DETROIT
FREE-PRESS not running stories about an auto strike on page one. But
then again GM doesn’t own the DETROIT FREE-PRESS.

The Times is owned by Tribune, which also owns KTLA, one of the major affiliates of CW, one of the TV networks hit by the strike.

Is Variety Publishing Lies?

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Nikki Finke posts a brutal analysis of Variety’s strike coverage, accusing the trade publication and its reporters of printing total falsehoods.

The trade’s Jason Blairs — oh, excuse me, Josef Adalian and Dave McNary — keep inventing stories which purport to show that less than 2 weeks into the strike wither the WGA’s resolve is withering, and/or its writers are going back to work, and/or even its late show iconic hosts are going to double-cross their teams of scribes. Just one problem: those stories are either totally fabricated or highly exaggerated.

[…]First, there was McNary’s article wrongly claiming the WGA was backing off its position on changing on Reality TV. (See my previous,  WGAW Says Variety Scoop Has No Reality). Then, there was Adalian’s and McNary’s fabricated story about The Young And The Restless soap opera writers returning to work by opting for "financial core" status with the WGA.

Both stories turned out to be totally false. Variety’s tiny correction on the soap opera story was buried in the back pages a few days later.

My take on this is that Variety’s so-called "reporters" are so used to retyping press releases and passing them off as "reporting" that they have no idea how to actually report a story. So they are simply publishing whatever their studio and networks sources feed them without bothering to do the basic work of a reporter.

But they also have no incentive to do any actual reporting. I know what I am talking about. Twenty years ago, I worked as a reporter for a trade publication. I know the pressure the advertising side exerts on the editorial side. The wall between the two in the trade publication world is very, very thin. By nature, trade publication rely entirely on advertising by the industry they are reporting on, which raises all kinds of ethical issues every single day. The fact is that the editors are under enormous pressure not to piss off the people who keep them in business…and those people aren’t screenwriters.