How to Correctly Blend Comedy and Drama

I chastised a reporter who wrote an article in the New York Times that I felt trivialized our struggle. It's fitting, therefore, that I praise another NYT reporter for hitting a narrow target of tone just right. I think this article captures the mood on the pickets: serious, of course, but with an air of joviality, humor and comradeship born of solidarity. Check it out:

Laugh Lines in the Hollywood Strike

'If They Don't Give You What You Want, You Take It'

I love being loud and right, and it doesn't happen often. But today's rally on Hollywood Blvd by thousands of members of the Writers Guild of America and supporting unions proved the recipe.

The highlight of the speechifying had to be the head of the local Teamsters. Unlike the handpicked Latinate diction of the writer-speakers, this bruiser pulled no punches. "I've been advised by attorneys to be careful about what I say," he started, then exhaled something that sounded to me like, "Pussies."

He continued: "They don't care how much you protest, or how well you articulate your position. The only thing companies care about is if you kick them in the ass." The spectators bellowed their support as the president of the Guild blanched. I love this guy! He wrapped it up by proclaiming the headline of this post.

I wished I was holding a sign that said, "WGA Loves Teamsters. Honest to God. We Swear. Don't Hurt Us."

In addition to the iPhoto above, here's another shot I took, of my favorite protest sign so far:

Don't Write. Send Money!

I attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the West Point of reporting, a boot camp so thorough in its indoctrination of objectivity and fairness that even today I bend over so far backward to see the other guy's point of view that I injure my vertebrae (and sometimes only perceive the other guy's case upside-down). And I've been doing it again as I read the screeds about the writers' strike.

I've been explaining to those who ask me what the "producers" (read: studios) could be thinking when they oppose the writers' demands for equity.

Now, the proper answer for a picketing writer is one of the following:

• --"They're not thinking. They're too busy using both hands to stuff money into their Twinkie holes."
• --"They're thinking: 'Fucking monkeys with pencils. Where do they get off asking to be paid just for writing?!'"
• --"They're thinking: 'Let zem strike. Let zem march. Ve vill show them vat marching means! Ve vill vait until zey are at zer veakest, und zen -- VE strike! Ve bring zem to zer knees! Today, ze various types of entertainment und zer adjunct communications channels! Tomorrow... ZE VORLD VYDE VEB!'"

But I don't say any of these things. I try to be fair and objective. Or maybe the ex-reporter in me figures that my argument will be all the more persuasive if I appear to be objective.

So I say: "They're not monsters, for gosh sake. They're scared. Their job is to maximize the value of the stock of their companies. Anything that might hurt that can have a devastating effect on the corporation as a whole. They see increased residuals as a threat, so they will do anything they have to protect their stock. They're may be in error, but they're just businessmen."

Then I rinse with Listerine in the hopes that it will kill the fecal germs in my oral cavity.

Now comes someone who really is objective, not just pretending to be. He's a computer scientist, and a columnist for Discover magazine. (And if you think that fact that he writes for a living automatically puts him in league with screenwriters, you probably also think that attempting to minimize scab work is the same as McCarthyism, as so many Web trolls have posted.)

On the off chance you didn't catch his column today in a little e-zine called The New York Times (they publish on paper too, by the way), I graciously link to the opinion piece here:

Pay Me For My Content

Monkeys with Pencils

I believe in getting to the root of any controversial issue via empirical means whenever possible. In other words, do the math. In my no-stone-unturned search for an explanation to the writers' strike, I've found this groundbreaking study in the pages of the latest National Geographic.

Monkeys "Go on Strike" When They Sense Unfairness

Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News

November 13, 2007

In recent tests designed to assess monkeys' sense of fairness, a group of brown capuchin monkeys "went on strike" and refused to perform routine tasks when they saw others receiving greater rewards for the same tasks. The more effort the primates used to earn a reward, the more upset they appeared to be at the inequity, according to scientists who conducted the research. "In human terms it doesn't matter how hard you have to work for a million dollars," said lead researcher Sarah Brosnan of Georgia State University in Atlanta. "But there's a pretty low cutoff point on what you'll do for five." Building on previous research, Brosnan's team tested six pairs of monkeys on a simple task: handing a token to a human examiner in return for a food reward. When monkeys noticed that their partners received better rewards for the same task—a cherished grape instead of a bit of cucumber—they became likely to refuse participation, the study showed. The behavior, called inequity aversion, might have its roots in activities like food gathering, in which primates can suffer if they cooperate with others who do not do their share of work, Brosnan said. Brosnan stressed that the primates' response wasnt one of simple greed or wanting a bigger payoff just because they knew one was available. "What really mattered was if someone else got a better reward," she said, "not [just] that they wanted a better reward." The team's findings appear in the new online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Grapes of Wrath? Brosnan's team studied monkeys' sense of fairness in a similar test conducted in 2003. In it, capuchins exchanged a piece of rock with their human handlers in return for a morsel of food. Monkeys that witnessed their partners getting grapes often refused to conduct future exchanges, would not eat the cucumbers they received, and in some cases, threw their rewards at the researchers. In the new study, the scientists tried to rule out alternate explanations for such behavior, including the possibility that the primates knew the grapes were available and were simply holding out for a better reward. The monkeys were sometimes shown a grape before completing their task, but at other times they were unaware a grape was available. There was no discernible difference in the monkeys' responses, Brosnan said. Researchers also distributed rewards evenly among the monkeys, so that no one animal was consistently rewarded or shortchanged. The scientists found that the capuchins didn't become frustrated by expecting a grape simply because they had previously received one for doing the same task. Laurie Santos, a Yale University psychologist, said, "The original study was met with much controversy in the field, including a number of now published claims that the original effect could not be replicated using slightly different tasks. "Given this level of controversy, it's nice to see that their findings hold up when other alternative explanations are controlled," she added. Evolution of Justice Brosnan said her team's research scratches the surface of a philosophical quandary: Is the human sense of fairness instilled by social institutions like religion, or is it the product of a long genetic evolution? Even if the primates are really displaying a sense of social justice in the experiment, it remains primitive in important ways, Brosnan said. "We aren't seeing a whole lot of response [when the monkeys] are the better rewarded ones," Brosnan said. "In humans we've expanded [our sense of justice] to [include] situations where another is treated badly." Like humans, many monkeys live and interact in groups much larger than the study pairs. Exploring the complex dynamics of those social groups may be a next step for Brosnan and her colleagues. "We'd like to study those relationships and how they affect their responses to inequity," she said.

And here is the photographic proof:




Look, I'm out of work. I have to have some fun.

Watch Moguls Screw Themselves! Amazing! Fantastic!

As a former journalist, I love nothing more than when the facts speak for themselves, and eloquently. I was never a big fan of "New Journalism," in which I shove my conclusion down your maw Michael Mooore-style. No, for me the lovely moment when the perp slings the rope over the tree, ties it around his own neck, and chirps, "Watch this!" So... watch this.




Addendum: I've heard through a WGA contact of mine that the above video was put together over a weekend by a single enterprising Guild member. It's gone mega-viral, with countless hits all over the Internet. Shows you what one person can do, even in our increasingly overwhelming and anonymous time. To the videographer: bravo or brava!

The Shirt Off My Back

Now here's some capitalism I can get behind. The fine folks at Strike Swag are selling strike-related items on a non-profit basis. All income goes to the strike emergency fund,which assists writers in dire need.

And hey -- if you don't back the strike, buy a shirt and burn it.

Please consider visiting www.strikeswag.com and dropping a few ducats.

Why We Strike

What I like about this brief video from United Hollywood is that it gets down to brass tacks, describing the process by which writers get paid, and how much, right down to the dollars and cents. Click below to watch.

Do the Right Thing, Or Don't Do the Write Thing

Check out this recent post on Deadline Hollywood Daily, an eye-opener that reveals a lot about some of today's aspiring screenwriters. Could you be one of them?

Maybe They Need a Class in Ethics

PENCILS DOWN: WRITERS' STRIKE

This blog is about professional scriptwriting, emphasis on the "professional." So it's appropriate at this time to temporarily shelve the writing tips and focus on the most important and biggest labor action by professional screenwriters in more than two decades.

In case you've been living in a soundproof closet, The Writers Guilds of America, East and West, are on strike.

I'm going to use this blog to chronicle the experience on a personal level.

When the strike began four days ago, David Carr of the New York Times ran a piece that focused, not on the gravity and facts of the situation, but on the apparently amusing aspect of a strike by bespectacled wan writers, as if cartoon moles had emerged from their burrows for the first time in years to squint at the sunlight and wave wooden signs.

I wrote Mr. Carr and, to my pleasant surprise, received a prompt reply. The email exchange follows.

Do I detect a lightly mocking note of disdain in your piece on the strike? As a former writer-reporter (BusinessWeek, Newsweek, UPI), I appreciate the color in your article. But this is a multimillion-dollar industry that drives the image of the United States around the world, and I find myself without an income today. I don't really see what lattes and artsy glasses have to do with it, nor the repeated insinuations that this is not like a "real" strike, and that no one has a vaguest notion of what it's about. It's about the livelihoods of thousands of writers and tens of thousands in related businesses.

Write a little less -- report a little more.

You are the third person to say this in feedback, so I think I must have crossed some line in there. I really appreciate you taking the time to write and will keep this and other notes in mind next time I step up to the strike.

david

Mr. Carr did not discard the purple prose in the next online iteration of the article. But it was couched in a good deal more perspective, an acknowledgment that the situation will impact, not just the thousands of writers involved and the tens of thousand of persons in businesses related to scriptwriting, but the millions who watch TV and movies. Readers of the article came away with a more accurate conclusion, that this is the real thing.

Real thing indeed. Today, thousands of professional scriptwriters are massing at the gates of Fox Studios in a show of strength.

Please watch the news, keep up on the situation, talk about it with friends and enemies, honk when you see us picketing.

And by all means, please comment on this post, asking any questions you may have about this admittedly arcane issue and offering any comments you may have, pro, con or otherwise. I say to you what any strike captain might say to his minions: If I don't hear you, I don't know you're out there.

Thanks. More to come.