POWER 2 DA PEN

Okay dolls, let’s recap.

On February 13th screenwriters put down their "On Strike" signs and went back to work on TV and films. Jokes were instantly better on late night, reruns ended, and, thank God, we’ll get new episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Heroes by April.

Now, what did we learn? Since there hadn’t been a strike by screenwriters since 1988, a generation of humanity has grown and forgotten—or don’t care—that when you watch your favorite TV shows and films, the actors are NOT making it up as they go. They make it look easy, but someone else’s words are coming out of their mouths.

Film and television programs are constructed. A bunch of dolls don’t run off and build a house without a blueprint. Our job as screenwriters is to be the architects of the medium. We design the blueprint. The blueprint is vital. The house falls without us. Then a director and/or producer come in as contractors and decide what materials to use (actors, costumers, set designers, etc.) So my question is: how is it the contractor gets ALL the credit and the architect is kicked to the curb? Cushman & Wakefield is the MAN but Frank Lloyd Wright gets dissed? Lawdy, say it ain’t so.

The disrespect we architects of scripted media receive at the hands of the studio power brokers is stunning. First, we writer dolls create the content, they (the Studio Dolls) buy it for what should be a fee and a net percentage point (I’m sorry, I’m still choking from the reality of that one)—then they actually take it from us, air it or produce it, maybe we get a net profit check (again, don’t make me choke), then they download it to the internet, make another ton of money and we keep taking it up the wahzu getting zip.

If you notice even the EPK (electronic press kits) created for most films and aired on HBO or Showtime as “The Making of…” will prominently feature the actors, the director, or the producer. If they’re lucky, the poor writer (when they are not also the director or producer) gets a line or two about how they envisioned the script. But most times you don’t know who wrote the damn thing. The prevailing sentiment is that film is a director’s medium, and therefore directors are the real auteurs. But ever see a director direct from NOTHING???

Before there is a movie, before actors are hired, before producers go out and find investors or studio financing, there is a script. The script is how everyone gets there. No director worth his salt agrees to do a film without reading a script. Not unless they are writing the script themselves and are very well known. No actor signs on either without seeing the “material.” How many times have we heard some star say, “I read the script and had to do it. But now with this rash of reality programming, everyone thought they could just do without those “pesky” writers and get non-union folks to throw a few words together and come up with something. “We’ll take it from there.” That means no medical, pension and welfare for those non-union wanna-be’s, and the airwaves are flooded with game shows, dad’s doing dumb stunts, and tussling, wrestling humanity on steroids.

What needs to be appreciated is what we writers do, and we should be paid fairly for it. A comedy is scripted by someone who knows how to write a joke. That joke works on paper first. Not even the President nor the candidates vying for the gig are writing their own speeches. Some writer doll is behind the scenes with a thesaurus and a lotta Starbucks doing their brilliant thing.

Our motto at the Writers Guild is: “Somebody Wrote That!”

Though the strike cost the collective Hollywood economy in the tens of millions, hopefully we all learned to honor that motto--to respect it, celebrate it…and remember it next time you’re at the movies marveling at how fabulous Tom Hanks “worked that scene.”

The Doll