Writers and Studio’s sitting in a tree…

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Okay, I need to go on a rant. In every war there’s two sides: the right side and the wrong side. The war over writer’s royalties in new media is no different. The studios are dead wrong. They’re the ones in the more precarious position. They stockpiled scripts, but they’ll burn through those in months, not years. And sure they can go to the slush pile for scripts to green-light, but those scripts all got put there because they weren’t deemed “shoot-ready.” And as for the ones already green-lit, what will they do about the re-writes?
The pressure on corporations to produce ever-higher profits every quarter is enormous. The guys who run the studios don’t see that –at least not at the same level of intensity that say Viacom, Aol Time-Warner, and Disney’s execs do. In 1988 the game of labor-versus-management left little room for error, today it’s no room. The studios are putting up a brave front, but in reality they’re scared shitless. Men who’s futures depend on guaranteeing ever-increasing revenues can’t afford to be ideologues or gamblers.
The studio suits may be eager to dig in for the long haul, but their corporate masters are not.

I say the writers should take the hard line and get a good deal for new media/internet royalties and not the crap one they got 25 years ago on home movie sales. Plus the writer’s contract automatically sets the terms for the SAG (actors) and DGA (directors) guild contracts, which both expire in only six months, give or take. So if the writers get a raise everyone does. In a town where billions are generated but most of the creative folks have to scrape to get by that means something.
And for those who say, “Oh these greedy screenwriters are filthy rich off what they make on residuals as it is. Why don’t they just do as the studios want and write material for the internet free-of-charge?” Consider three things. First: as the WGA contract stands now writer’s only get three and a half to four cents of every DVD sold, and when you consider that you have to work on a feature film in order to have enough sell-through to make that amount to anything, four cents a copy ain’t much, especially not living in Los Angeles. Ask yourself how much a mortgage is on a house in Southern California. Now ask yourself how many 4-cent-per-DVD-royalties have to get sold in order for a writer to have accrued enough money to pay a year’s worth of that mortgage. When seen from that perspective, the perspective of most writers in LA, all of a sudden four cents a DVD sounds like exactly that –pennies! And that’s just the mortgage!
Secondly: the writers don’t make anywhere near as much as the producers and studio execs, but for some strange reason nobody ever says, “Those damned producers are so greedy. Even the lowest paid producers make more than the highest paid writers! Why don’t they just agree to a generous royalty payout on new media, and be done with it?” But that’s exactly what always seems to happen during a strike.

And third: most writers–with the exception of the “marquee” screenwriters, and that includes TV staff writers–don’t work that often. They usually go several months, and in many, many sad cases years, in-between gigs. It’s very much a feast-to-famine job cycle for them, with a lot more famine than feast.
For people who work for an hourly wage, and can count on their job being there the next day, next year etc it’s easy to point at writers and say their circumstances are the same as ours. They simply aren’t.
End of Rant.

Comment by JaySmack | November 17, 2007

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