I just wanted to take a second to post this b/c I'm at work and I should, in theory, be working. I just read that Carson Daly was asking strangers to send him jokes because he's going back to work. I posted a while ago about the writer's strike. I am fully behind the writers. The amount of money they're asking for per DVD and for new media is tiny - $.04 per. The money the networks, and their leaders make, is obscene. Most of the CEOs of the networks make somewhere in the $50 MILLION per year range. Like I said, obscene. Most writers, with notable exceptions (Joss Whedon, Shonda Rimes, and Aaron Sorkin) make just a little bit more than I do. Half the writers who are members of the Writer's Guild of America did not make enough money last year writing to have the WGA health insurance. This is not Brad Pitt and George Clooney we're talking about. However, I would argue that the writers are more important than the actors that say the lines. I think the network's stand of giving nothing is asinine. Truly.
I read this morning, as I have been following the strike on the internet, which is becoming a bigger source of news that the 20 second sound bites that masquerade as news on television, that Carson Daly was crossing the picket lines and going back to work. It would be truly poetic justice if the show tanked so bad without his writers that it got canceled. I know it would put a lot of good people out of work. But I have always thought, since his debut on MTV, that he was an asshat. And it would totally fit what little I know about him that he would cross the picket lines.
As I have said before, I didn't used to be pro-union. But as corporations get bigger and bigger and gouge us for more and more money in the name of increasing profits, I see unions as an equalizer. They are one of the last bastions of keeping the "middle class" and "blue collar" workers from living in utter poverty as we face an aging society and astronomical increases in the costs of oil, food, gas, and health care. No, the train hasn't derailed, I have a point that will come full circle.
While the writers are not Teamsters or the UAW and they are most decidedly not blue collar workers, they represent the very thing we should all be worried about. People whose work product is devalued. People who are lied to about the ability of their huge, corporate boss to pay them what they deserve to be paid. We should all be in the streets with the writers. Does Sumner Redstone need in excess of $50 MILLION a year to do his job? Hell no. Does a writer with a Toyota Camry, mortgage, braces and college for kids to pay for, deserve $.04 a dvd and internet view for his intellectual property that contributed to the networks obscene profits and the CEO's equally obscene salary? Hell yes. The CEO wouldn't be making an obscene wage if the writer hadn't written something that people want to watch and advertisers line up to pay obscene money to have an ad in. It ALL starts with the writers. You don't have hit shows that are poorly written. They may have stupid plots, but they are not poorly written. You can have the greatest actor in the world on a project, but if the writing sucks, it won't matter.
My point here is that writers make the Hollywood world go round, whether anyone else wants to admit that or not. As such, they should be paid like they make the world go round. Give them what's fair and do what's right. It's just too bad that you have to fight billionaires to get them to do right any more. It would be easier if they had the ethics and morals to recognize right without having it chanted to them for three weeks.
Off the soapbox now. I have to get back to work. Carson Daly is an asshat. Have a good one.
[Edited to add: I completely forgot (short term memory of a gnat) that a lot of the showrunners (writers-producers) are going back to work to perform their non-writing functions because the studios sent out nasty legal letters (damn lawyers) saying they were in breach of contract with respect to the non-writing duties they had. While the studios are technically correct, I think it's picking gnat shit out of pepper. Are the showrunners really going to be happy being being at work when they can't write? Another irony in this mess is who owns the writing once it's on paper? The WGA sent letters to the writers telling them they had to submit their current project to the Guild so they can insure work isn't being done. The studios are telling the writers the property belongs to the studios and dissemination to the Guild would breach the writer's contracts with the studios. Why is it every time I think about this, I get a Catch-22 headache? Just wondering.]