A Quickie Newsvine Interview With Two TV Writers On Strike

Tom on the picket line

I, and probably you too, have had many questions regarding the TV writer's strike. Around the time I wrote this piece asking whether the big winners of the TV strike are going to be – nooo! – Fox and reality shows I realized something. I realized that I'd recently interviewed, separately two guys – Bill Bryan and Tom Straw - who have written for TV shows and are in the guild. Both wrote novels and both wrote for the show Night Court as well as each writing for many other good shows.

I begged them for a quickie interview, something in between what I usually do with authors and what I did with Newsviners Walt D, Rob and Dennis McCann.

Technically, I was told, they are not supposed to be talking to the media. Shh, I told them, it'll be just our little secret. Nobody else will read this…. Except anyone reading this now. Oops?

Scott: First let's provide a little background. How about both of you tell me how long you have been in the group that is on strike, the TV writer's guild?

Bill: I joined the WGA in 1982, when I was 24 and made my first two screenplay sales to MGM and Paramount.

Tom: I've been a member of the Writer's Guild of America-west since 1984, which is when I sold my first TV scripts to the MASH sequel, AfterMASH and Benson. I think you needed two credits to get in then, and those were mine. To clarify your question, the WGA encompasses more than TV writing, it's also feature films, cable and video.

Why is the guild important to you?

Bill: I essentially retired from the entertainment business around the turn of the millennium, so the WGA is important to me in sort of the same way my parents are (or would be if they were alive). Like Mom and Dad, the Guild did an awful lot to help me become a successful, self-sufficient adult, and though I no longer rely on them for my care and feeding, I will remain eternally grateful and try to resist the urge to pack them off to the rest home the first time they misplace their car keys.

Tom: You'll hear most Guild members talk about benefits and legal protections, and so forth, and they are not wrong, those are basic functions of the WGA. When I think of the importance of the Writer's Guild of America, however, I go to meaning. Significance. Let me explain. I have a dear friend whose father, the late Philip Dunne, wrote the screenplays of some of the classic films of cinema, The Last of the Mohicans, How Green Was My Valley, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Robe, and The Agony and the Ecstasy, just to name a few. But Phil Dunne not only penned these movies, he was one of the founding members of the WGA, and an unselfish voice for the future screen and television writers.

Here's what I mean by unselfish. In the early 1960s, when television was filling a lot of its schedule with feature films, the screenwriters in the WGA said, hey, the networks are running our films… The studios and networks are making money off them but we aren't getting paid for the TV run. The same was true for TV writers, whose dramas and sitcoms were rerun and rerun with the writers only paid for the first air.

Labor strife. Lines drawn in the sand. And do you now how it was resolved? Phil Dunne and other founding members of the WGA settled the issue by agreeing to forego all residuals and benefits for their prior work in exchange for the studios and networks establishing health and pension benefits for all future writers.

Think of what those men and women gave up so Bill and I and everyone else in the Guild could have health coverage and a pension. I do, every time I see one of those old movies on TV or watch a black & white sitcom at two in the morning.

Without saying anything that will get you in trouble with the guild, what do you consider this strike to really be about? I'm sure I oversimplified in my strike analysis piece where I reduced it down to the issue about residuals from TV shows appearing on the Internet and DVDS.

Bill: I don't have any inside information, so it should be relatively easy – for a change – for me to stay out of trouble. I believe what the Guild leaders have told us and stated publicly, which is that the studios and networks have been both unreasonable and disingenuous in the negotiations, and that if writers don't stand up at this crucial juncture (the transition to new distribution models, notably the internet), we will soon be left with very little in the way of residuals. Many writers rely on them to survive between gigs, and the amounts in dispute are relatively miniscule compared to the immense wealth of the media conglomerates. Collective bargaining is more important than ever for the writers and the other people who actually make entertainment product, since Rupert Murdoch and his ilk make the old all-powerful studio bosses look like crusty but warmhearted 7-11 proprietors.

Tom: Oversimplified is good. Maybe, Scott, if somebody at a bargaining table could do that, this would be over. Or would not have started in the first place. But here we are, though, in the labor equivalent of a war. We've powered-down our PowerBooks and hit the bricks, taking on the Alliance and their Weapons of Mass Production.

My hero, Mark Twain, said history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. And when you ask what this is about, I can find the poem in the history of prior Guild strikes. First stanza: Few significant gains were ever just given, they only came from a strike. Second stanza: New technology fuels confrontation. In the early going, it was adding sound to pictures—someone had to write dialog. Writers who wanted money. Then it was TV (I already shared about that). Then it was video markets. And now, it's about a fair slice of video markets and Internet, aka New Media. The point is, every confrontation has historically been about one new medium or another.

I'd like to hear your reactions to my piece on this topic. Both of you in your books and interviews were, like me, critical of reality television. So what do you say to those like me concerned that the real victors in this strike are going to be the reality shows?

Bill: The audience today has lots and lots of choices, and there's no question that their viewing habits can be easily and permanently changed through the absence of what they've been watching. Reality TV and worse (assuming there is anything worse – scientists are searching for such a theoretical substance as I write this) will no doubt benefit if the strike is a long one.

Tom: First off, let me say that I like some of the reality shows. I confess to getting hooked on American Idol and the first season (only) of The Apprentice. Of all things, Food Network has some terrific reality programming, as do some other outlets. The butt ugly part is the endless stream of bad reality shows, of which there seems and endless supply—sort of like a toilet that won't stop running. But as the old radio pioneer, Fred Allen quipped, "Imitation is the sincerest form of television." Just as we revere the great scripted shows, as we watch them, we hear the roiling flush of the legions of bad that follow. Why shouldn't it be the same for reality fare?

The fact is that diversity in TV is great for the viewer, and I feel sorry for the writer or programmer or studio honcho who overlooks the reason we do all this: For the audience. If there's an appetite for reality shows mixed in with a great medical drama or a scripted comedy show about nothing? Why not serve 'em all up piping hot? Win-win-win.

Are you and/or writers expressing concern about the future implication for your own shows – and viewership – the longer you stay on strike?

Bill: Yes, that's what makes it all so unnerving – we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

Tom: Of course. Currently I am a writer for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS. It's a great gig for a comedy writer. Topical as the day, edgy, naughty, true. Craig shines in the comedy segments and the interviews. But it's a competitive field and if this goes too long a reflective fella has to scratch his head and ask, what if they decide to try this without comedy and just go with the interviews? Or what if NBC or CBS or ABC decides to experiment – and has success with – some other form in the late night slot? A cooking show? Sports? Or, God forbid, "Are You Smarter Than a Current President?"

SB: What's the biggest misconception you've seen so far about the strike?

Tom: First, that all writers are rich. Sure there is a tier of Guild members making a fortune. But most of us aren't guys who wear a pair of jeans once and throw them away. Slowly, the word is getting out about "the middle class" of writers. I think the average annual income in the WGA is $60-grand or something. Good money. But not enough to even service a Bentley. Second misconception, that the public is mad at the writers. I've been on the picket lines every day and I hear the car horns of support (or are they just alarms from stolen cars??) and the cheers of many, many passers-by. A Pepperdine poll just came out today that says 63% of Americans favor the writers in this strike. Only 4% support the AMPTP. Finally, some popularity figures worse than the president's. And the final misconception: that anybody knows how long this will really go.

Bill: The one held by the several people who have called to ask me if I would come out of retirement as a secret scab. If I haven't wanted to work for the last eight years, when I could be doing so alongside lots of my old friends and feel (relatively) good about myself, why the hell would I do it now? I'm actually quite happy to be able to tell my wife that I am no longer merely lazy – I now have principles which prevent me from doing a goddamned thing all day.

Was there any question you were hoping I'd ask that I didn't? If so, this is your chance to ask it.

Actually, there's one question I was hoping you wouldn't ask, and you didn't, and wild horses couldn't pull it out of me now. Cheers! Editor's note: nooooooooooo!

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