Actually, I was the only available expert in the rather specialized field. The wage I wanted was significantly above the union scale for someone with no teaching experience and no credential, but management really wanted me.
Here was my position: management wanted me, so they jiggered “equivalent experience,” got me a “special credential” and put me in at over the rate the union felt I should get. The union was pushing to get me lower pay than I was asking for (or management wanted to offer), so I’d be on scale. Isn’t that a great way to represent your members?
I seem to be getting out of this that screen writers – the active members of the union – are technical employees. It’s not like being a real writer where you can sit at your house in Maine and write whatever you fancy, and sell what sells. This is a job. You may be able to inject a little of your own personality, but mostly you’re doing what you’re told to do. You can excerise your real talent (“be a ‘real’ writer”) at Starbucks while working on your spec script, but your daily bread consists of doing what you’re told. And doing what you’re told goes beyond sitting at your laptop and just writing; you’ve got all of the functional parts of the job as well, ergo your actual writing talent versus people that are not professional writers (but are skilled writers) isn’t as important as your ability to perform all of the ancillary functions. Just 'cos you’re handy with the MIG gun in your garage doesn’t make you a welding engineer.
I’ve got to ask, what percentage of you professional screenwriters’ time is dedicated to actual writing?
I see a lot of movies, but unless it’s a book author who wrote his own screenplay (with or without real screenwriters helping or even doing the whole job), or a famous director or producer, I have no idea who any screen writers are. I can name tons of book authors or playwrites, even if I’ve never read them. But screen writers? Even though I’ve seen more movies and TV than books I’ve read? I don’t mean my ignorance to be an insult – you probably know each other, and you’re known in the industry, but there’s no general modicum of public recognition for most of you…
…so let me ask, how did you get into the business in the first place? At some point did you just happen to get noticed for a spec script? Did you even have to sell that script? Or was the talent recognized so that you got a contracted job? I’m not looking for a guide to get into the industry (not interested in doing that), but rather, how’d you do it yourself?
Just to clarify on this point. I think working with an editor is fine, and changing some things are fine…but for me, I write to put out certain thoughts or messages or philosophies of mine, and to call me and say “great, but can you take out the whole part where the prostitute has cancer?” when that’s the entire point of the book, no, I’d rather shelve the book and write something else than change my whole view to make it more John Grisham-y.
What I love most about these strike discussions is that my attitude is extremely similar to that of Diogenes and the others who whinge about the crap that’s on teevee. Could I write better than that? Hell yes, I could! As long as we define “better” as “stuff that I like”. I’d tune in for my own show every night of the week.
It would be the most awesomest show on the boob-tube, and it would have a total audience of one for every broadcast.
I wouldn’t say that is the case. Writing skill is still paramount.
It’s like being a session musician as opposed to a rock star. Being a rock star is all about expressing your unique musical vision. Being a session musician is about delivering the sound the client wants with a minimum amount of fuss. Which job requires more musical skill … ? :dubious:
That’s a good compairson. Let me give you another.
I’m a copywriter (advertising, news releases, stories for the company newsletter, speeches and so on.) Everything I write has to fit a certain, preassigned, format. It has to follow whatever standards my employer set. It has to be approved by at least one (usually a bunch more) superior. I have to balance all those comments in my rewrites and still fit the format.
I have to be prepared to rewrite stuff over and over without letting my ego get in the way. And I have to do it on deadline.
I don’t find it to be especially difficult, but I’ve been doing it for more than 30 years. I’m not a novelist or a playwright, but I’ve known aspiring novelists and playwrights who couldn’t write copy worth a damn. Am I a better writer than them? No, but I know my craft.