Forgive me…I need clarification on terminology. What is a showrunner? And Elenfair, can you tell us which show you work on?
It’s the person who runs the show, who actually sets the standard for what direction the show will go in and who either writes the majority of it or directs the writing. Think Seth McFarlane for Family Guy, Marc Cherry for Desperate Housewives, or David E. Kelley for…well, about half of the network prime-time output for the late 90s.
So the writers are going to be on strike for awhile. Every Producer must have a huge cabnet full of pilot scrips. I know it costs a lot to gather the acting talent and create new sets for one show, but maybe doing it now isn’t a bad idea. Risk a little to test the waters with off the wall ideas instead of showing reruns, especially since all your competitors are just reshowing the same stuff. Just something new could sell advertising. No need to flood the commercial hotwire advertising the new show, just show the same pilots again and again in your rertun spots, if the pilot is any good word of mouth will get around.
So showrunner = executive producer?
Not quite. The term “executive producer” has no fixed or practical meaning. It’s mostly an honorary title. For example, every single one of the Monkees was credited as an “executive producer” in their TV special from about a decade ago, but it’s a safe bet that they weren’t coordinating the day-to-day operations of producing their show.
A showrunner can certainly be called the executive producer, but the two titles are not equivalent.
Building on this, if your next book sold like gangbusters- millions of copies and action figures and movie deals and Rosie O’Donnell musicals- and you made a fortune from royalties, the illustrator would not see another dime. BUT, if the publisher said “Man that was something- you two have got to team up again! Here’s another $12000 for the illustrator!”, then the illustrator would be a fool to say “Okay, that’s fair”. He’d renegotiate, this time for an advance and a share of the royalties since arguably his contribution was part of the book’s success, and that’s what writers are doing now.
A lot of people don’t seem to realize that when you watch TV shows online on the networks’ homepages (and since I work nights and my Tivo is on the fritz that’s how I watch most primetime shows), those ads that you have to watch aren’t just there to annoy you. They produce income- that’s why you can watch the show for free is because the advertisers are paying for it. This seems an ultra simple point, but I’ve actually heard several people ask here and on other boards and on TV “why should they get a residual from a free download?”
What I think is funny and ironic is that people like Medved and Hannity and other conservatives criticize Hollywood writers constantly for being too liberal and such commie pinkos. Now that the writers are after their share of the pie- in other words exercising and embracing pure capitalism- they’re criticizing them for that.
But the audience thinks/when they’re watching the screen/that the actors make up/every line in the scene
I disagree. For one thing, a lot of people apparently think Eveybody Loves Raymond is good writing. Certainly, writers got paid for it, just like all the writers for other shows. Hell, the writers for Cavemen got paid for the dreck they put out. “Production-quality script” is not by any means synomous with “excellent writing”.
For another thing, writers who work in the industry are expected to crank out scripts in 4 days because that’s their damn job. If they can’t produce in that timeframe, they can be told to hit the bricks. (Of course, that time pressure may well be a primary reason for the lousy quality of most TV writing.) But seriously, does anyone expect the first script someone submits in order to break into the industry to be done in 4 days? Was Ellenfair’s first script only 4 days in the making? I rather doubt it. Until one is actually working, there is no time constraint. Which is why I think it’s a bullshit stipulation on this little pissing contest between y’all. Whether Dio can pull off a potentially-producion-worthy script is another matter entirely, which I have no opinion on. I just think the moving around of goal posts for this little stunt is being done by everyone but Dio.
You mean it’s not just dialogue? Huh.
A world which you readily accept. You continue to work in the industry, knowing this is a part of it. Strangely, I don’t see anyone out there on the picket lines striking for “artistic integrity”.
You want to take measures to obtain whatever money you think you’re entitled to, go for it. But complaining about how the industry operates is whining if you aren’t doing anything to change it.
Dio didn’t merely say that he could *eventually * learn how to write a production-ready script, given enough time, practice, and feedback. Rather, he said that he COULD do it, and that people who couldn’t do so are idiots. In fact, his exact words were:
He’s the one who set the goalposts. We’re just asking him to put his money where is mouth is, so to speak. We want him to prove that, despite his complete lack of experience in this field, his piss in the snow is indeed superior to the majority of television scripts nowadays.
Would you care to sample some of that product?
Seems like the term that used to be used was ‘head writer’. I’ve only heard ‘showrunner’ in like the last 10 years or so.
And by those same exact words, he said he could piss out a better script “than what I’ve seen in the average 'Til Death episode”, not that whatever he writes would be “superior to the majority of television scripts nowadays”. Which he may well have implied elsewhere, but that’s not what he said in your goalpost-setting quote.
Darwin’s Finch, do you remember the adage about the forest and the trees? I think you’re missing something.
Dio didn’t merely say that he could write a script that’s better than your average 'Til Death episode. Rather, he said that he could urinate out a better script than that – thus implying that a fastidious effort on his part would be much better. It’s one thing to claim that you can write a decent script. It’s quite another thing to say that your urinary output is better than what these TV writers can produce.
Moreover, if someone claims to produce work that’s better than – or even comparable to – the output of professional TV writers, then it’s only fair to hold them to the same standard. Let that person produce more than just “dialogue.” Let that person sell the ideas; contend with rewrites; deal with an established; mythos; deal with the availability (or non-availability) of characters, sets and props; make sure that one’s storyline fits in with the producer’s vision; and so forth. If you can’t do that, then you can’t honestly claim that your “piss in the snow” is indeed superior to their paid efforts.
I have a question:
I’ve read lots and lots about what the writers want. And it all sounds incredibly fair. Can someone tell me what the studios want? They were so far apart in negotiations…why?
“We want more of the DVD money”
“You can’t have any more money…be…cause… ?”
What? Why won’t the studios agree that the writers are an integral part of the process and while before they were giving them money based on repeat performances, now they’re not? I can understand why they wouldn’t since they had a contract, but now are they just being greedy and unwilling to give up percentage pts?
If I were to argue on the side of the studios, here are a few of the reasons for their viewpoints:
- Doubling residuals paid to writers for shows shown through “new media,” will cut into the studios profits thus making it less likely future shows get made and giving less money towards the exploration of additional shows/research/etc. It means a lower quality show is produced.
- In the alternative to eating the cost themselves, studios could pass the cost onto consumers. But raising prices on a non-necessary product will decrease its demand. Less total sales means lower revinue which ultimately will affect everyone in the industry as consumers look elsewhere for entertainment options.
- The studios know that bowing down to the writers in this instance means they’re going to have to agree to the same terms when the actors and the directors and the producers strike. That just strengthens arguments #1 and #2 fourfold.
“Because then we’d have less.”
So instead of a metric fuckton of cash, the studios might only make a short fuckton? I am less than sympathetic.
I took it as a bit of hyperbole, myself. I mean, bad writers don’t actually submit crap, right? You don’t really think Dio meant his bladder was of sufficient size to hold the volume of urine necessary to piss out a full script’s worth of material in the snow, right? It was an exaggerated statement, on par, in my opinion, with a bunch of the “my job is sooo hard no one else can do it!” stuff from the other side. It is not the case that everyone who can write a production-worthy script is a member of the WGA, nor is it the case that all TV writers are superior writers. I don’t believe for second that the talent pool in the WGA is any different from any other profession: you’ve got some very talented folks, some total losers, and a whole bunch of mediocrity in between. While I’m sure everyone in the biz might well think they’re the highly-talented folks, it just ain’t so.
Is it easy to break into the business? Probably not. But then, that’s not what Dio was claiming to be able to do. If his script reads better than a typical episode of House (not that I’ve ever seen the show, so I know nothing at all about where it falls in the quality spectrum), then I’d say he was correct in his boast, regardless whether the suits might actually be willing to pick it up (they pick up a lot of lousy shows, remember, so their opinion isn’t necessarily any better than anyone else’s) or someone “in the biz” thinks he’s paid his proper dues in terms of jumping through soul-destroying, artistry-crushing hoops, or whatever. What’s on paper ought to stand on its own, unless Dio made a specific claim to being able to crank out a superior episode in the same or less time as a professional is allotted. Which I don’t recall him doing in this thread.
Despite his braggadocio and all of our collective prejudices regarding the quality of his yet-unread end product, I do hope we all give his work a fair shake.
In this teleplay he’s the incorrigible underdog, which has me rooting for him a bit.
I’m a little late to the game, but since my local newspaper has been covering this extensively, I’m going to have to throw in my two cents.
Writer’s strike: if they can’t reach an agreement, and if the union thinks they can get more money in the long run by applying this type of pressure, then they would be foolish not to strike. I support them because in general I think that the average employee has the disadvantage in negotiation.
How difficult it is to write for television: I knew a person who was wrote for television shows (not a household name and a name that probably none of us here would recognize without an iMdb search.) His opinion was that there were doubtless many people that could write as well as he could, but he had put in the time to learn the ropes, sat through the countless rejection slips, had personal relationships with people in Hollywood to help him find jobs, knew how to work with producers or directors or actors wanting rewrites, and was able to write quickly under a deadline.
The small exercise that Diogenes the Cynic is undertaking, while possibly showing that he can write a screenplay, doesn’t do much to prove that he could be successful as a TV writer. There are many other things involved.