The guild doesn’t prevent anyone from working. Anyone can join the guild and write scripts. But if does require that anyone who benefits from the contract rights that the Guild created, has to belong to the Guild. Otherwise you’re a free rider - you want the Guild members to pay dues and hire lawyers and go on strike and negotiate a new contract while you sit back and wait until they’re done and then say, “just give me whatever you gave those guys.”
This is certainly true. The problem, of course, comes when someone decides how hard something is or isn’t, or how much training something does or does not require, without having the the slightest bit of knowledge on which ot base that decision.
Not all fields of expertise require the same amount of comparable training to do a good job, but are you really that certain you can tell which is which?
There are 12,000 members of the WGA currently on strike.
Let that number sink in for a minute.
To hear some people in this thread tell it, those 12,000 people are the only ones in all of America capable of writing for TV or movies. Yet there are over 300 million people in this country. That’s less than 0.004%. Somehow, I think there has to be at least another 12,000 out of the remaining 299,988,000 people that could write a passable TV show or movie.
And I don’t remember who said it (it may have been you Darwin’s Finch), but Elenfair’s continued insistence that no one can do it sounds like sour grapes.
I don’t think that’s her position. It’s more like it’s just not as easy a job as you and Diogenes claim it to be. Not that it’s impossible/highly specialized/PhD level hard, merely harder than ‘a dime a dozen’.
Also, that 12,000 number can be turned around on you. There are only 12,000 people who’ve managed to sell enough scripts (less than or equal to 3, I believe) to be accepted into the WGA. Think about that.
There’s less than 1700 players in the NFL. But if they all went on strike, I’m sure you notice a major difference in the playing ability of the next best 1700.
Or here’s an idea. The total membership of the executive boards of the top 500 corporations in this country is probably less than 12,000. So there’s probably another 12,000 out of the remaining 299,988,000 people in this country that could do a passable job managing a major corporation. And I’d bet they’d be willing to do it for a tenth of the amount the current board members are getting. We should replace them all and save billions.
Probably so. So what?
Say it was firemen striking instead of writers. I’m able-bodied and fairly fit. In a pinch I could pick up a hose and aim it at a fire. Give me a few months training and I’d probably make a passable fireman. Does that somehow invalidate the idea that real firemen have the right to bargin collectively for a better deal?
Writing for TV and movies is a skilled trade. Yeah, it’s not rocket science, but it’s not ditch-digging either.
But that 12,000 is centered almost exclusively around two cities (LA and New York) and short of moving there, a prospective writer is severely limited in getting their work noticed.
And as someone who’s grown up on minor league baseball, I think you magically disappeared every Major League player tomorrow and promoted every AAA player, the dropoff in play would be quite minor (pun intended).
You have the same restrictions on lots of professions. If you’re an automotive engineer are you better off living in Denver or Detroit? If you’re a petroleum engineer do you have more job opportunities in Philadelphia or Dallas?
I’m sure there are lots of kids in Kansas who’s make decent pro surfers if given the chance. :rolleyes:
"And writing entertaining comedy or drama requires far more training than most laymen realize."
Oh, I’d definitely concede that and imagine it to be just as you say.
I was simply pointing out, given the biologist example, that just because it takes a lot of training to do one thing doesn’t mean it’s equally difficult to do another.
“Doing anything well takes an equal amount of training,” in other words, is a notion that I suspect makes too blanket and broad a statement to apply to everything.
No disrespect intended, but I can’t imagine working at a junkyard can require as much training to do well as, say, being a writer. There’s a difference. It’s harder to be a writer than it is to be a junkman. All aside from and beyond the training.
Likewise, I don’t know about the biologist/writer example. Nuclear scientist/writer of Hallmark cards? I’m exaggerating to make the point, but I don’t think all jobs are equally difficult or require an equal amount of talent or skill.
Not until I try; especially since it’s also going to be dependent on my own innate “talent” (a word I don’t much care for, but it’ll do here).
I’ve seen hubris do some good though; sometimes guys are so cocksure of something (for no good reason) that it propels them forwards.
Other times, most perhaps, you’ve got the standard goeth before the fall thing. 
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Yeah, but that doesn’t speak to quality, interest, economic choices, etc.
It’s not like every living person submitted a sample and 12,000 were chosen (is this the rapture?). And though that 12,000 must obviously represent a small percentage of all that try to work in the profession it’s already been said that most people suck at everything. LOL
But it’s a valid point though and I think you’ve stated the reasonable position to have for that side – namely, that it’s not dime a dozen and not as easy as it seems. Everything’s more involved (and often less glamorous) than it seems, I think.
I don’t know if that’s a fair reading of her position or not, but that’s sort of moot.
Ironically, Dio may have already given the sleight of hand to that particular premise when he clarified that he’s writing the script to prove that **he **can do it, and he’s already taken pains to point out that he’s **not **a dime a dozen.
So, I guess it would just prove that he – an unusually gifted person – can do it.
Which, maybe, is besides the point of proving that it’s easy for anyone to do (whether or not that was ever his point or one that developed later by others).
I liked the little snippet I read though (layman) 
That’s an interesting notion. It suggests the quality difference between the #1 and #2 of each theoretical group to be a chasm. I wonder if that’s true.
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Which just goes to Justin’s point; that using the 12,000 number to suggest a quality and rarefied skill isn’t all it’s cracked up to be since other factors go into that which have nothing to do with quality or talent – like geography.
But anyway by the time that was replied to, it wasn’t a direct reply to the OP anymore or whether or not its a skilled trade; just that the 12,000 doesn’t really prove anything in and of itself.
Actually, I’m a computer programmer by trade; I study biology as a hobby (though I did major in biology in college).
Off the top of his head? Perhaps not. But I would also not be so presumptuous as to claim that no such layman could pull it off. That’s one of my major beefs with this thread: the idea that just because it’s hard for some folks to write a passable script on the fly, or even for most folks, it must therefore be diffcult for all folks who aren’t currently doing it for a living. Dio thinks he’s an exception, so I say give him the chance to show it, rather than just assuming up front that he’s doomed to failure. It hurts not a single person in this thread to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he fails to produce, then there’ll still be plenty of opportunity for "I told ya so"s all around. But it’s also pretty clear that he’s unlikely to be fairly judged given the animosity towards him displayed in this thread.
But, again, Dio never claimed he could become a professional televison writer, only that he could produce a passable script. There is certainly more to the profession than a one-off script. But the “bet” as it were, was to produce a single script.
Sure I can: because people are taking his boasts personally for some strange reason. All the more peculiar because many of the folks taking umbrage at his remarks aren’t even professional TV writers themselves!
Sure they do. Doesn’t mean it isn’t all smoke and mirrors, though. I’m darn good at what I do for a living. The average Joe, fresh off the street, probably couldn’t do what I do. But I suffer no illusions that I am irreplaceable, or that my employer will suffer more than a minor, temporary setback should I be struck by a bus tomorrow. And I know there are many folks doing the same job who are much better at it than I am.
I therefore suspect that the vast majority of TV writers could likewise be replaced. There may be a subsequent decrease in quality as the newbies get up to speed (but you can be sure there will be newbies brought in, rather than allowing the whole enterprise crumble to nothing), but I also suspect the level of quality would return to the current status before too long. As I said before, everyone likes to think they’re in the top whatever percent of their field, but it just ain’t so.
I also suspect that writing in itself is not as hard as people are claiming. Sure, there are a lot of abominable scripts submitted by Joe TV-Watcher. The state of our school system is such that the average high-school (and in some cases, even college) graduate can’t even write a decent essay, much less a TV script. But that speaks more to Joe TV-Watcher being a poor writer period, rather than TV-writing in general being particularly difficult. What I suspect is difficult, though, is as you say: the pressures of meeting deadlines, of making everyone happy, and of being consistently creative given the many constraints one might face. And if people had admitted as such early on, this thread likely wouldn’t have devolved to the state it has.
Let’s say I read a paper within a field that is not my own area of expertise. Then, I wouldn’t expect a layman could a layman could do it better. Neither would I feel that I myself could do it better. I wouldn’t have that feeling about pop songs or novels either, for instance. But I often feel like I could improve on a screenplay, if not write an entirely better one. I’m not saying that I definitely could, the conditions might be too hard, but this aspect makes it different from research papers.
To take an extreme, would anyone here admit to not being able to scriptwrite an Episode of He-man?
Which is how it works in many right to work states, and chaos hasn’t gripped the nation yet. Hell, I’m in a profession in which all negotiating is done by a union, but teachers are not required to join. The union very specifically does not want individual teachers to negotiate, because it knows that the individual ngotiators will get better packages. However, in Arizona, nobody can be compelled to join a union, so if the union wants to exist, it must advocate for workers who don’t belong. So that particular system can and does work.
The guild supporters seem to think that if they didn’t exist, the writers would get screwed (ignoring the irony that they are already getting screwed because of the guild system). Put it this way. If the writers aren’t worried about scabs coming in and taking their jobs (and based on the dismissals of Dio, that seems to be the case), then why require production companies to use only their work? If nobody else’s work is good enough, then the companies would have to come to them. Why require it? No, it seems to me that the guild is terrified, terrified that there are talented people (not millions, but enough) who **could ** take their jobs, so they create a closed system. That’s what bugs the hell out of me.
Can’t you see why this attitude might be insulting? Actual writers say otherwise, but you, who have never done it and may be incapable of doing it, “suspect” that it’s not that hard. And hard, not just because of the pressures of doing it day in and day out, but hard to do, period.
As I alluded to above, it’s an attitude that writers run up against all the time. Everyone knows how to put words down on paper, so the work that a writer does is effectively invisible.
But it’s not a closed system! It isn’t like a taxi medallion system where there are a limited number of writers allowed and steep barriers to entry. ANYONE can start a career as a Hollywood writer without being a member of the guild. In fact, the guild REQUIRES that you demonstrate that you are a working professional before allowing you to join.
But look at the number of published authors in your average Barnes and Noble. Sure, it’s not easy to write, but it’s not this impossible skill that is only available to a small percentage of the population either.
It’s just as fair for people to think “anyone can write” as it is for writers to think “no one can write but writers.”
But as has been pointed out in this thread, producers do not accept unsolicited scripts and the system is limited almost exclusively to New York and LA. It may not be closed completely, but their is an ugly bouncer at the door who’s scaring the riff-raff away.