Er, yes, actually. I do. I earned a living as a writer for about five years (okay, I actually earned a living as a writer for much longer, but only the first 4-5 years were spent writing for television and other creative media). And I agree with the posters who say it isn’t as hard or as difficult as the writers are making out. I guess any job can be described to either sound harder or easier than it really is, and I don’t blame pro writers for getting all melodramatic about how arduous their work really is, but who do they think they are fooling? 99% of what gets shown on TV, especially American TV, is conveyor belt pap processed by committee and built to a rigid and predictable formula. There are exceptions, of course. There are exceptions to everything. But no matter how hard you claim it is to write one of these shows, I’ll tell you something that’s even harder: remembering any of it one hour after you’ve sat through it.
I was with him right up until he mocked the idea that “everyone can write but not everyone can draw.”
Everyone can write, it’s only a matter of degree. Some will be great and some will suck. And yes, some will not be able to do it as often as they’d like because they believe their family should be able to eat this week.
Showrunner Joss Whedon is on your side. Here’s his report from the picket lines–posted at the fansite for Dollhouse. That’s his just-announced series starring Eliza Dushku, scheduled to start this Fall. If the strike ends in time, that is. And Whedon’s many fans probably want the strike to end the right way–by the guys who earn far more than $200,000 a year loosening the grip on their money bags.
However, much of this thread is a lighthearted look at current shows, rather than serious scabbiness (scabbitude?). Some of those shows do seem far too predictable. But that’s more the fault of the big guys than the writers.
See, that’s because there’s a little bit of a magic trick involved. They claim copyright on describing the shows and threaten legal action, or even worse, try to get people banned from message boards if they say how the shows were done.
Oh absolutely, and so are Mendelssohn, and Espenson, Leight, Kaplan, Noxon, Kring, Shore… They know what this means. This is about fairness. I mean, just look up what the deal is regarding internet downloads and streaming media. Tell me the current arrangement (or lack thereof) and the AMPTP’s proposal is fair to the writers? The Companies are making money hand over fist off the writers’ backs and the writers are seeing NOTHING in return. Tell me that’s fair. Without writers, the whole industry collapses.
Gnarr!
… gnarr.
sigh thank the Dagda and all his fuzzy nephews for unions. Otherwise, we’d get eaten alive.
Anyone who thanks that “everyone can write” should see some of my classmates’ papers.
Well, as Elenfair noted, they’re striking for the uncredited writers who don’t make $200,000 as well. And $200,000 seems pretty damn low considering what other people in the process of making a TV show pull in.
Your woe-is-me bit seems a bit pale to those of us who do other sorts of writing. Instead of actors and directors wanting rewrites it’s editors and layout artists. Boo-hoo.
Screenwriters only get 1.2% of 20% of sales as royalties? Cry me a river, it’s infinately more than I get.
That’s the writers who write 50% of a script or more. That doesn’t include those of us who are staffers, script doctors and editors who still write a shitload but don’t see residuals. At all.
You might want to check your royalty figures, especially when it comes to DVD sales.
Elenfair is giving an example of the process in order to refute the idea that “anyone can do it”. Your counter argument is that other sorts of writing are also difficult? What’s your point?
How does your renumeration structure matter in any way to what’s fair for them?
A couple of my friends had a bit of banter with some guy who wanted to fuck one of them, and he told them that they were so funny that they should write sitcoms and comedy movies. They were quite excited, and came to me for advice since they knew I’d written a few short films. I said, “Great! Let’s get you enrolled in some screenwriting classes on the other side of town. Once you learn the basics, you can transfer to USC or UCLA and, assuming you get in, you can write a whole bunch of scripts and then work 70 hours a week in Hollywood for a while. After a decade or two, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to write something creative that the executives like, and you’ll get a chance to start your own show.” Then I noticed that both of them had ran after “other side of town”.
From where I’m sitting, and this isn’t meant as a gotcha but as an observation, your posts are coming across as way whinier about the unfairness of it all.
Writing is hard and undervalued. One group of writers attacking another doesn’t make sense.
Actually, they’re whining about not getting paid, for DVDs and Internet streaming/downloads, when other people (producers, studios)(and when the directors get their contract settled next year, you bet they’ll be getting some of that pie too). Those are the issues that the AMPTP has, last I heard, refused to even discuss with the WGA.
