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Writers' strike update: Dissent among strike captains [1]

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Date: 2023-07-08

As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike drags on, it becomes ever more important for the union members to stick together and present a united front against the studios that exploit their labor. Unfortunately, an incident from a couple of weeks ago threatens to break that unity. Lesley Goldberg for the Hollywood Reporter:

Ryan Murphy, in a letter from his attorney to the leadership of the Writers Guild of America, threatened litigation against Warren Leight, an East Coast strike captain and Strike Rules Compliance Committee member who has subsequently forfeited those positions. The flap started June 21, when Leight, a former Law & Order: SVU showrunner and playwright, alleged in a tweet that crewmembers on Murphy’s American Horror Story had told him that “they’ll be blackballed in Murphy-land” if they don’t cross the Writers Guild’s picket lines. At the time, a spokesperson for Murphy called Leight’s tweet “absolute nonsense” and “categorically false.” After Murphy’s attorney Craig Emanuel sent the letter to the WGA, union leadership met with Leight, who deleted the tweet and issued an apology and retraction in which he called his initial tweet “unsubstantiated” and “completely false and inaccurate.” Reps for Murphy declined further comment on the letter sent to the WGA.

In a podcast, The Wire creator David Simon says that it’s going to be a very long strike. Christian Zilko for Yahoo! Entertainment:

In a new appearance on the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast, “The Wire” creator David Simon encouraged striking writers to manage their expectations about returning to work and cautioned them to settle in for the long haul.“ I heard a very funny thing,” Simon said. “It may be apocryphal, but somebody, the vice president of the [WGA] East, she assured me the other day that she had it on good authority that all of the rental yachts from Santa Barbara down to San Diego had been rented through the end of summer. All the execs are gone for the summer.”

Simon thinks the studio executives are still bullish on replacing real writers with artificial intelligence, even though the technology has a long way to go before it can produce workable scripts without serious human supervision and intervention.

In Simon’s view, companies won’t come to the negotiating table in good faith until the strike has lasted long enough for streaming services to see real drops in customer engagement due to the lack of new content.

So, if you’ve been thinking about starting a new subscription to a streaming service, or renewing an old subscription, even if it’s to watch shows produced before the strike (there’s a lot on Hulu, Netflix and PrimeVideo that I want to watch), maybe hold off on that until the strike is resolved.

And let’s not forget that the majority of screenwriters are not much better off than fast food workers. Ruth Fowler, for example, who has four writing credits on IMDb. Writing for Fast Company, she explains that, even though she has a show on Hulu,

I’m also a single mom on welfare, relying on three different part-time jobs to fund my screenwriting career. I’m $50,000 in debt, and I share a bed with my 9-year-old in a one-bedroom apartment in Inglewood, California, because I can’t afford Los Angeles rent. My story highlights why my union, the Writers Guild of America, is on strike.

Her story is very much worth reading. She’s gotten what seem like big paychecks to ordinary folks, but when you put in the context of how much free work she had to do to get those paychecks in the first place, and how she even had to fight for some of them, a very different picture emerges.

Maybe one of the writers is thinking about a screenplay in which an arrogant studio executive and the arrogant CEO of a company that makes flimsy submersibles decide to go on a trip to the wreck of the Lusitania. Too on the nose? Maybe.

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