Here are some of the writer-producer-actors on the show, The Office, to explain what the writer’s strike is about.
And here’s an interview with Battlestar Galactica honcho, Ron Moore.
Insider blogger Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily has an interesting take on what’s going.
Really smart people have told me that if this walkout doesn’t settle in the next few weeks, say, by December 15th, then there may not be an incentive for the moguls to settle it until June when the Screen Actors Guild contract expires. As for the Director’s Guild, whose contract is up next June as well but will settle it sooner, everyone expects the DGA to fold like pup tents: no shocker there. In film, the studios prepared for this labor action starting two years ago. But I broke the news pre-strike that the Big Media and Hollywood CEOs viewed this TV season as a total loss and welcomed the walkout as an automatic “do-over” that would allow them to regroup and then refashion their business models.
DU editor, SN, took this further:
I don’t know why I’m obsessing on this, but maybe the causes are reversed. Maybe we’re faced with crappy shows because the producers and networks knew this strike was coming and didn’t want to risk any good shows to be stalled during the strike. So they threw out a bunch of crappy ones to wither through the strike. I mean, how else could Christina Applegate get yet another sitcom?!
So, who’s up for a Gilligan’s Island marathon in January?
Maybe they should rerun Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip…
Or maybe they could just loop Judd Hirsch’s opening monologue from the pilot over and over again.
I’m up for more Gilligan and the Captain shenanigans! Maybe they’ll get off the island this time….Ginger….what a babe but Marianne she’s got it going on.
2. Hey, I started watching old episodes of Andy of Mayberry recently, sheer classics. Ron Howard was the best child actor ever, (not a bad director now either). Gilligans Island, not so good.
I edited out the extra cuts and dialog so you could just read the monologue:
Wes, Studio 60’s producer, interrupts the opening sketch (A bit where actors playing Bush and Cheney are addressing the nation from the Oval Office), on camera, live, and tells the actors to leave the stage before addressing the audience.
WES
This isn’t gonna be a very good show tonight and I think you should change the channel. You should change the channel right now, or better yet turn off the TV. (audience laughs) No, I know it seems like this is supposed to be funny, but tomorrow you’re gonna find out it wasn’t and I’ll have been fired by then. This isn’t supposed–this isn’t a sketch.
This is for real.
This show used to be cutting edge political and social satire, but it’s gotten lobotomized by a candy-ass broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience.
We were about to do a sketch you’ve already seen 500 times. Yes, no one’s gonna confuse George Bush with George Plimpton, we get it. We’re all being lobotomized by the country’s most influential industry which has thrown in the towel on any endeavor that does not include the courting of 12-year-old boys.
And not even the smart 12-year-olds, the stupid ones, the idiots, of which there are plenty thanks in no small part to this network. So change the channel, turn off the TV. Do it right now.
(cut to some business in the control room then back)
…and there’s always been a struggle between art and commerce, but now I’m telling you art is getting its ass kicked, and it’s making us mean, and it’s making us bitchy, and it’s making us cheap punks and that’s not who we are.
…We’re eating worms for money, “Who Wants to Screw My Sister”, guys are getting killed in a war that’s got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe…
(cut to some business in the control room then back)
…and it’s not even good pornography. They’re just this side of snuff films, and friends, that’s what’s next ’cause that’s all that’s left.
And the two things that make them (the network) scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho-religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott.
These are the people they’re afraid of, this prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network you’re watching. This thoroughly unpatriotic–
(cut to the control room)
CAL (the director)
Go VTR! Go VTR! Roll titles! Now!
CUT TO:
Title Sequence
I should point out that was written by Aaron Sorkin.
I didn’t realize “The Office” had writers. Who knew?
I think Leno, Colbert, Letterman, etc… should use their comedy skills and improv the entire show.
I mean these guys are comedians and half the show is an interview they should be able to do it, right?
Well the writers have no money to wait out a strike, while the studios are left with nothing unless they can find strikebreakers. How important are these writers? I’m sure there will be any number of people who’ve had scripts rejected who will be willing to work for cheap.
Of course without the studio money, these movies and tv shows never get made, but without the writers being paid, that’s one more excuse for the illegal downloaders to justify their criminality.
Time for an Audible account.
What will I do without new TV episodes?!? Get a life? Hmmmmm.
#4 OFTLO, I loved Studio 60, and was dismayed that it never found enough loyal viewers to support its continuation. I wonder if we’ll ever get to see Amanda Peet in another TV show. My guess is that Sorkin’s brilliant dialog must have been the draw that brought her to TV. I’m always up for reruns of anything that good.
As for the writers strike (to #7 Andrew especially), parts of the daily comedy shows can be improvised, although a lot of their improvisational skills still depend heavily on a full staff that preps them for interviews, as well as even just gathering news items, apart from the writing itself. As long as significant parts of the staff won’t cross the picket lines, there simply won’t be any show. I do recall, though, that during the last writers strike, Johnny Carson began doing the Tonight Show without writers even before the midway point of the 22-week strike, so only time will tell what happens this time around.
Hmm, split that Futurama movie. Put it at primetime, done!
Are I think go read a book
I haven’t heard anyone mention this but, why can’t the writers just go out on there own? Do they really need the studio’s? They have the internet to distribute there stuff. The better writes could easily get financial backing and they know plenty of actors, producers and directors? There are plenty of bands that have done it.
#14 – Getting work as a writer of a TV show isn’t exactly like that… It’s kind of a blue collar job in many ways
You liked Studio 60? Well just about everyone disagreed. The big problem was he had a show about a comedy show, but what they showed wasn’t funny.
#16, to the extent that your criticism of Studio 60 is valid, it’s equally applicable to another of my favs, 30 Rock, which has been quite a big success. In both cases, you simply have to suspend disbelief and pretend that the show within the show is really funny, because that’s part of the premise of the external story. In one case, the external story is a drama, and in the other it’s a comedy.
I agree that the internal “comedy” wasn’t funny, but for me it wasn’t a big problem. I do remember that one of their recurring themes on Studio 60 was criticism of the religious right, and maybe that helped fuel your dislike of the show. And maybe, just maybe, that same theme helped stimulate my utter enjoyment of the show 😉
#14: If they belong to the Writers Guild, why would they? They won’t make a dime off of what you’re talking about. That’s what someone does to get noticed and get work in Hollywood which they already have done. And besides, if they did, they’d never work in Hollywood again. Guild rules state that they can’t write and sell anything without a contract (ie, someone paid them to write it). Also, if they broke the strike by writing something, they would get kicked out of the Guild. They could get work on independent productions, but at virtually no pay and without benefits.
And if they did do as you say, finding someone who’s got a spare million or so for a low budget film isn’t that easy, especially since the chances of making the costs back, much less making a profit, are virtually zero.
#16: I loved Studio 60. Yes, the skits on the show within a show sucked, but the rest of it was a kind of intellectual banter that I love. If I remember right the people who enjoyed the show had a fairly high IQ which was not the demographic the advertisers wanted since they are more resistant to advertising.
Hey, wasn’t the result of the last strike all these reality-based shows that don’t require much writing?
If during the endless rerun season you get hungry for new material you can turn to watching vodcasts.
Seriously, the biggest benefactor of the writers strike will be the internet.
I haven’t had cable in years and could care less.
http://isohunt.com/
There’s a lot of me’s out there!
fresh daily updates
#18: But, what if an advertiser bank rolled it . If say, Ron Moore set up a company to make BSG on his own and say Coke gave him the backing he’d make a lot of money. Instead of a station logo in the corner of an episode you would have coke. Moore could pimp Coke for helping them create the show.You Download the show free from the BSG website and it has only Coke adverts on the site. Thats direct world wide advertising. The best kind of advertising. It would be a lot easier and cheaper for Coke too. Someone just needs to take the plunge.
turn off the gd tv and read a book.
who writes the signs that they are toting?
TV is evil anyway. screw TV
#16 – You liked Studio 60? Well just about everyone disagreed. The big problem was he had a show about a comedy show, but what they showed wasn’t funny.
The show was brilliant, just like The West Wing and Sports Night before it. And when you stop to consider the success of the Blue Collar Comedy guys, Larry The Cable Guy, Ron White, Foxworthy (the latter actually being marginally amusing for a limited time) then I don’t think what “almost everyone” likes should be used to determine quality.
The masses have bad taste.
#23: Then Coke would own it. Much better for the producers to own it and have someone pay to sponsor it. The other workable alternative is like HBO which produces it’s own shows like the Sopranos where money comes from HBO subscriptions.
I could care less, I only watch the History and Science channels anyway. Most of that programming originates from more enlightened places like Canada or Europe.
I have no sympathy for these people.
They bellyache about how writers in the past didn’t get a money for the shows being in syndication (The Honeymooners, Car 54 Where Are You, etc.)
And yet these whiners have the gall to want even more money (of which they get a lot as is) to re-write olds shows from the past into movies now. So where is the smeggin money again for those old writers?
Look when they can produce new content that isn’t a sequal, ripping off a 50’s 60’s or 70’s TV show or is a spinoff (like how many CSI’s do we need?) THEN they will be worthy of striking.
Until then shut the hell up you hacks!
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