The writers' strike: A voice of reason

Like you, I've been hearing from observers of the writers' strike who have put a pox on both houses. As in: Yes, the producers are being tight with their money, but the writers are too belligerent. Or: Yes, Nick Counter is a hothead who should've kept the talks going Sunday night like he promised — but the writers were dead-set on a strike and were never interested in negotiation. Or even: Sure, the studios make too much money, but why should I feel sorry for the people who worked on "Cavemen"? And if you work at Variety, there's an additional verse: Yes, the AMPTP are greedy SOBs, but at least they give us scoops!

After dozens of conversations and reading plenty of news stories on previous WGA contracts, however, I've reached the conclusion that this jaded point of view — so easy to come by and, thanks to Gawker Media and its underpaid ilk, easy to spread — is wrong. More than wrong, it does what cynicism always does, which is reinforce the status quo. Which brings us to today's video.

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Howard Gould is a former writer on "Cybill." He now writes for the movies. He is an alternate on the WGA Negotiating Committee. You will hear him refer to himself as a "moderate," and a couple of comedy writers I spoke with say that's indeed the case. Last Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, as 3,000 writers gathered to discuss the impending strike, Gould spoke up. By the time he finished three minutes later, the whole room was on its feet. I've transcribed the above video (a) because his message was succinct and powerful and (b) so I could hyperlink to some pages that would give context to his speech.

I wanna just speak here for a minute here to the, I dunno, the moderates and the skeptics, and I wanna speak to you because I am one of you. OK? And I have been over the years. I've been less militant than some other people, I know that strikes are destructive and painful and they have a way of going on longer than you want to when you go into one. And I've always felt, though, it was a card we needed to hold and a card we would need to play when there was an issue was on the table that every member felt in his or her gut was the kind of thing that we just had to take a stand on.

I know not everybody works in the same mediums. I spent about 10 years in TV, the last 10 in features. Personal experience: Last night I went on NBC.com, clicked on "The Office." You can watch entire episodes of 10, 15 series. OK. You click on the office, what do you get? You get a commercial for Fidelity Investments. Then you watch the cold open, then you get a commercial for Target. They are monetizing these episodes already. OK?

Carlton Cuse was telling me "Lost" does not run a second network rerun. So writers on that show are not getting the typical nice check you usually get when working on a successful series. That goes right to the Internet. They're making money on it. We're not making money on those.

We must realize that that's the kind of issue we cannot let stand. That's the way my kids watch TV. They hear about a show, they look for it on the Internet. Soon, when computers and your TV are connected, that's how we're all going to watch. OK? Those residuals are going to go from what they are toward zero if we don't make a stand now.

And I want to go a step beyond that.

This is such a big issue that if they see us roll over on this without making a stand, three years from now they're going to be back for something else. OK?

[Applause]

And I'm gonna tell you something. These guys will tell you, I might've been the most moderate one up here when we started. But I sat there in the room the first day, and they read us those 32 pages of rollbacks. And what they wanted us to hear was, "If you don't give us what (we) want on the important thing, we're going to come after you for all those other things." But what I heard was: If we give them that thing, they'll STILL come after us for those other things! And in three years it'll be, "We want to revamp the whole residuals system." And in another three years it'll be, "You know what? We don't really want to fund the health fund they way we've been," and then it'll be pension, and then it'll be credit determination.

And there just is that time when everybody has to see, this is one where we've just gotta stand our ground.

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Just so we're clear: I'm working on a story right now about a local boy made good, who's a non-writing producer on a hit TV show. His job is supervising "below the line" crew — the people who will never be overpaid but are sometimes overworked; whose names are crushed and sped up in the closing credits; who are being directly affected by the writers' strike and in many cases are less well-prepared to deal with the effects of a long work stoppage.

Which is my way of saying I think there are very legitimate criticisms of any protracted strike action by this union that its leadership will have to face and not try to dance around.

But it's also true that the pressure always comes to bear, in long work stoppages, on the workers, no matter how just their case. And hearing someone like Gould speak from the heart, I'm having trouble reaching any other conclusion that he's right: If the writers don't strike now, when do they strike? It also makes me wish on him and his unionmates many years of Internet residual checks to come.

On the other hand, this caricature of a feckless network executive by Fred Armisen on "SNL" last weekend left me cold. Cynicism is easy. Earnest is hard.