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Speaking of NBC and Leno, I reserve comment on whether or not Leno broke strike rules until I have all the facts. I know, it's a crazy way to do business...
The Leno picket was interesting. I was picketing the Alameda entrance, where Leno's audience lines up. There seemed to be two different groups. One group knew fucking well they were crossing a picket line and tried to uncomfortably ignore us. The other group had no Goddam idea what was going on and they kept staring at us. Now, if they were all there to see Huckabee, I understand their reaction. Because Huckabee, a self-proclaimed friend of unions, literally SNUCK into NBC. Nobody even saw him. He repeatedly pretended wide-eyed ignorance (a grand quality in a presidential candidate), claiming he thought Leno had made a deal with the WGA. It's one thing to lie well. It's another to lie worse than a four-year-old.
I don't get too political here. There are other places for that sort of thing and I'm just not interested in being attacked by a whole different group of internet crazies. But Mike Huckabee, current Republican front-runner, proved that he cares more about running for President than he does about the people he wants to vote for him. He's a fucking idiot, a hypocritical, slimy pustule of a human being. And we can't have a President Huckabee. It's too quirky.
I'm sure you all saw the comments from yet another dreary Anonymous. According to Anonymous, who is a below-the-line person:
I find your comments appalling.
By the way Kay, the reason you don't get hired on TeeVee is because... well, let's face it, you're just not good enough. You need to deal with that, dear.
No, I'm not basing it from your blog writing. I'm basing it from the fact that nobody calls you. It's very simple.
The good writers always get called.
I did not know that below-the-line crew people were aware of how many phone calls I receive. Fascinating. I'm curious about Anonymous's point in posting this. I imagine him/her, fingers shaking in rage as he/she types furiously, going, "I'll show YOU. I'm gonna hurt your feelings." Well, um... who are you, exactly? Because just some asshat blasting away at me on a blog isn't having any effect.
Pretty soon (when the DGA will strike a deal) the WGA will capitulate and go back to work and although I'm very happy we all will go back to work I'm a little bummed, I would have loved to see the writers starve.
And you know, just because there are only few posters against the writers, it doesn't mean we are the minority. Of course pro-writers are going to be the main constituency in blogs like yours.
I just know that everybody in my crew hates you. And we are in the hundreds.
Heh. You understand that executive producers hire the crew, yes? I don't know which show you're on, but it sounds like you're miserable on a daily basis. So the best thing that could happen to you is for you to go back to work. Let's make that anger ulcer even bigger!
I know you won't post this and it's OK. I just wanted you to read it.
That was entirely too clear, which is why I posted it. And also to give a little holiday present to the folks who read this blog and have already torn you a new asshole, Anonymous.
Sorry your show sucks, and you're so fucking miserable. Oh, and I hate you, too. Is that better?
Things have been hopping in Strike Central over the past week or so. Because the AMPTP is deliberately silent, there are writers who are freaking out. I get that a lot of people thought the strike would be over by the new year, but come on. Be real for a minute. It was never a vanity strike. Just because Americans on the whole are fat and happy doesn't mean that's how life is going to go. Of course the strike is still going on. It could go on for months. If it does, then it does. The real question is, how do you want to handle that? For some people, handling it means latching onto every little rumor and tidbit, obsessively refreshing Nikki Finke's blog, and repeating, over and fucking over again, that we shouldn't be striking over reality and animation.
For the rest of us, handling it means fucking handling it. Yeah, it sucks. It's not often that the members of an entire industry get to see what they're made of. Our industry feeds on rumors anyway but now the rumors actually have to do with our fucking livelihoods. It's all a lot more real now. So people are losing it. We're in a vacuum here. The AMPTP isn't talking FOR A REASON. I thought that would be fairly obvious, but apparently that's not the case.
The notion that there are WGA members who aren't behind the leadership shouldn't be news to anyone. Okay? Moving on...
Several high-profile WGA members have put together a series of essays, called http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifWhy We Write, which come from other high-profile writers. The goal is to, I think, put a human face on the strike, similar in a way to the A Working Writer video blog.
I've read a few of them, and they're interesting, poetic, infuriating, sad and dramatic. So I started thinking about that question. Sometimes I think of the blog as musings on that question, but one essay? Hmm. When I worked at Universal, we had rooms full of battered metal filing cabinets. Those cabinets were full of coverage, dating from the beginning of time to the present. The first pieces of coverage were typed on onion skin paper and weren't true synopses, but brief summaries.
I spoke to a former story analyst who'd worked there, back in the day. He had an amusing story about synopsizing "War and Peace" for a producer. He did a real synopsis, which was dozens of pages long, but that was too dense for the producer. So he shortened it. Still too long. Finally, after a lot of work, he got the synopsis of "War and Peace" down to a page. The producer read it and said, "I don't see a story here." Of course he didn't. The synopsis was so short that everything that made the story an actual story had to be cut for the sake of brevity.
I feel that way about why I write.
It's easy to say "I write because I love to tell stories," or "I write because I can't not write," or "I write because I want to make bags of money not doing any real work," or "I write because everything inspires me." But to me, writing is much more complex than that. There's something primal and alchemical about it, as if some long dormant hind-brain awakens as soon as I open a blank document.
Philip K. Dick (come on, you KNEW it was coming) tried to write an exegesis, an explanation of God, which he also tried to incorporate in his writing. He wanted the answer -- does God exist, and if so, what the fuck does God want? Why are we here? You know, the easy shit. So he wrote and wrote and wrote and NEVER found the answer. But he always felt like it was right within his grasp. All he had to do was reach a little further, understand a little better.
"Why I Write" is like asking "Why Am I Here?" It's impossible to answer. It's an unquantifiable exegesis. A quest. Boiling it down to a few paragraphs is, in my opinion, a fruitless enterprise.
I dunno. Maybe I write because I don't do heroin.
np -- Sixnationstate, "Sixnationstate." First truly cool album of 2008!
8 comments:
Kay,
I was at NBC today, yes, in the rain. They were letting the audience people in as quickly as they came, so there wasn't much chance of interacting. I think they were doing the pretending to ignore us as you say.
I didn't know that Huckabee snuck in. Thanks for telling me. I'm just happy that my candidate proved that he was the friend to unions he says he is... former Senator John Edwards, who joined the picket line at NBC Universal in LA, and in NY... and from what I was told by someone on the line, John had appeared at the picket lines more than the twice I knew about.
A friend of mine, who's a Democrat more than for a specific candidate yet, I think, came out with me to the John Edwards-attended rally, but she was telling later about a trip Obama made afterwards -- and I said, did he come out to the picket line? Her excuse was that he was only there for a day. Well, for me, coming for your fundraisers and not coming out to the writers on the line says something to me and my vote.
Interesting the difference between Huckabee sneaking in and a debate being cancelled because Edwards said he wouldn't cross the picket line and then Obama and Clinton echoed him.
As for your nasty anonymous below the liner, I don't have time to read all the comments but I'm sure your readers told him/her that he/she will be very unhappy when his/her health insurance and pension dry up in the future if the writers aren't successful.
""Why I Write" is like asking "Why Am I Here?" It's impossible to answer. It's an unquantifiable exegesis. A quest. Boiling it down to a few paragraphs is, in my opinion, a fruitless enterprise.
I dunno. Maybe I write because I don't do heroin."
Sweet Jeeesus Christ.
I'm a writer as well, and you just wrote something so true to my own life, the above, that all I can do is nod and wish like hell I'd written it.
I salute you.
Can't help it. I peeked this morning. Craig is, shockingly, bitching about leadership. Nothing new there. But this sentence got me, and I just wanted to highlight it - "One of my problems with our leadership is that they have a tendency to be a bit cavalier toward our constitution."
Haven't argued politics with the guy in a while, but it's worth mentioning in a BIG way that up until a year ago, this was a guy who supported George W. Bush.
So, apparently, constitutions DO matter to this guy, but only when they protect his bottom line. When they protect the lives and privacy and safety of Americans, hey, who gives a shit?
There's a larger point about the blinkered, solopsistic self-interest of the American right, but I have to go to the line in ten minutes...
Josh,
Thanks for sharing that about Craig. I didn't know that, and certainly makes me respect him even less. Can't say I knew much about him before he popped up everywhere making a jerk of himself and bitching about the WGA leadership -- not the way to get in a leadership position if that's what he's aiming for. He doesn't seem to write the kind of movies I'm willing to pluck my money down for, but I'd be even less inclined to put money in his pocket if what I remember him for is what he's doing now.
Crystal,
I don't want to characterize all the opponents of the strike, but a large chunk of them tend to be conservatives. They're all for moral crusades when it comes to coming into my bedroom and telling me I'm a pagan, or blowing the fuck out of brown people who are no relation to the brown people who attacked us on 9/11, but when it comes to putting labor relations in a moral context, they get all bent out of shape. Unions are a particularly sore spot with them.
The latest - it seems the story about the threatened strike against the WGAe may be a tad inflated. Which leaves our pal, once again, running with potentially damaging stories that aren't entirely confirmed.
Josh,
I have to admit, I've never seen such downright hatred as comes pouring out of the opponents of the strike.
I was so hoping that that story about the staffers and the WGAe would not hit the news until people here could have a chance to talk some sense into them. We were discussing it on the line today and there were going to be some phone calls going out by strike captains here, trying to prevent this from blowing up, but apparently not soon enough. Thanks to our pal it seems.
Of course if you asked most of the moguls, they would identify themselves as liberals.
http://www.myspace.com/butcherboymusic
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