Another Day in Stupidtopia
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Above, Tina Fey pickets outside Rockefeller Plaza. (Go Tina!) The strike is beyond valid and overdue. As the new media boom continues, cross platform delivery of writers’ content is now on everything from DVDs to iPhones. Not to mention the mass use of content now in public spaces (with LCD screens everywhere), and on the internet. The writers, who come up with the ideas and scripts for the content, get a little upfront and a little on the backend. Very little. I say to writers and content producers everywhere – take back the media – start your own .tv and find your own audience. Take that audience away from the entertainment fossil known as Hollywood, and bring it back to the realities of what it really costs and who should really get the credit and bank. You can get sponsors, advertisers, etc, without the massive middle-beast and bring the industry back down to the people who actually make it happen. Lord knows the Hollyweirds certainly don’t have anything over the creatives and crew – they couldn’t pick a winning movie if it came up and slapped in the face with a protest sign. And seriously, without the words, the talent would do what it does best – stammer and sputter and say stupid things like its prose. We don’t want too many actors improv’ing, you know? There are few Robin Williams out there – very few. Its bad enough when talent speaks on bigger issues and blunders titanically – Tom Cruise and psychotherapy, Dog the Bounty Hunter and his racist rants, and well, any actor on politics.
The strike calls up a few other issues – like asking independent filmmakers and content producers to submit work for very little, for free or for a “contest” to a growing swarm of websites. From YouTube to Fox’s The Lot, pros are having to swim with the tadpoles and cell phone cammers, and are asked to “prove” their worth and work. Didn’t we go through years of artistic poverty and PA’ing to do that already? Isn’t our reel or our website or our YouTube profile enough? Guess not! So that means these sites can pick and choose, stockpile content and wrap their advertising around it, while barely breaking a sweat or spending much at all. I guarantee you the studios, who have been stockpiling scripts, will turn to America, with some LAME contest, to find the next great script or sitcom or film, and bypass the Writer’s Strike. I mean, wasn’t The Lot, American’s Next Producer and a variety of other shows proving that talent exists in plenty outside the Hollywood system?
I participated in The Lot and I felt conflicted at the time. I know why – it was most definitely talent mining, on an uneven field, where both pros and amateurs jockeyed for position. How many of those hungry hopefuls, if offered the chance, would cross the picket line eagerly and get their foot in the door? Thousands, if not millions. And not just in the US – worldwide! How do you explain to a desperate, starry eyed amateur that being a scab is not only killing the existing professionals a chance at real parity, but destroying their own chances at fair pay down the road?
When you can mass anything together – talent, workers, choices – you can lose sight of the individual value of each thing separately. Homogenized results come from mass selection. The mean or the median is chosen, the average is applauded but what about consistency and brilliance? What about professionalism and the craft of what we do as artisans, not just corporate cogs?
Support this strike, though it may cramp your Daily Show watching. Its important for many reasons, and solidarity is required of all of us, union or not, in this industry. For disclosure, I’m not in the union, but I do subscribe to the WGA for their bulletins and notices.
Rock On Writers!
Melissa
