Why (Exactly) Are Writers on Strike?

From cocktails to business power lunches, New York is abuzz with the same sarcasm expected of a city that views waitressing actresses with almost as big of a snort as they do bright eyed tourists joy riding in figure eights from Madison Square to ye olde Hard Rock Cafe.

This time the quips go something like "what's a writer going to do with that fifth house in the Hamptons that couldn't be done with the one on Cap Cod?"

Your intrepid writer sits mildly in front of her guacamole as the table turns nervously in my direction, seeing if I'll take a bite. I was outed as a writer a while ago and it hasn't helped my reputation.

Personally I'm at an odd angle on this because I work both on the production side of new media and as a creative advocate. I understand the constraints any modern production is under from flighty actors to hard drives confiscated at the Canadian border. But I can fully sympathize with the legion of writers who must pay it forward from cradle to grave, unsung and under appreciated financially while the world goes on thinking writers get dedicated limos to deliver them home after movie premiers and five second interviews on late night cable access stations.

Writers are a little bit like actors in that they must play a part while in the public eye. They hold their lattes like they're supposed to not because they've been partying with the veterans, but because they've been re-writing story arcs all night to compensate for a set location that must be cancelled, an actor who's been thrown off set, or a producer who can't pay the bills to finish a set the way it's supposed to go.

Of course they're going to have a nice car if they can afford it, but like any construction worker or school nurse, whatever they purchased is only going to get the blue book offer when they arrive back a year later with a new car seat in the back and a top heavy mortgage to pay.

New writers themselves buy into the idea that once they have a marketable screenplay they'll be set for life, which of course has the other pretentious court of the New Yorker trust fund literati snorting froth off their lattes and onto fine linen table cloths predictably by the hour.

What was resolved in the last strike twenty years ago for the average working Joe Writer is at stake once again. With each new format coming available on the internet, common sense dictates that residuals given to writers for DVD and video sales would of course include new formats like streaming media and video purchases made online.

Common sense and Hollywood rarely meet for toe tapping in airport bathrooms, though perhaps it would be an improvement for negotiations if affections were withheld where it counted, and that's just where writers have been driven now that Hollywood is refusing to offer any residuals whatsoever for any non-standard (read: not contractually obligated) media format they're now selling all over the place with no overhead or manufacturing fees to bite into the pure profit that's streaming in from every direction.

To quote a recent Newsweek article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/70297/page/1):

"Right now, if you go online and watch a streaming version of a TV show, the company that owns that property is getting paid by the advertisers whose commercials appear at the top of it. Just like TV, but with one difference: the writers are paid no residual, not even the four cents [already agreed on for DVD and video sales]. The companies say they don't need to pay us for this: it's "promotional." By that I suppose they mean that it promotes the size of their earnings from smaller to larger."

That's really the point that's been getting lost by the media and major news outlets shivering in fear of industry moguls intent on painting writers as padded royalty. (Did you hear my snort? Did you?)

In truth we'd like to write for free if money grew on trees or Hogwarts apperated gringots under the door each day for tea and cakes as we sat scribing the next "Heros" or "Lost" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" from dawn till dusk. (Dusk till dawn for the working set.)

Instead we live in a world that makes the best stories, and so gives us the material to write what you love and hate and fear and need in exchange for living right in the thick of it with you. We have fights with our Health Insurance providers and need braces for our kids, and at a minimal level, food for our shelves as we sit manically mapping the quadrants of our character psychologies and conflict resolution scenarios while you do loop-de-loops on Broadway hoping at some point to make your IMAX showing at the theater that was across the street from the cab you shoved a hand in the face of a teenager to get into first.

So yes, money helps. We need our coffee and we do have day jobs.

If you've skimmed this far, go back and see above.