Many in showbiz don’t have a clear understanding of the writers’ demands or the reasoning behind these demands. —Variety
We are artists. We may not dress all cool like artists, or get chicks like artists, and none of us are starving, quite obviously, but Hollywood screenwriters are certainly artists, perhaps even artistes, and we suffer just the same. Not in a showy, oh-I-live-in-a-tenement-and-turn-tricks-to-buy-paint-and-have-this-special-tuberculosis-only-artists-get kind of way. We suffer as we slave over our screenplays alone, staring into blank laptops, often blinded by pool glare. And we smoke real cigarettes.
We are not in this for the money. Management would have you believe that we all make $200,000 a year. That’s funny. We wouldn’t even eat something that cost $200,000, unless it was actually $200,000, drizzled with truffle oil, the way Silvio makes it. Yum. The only reason we require payment at all is so we can support those little people we keep telling you about—the assistants, amanuenses, baristas, Rolfers, scarf carriers, and erotic muses we need to create our art. Oh, and our babies. And various charities.
We are not cogs in some machine. While many of today’s blockbusters are written by that machine, we are not cogs in it, despite having originally written all the dialogue and characters and plot that this machine endlessly recombines and maximizes. When a bitter cop with a shattered family and a monkey on his back flees a narco-terrorist’s fireball while cracking that he’s getting too old for this, some writer wrote some parts of that, some time back.
Nor are we trained chimps. The last decent show written by chimps was Jojo’s Poop Party, which was largely improvised.
An end to the lying. Just kidding. We recognize that without lying, Management would be unable to exhale and would thus perish. However, we are asking for a manifold increase in White Lies about how we are brilliant geniuses and the like, and a corresponding decrease in Brown Lies, about what might happen in the future.
A fair share of newfangled revenue. Management is currently offering us adjusted bubkes of what they are making off Internet sell-through, streaming, ringtones, Webisodes, cellisodes, iPodisodes, celebrity-narrated colonoscosodes, or the psychotic episodes they’ve been beaming into your brain, brought to you by Clozaril™. All we are asking is 2.5 percent of revenue, based on 40 percent of gross receipts, divided by zero, in bullion. We believe that this is a fair formula, yet one complicated enough for Management to continue to find ways to exercise their cheating rights.
More respect. We are demanding unbounded respect bordering on worship, but that’s just our opening offer. We’ll accept far, far less, or even a good-faith reduction in spittle.
Meaningful consultation. While we acknowledge Management’s right to rape our material, pervert its meaning, and cravenly dilute it for commercial use, we demand to participate in this process. We would like to be on set, or contacted by iPhone if the director doesn’t want us there, and simply be asked, “Is this okay?” We stipulate that our opinion, coming, as it does, from the creator of the material being dramatized, is meaningless, and that Management can walk away or hang up before we even answer the question, but it would be nice, for once, to be asked.
A renunciation of droit du seigneur. As it stands, studio executives, from chairman down to associate producer, have the right to deflower us on our wedding night, or any other night or time of day of their choosing. We believe that this change can be written into our contracts without affecting a similar agreement they have with the Screen Actors Guild.
2007