101 Reasons to Stop Writing

Hollywood, CA — the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) today announced that under the terms of their new agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), screenwriters will strike during the month of November each year, to coincide with National No Writing Month.

During the strike, writers downed their signs in protest against the WGA’s controversial "no donuts on the picket line" policy – Photo by Here in Van Nuys / Flickr

"We’re very proud to announce that starting in 2008, all WGA guild members will go on strike for thirty days, every year," said WGA West president Patric Verrone. "This will give our members a break from the pressures of the the screenwriting occupation, which as many as half our members are employed in at any one time. And it will remind the Hollywood powerbrokers that they can’t just push us around, at least not during November. We feel the screenwriters of America should respect National No Writing Month, and this new agreement guarantees our commitment."

The agreement brought to an end the three-month strike by WGA members which forced the US entertainment industry to a virtual standstill, costing the industry an estimated $380 million to $2.5 billion (depending on whether the calculation is based on Hollywood accounting). The late addition of the so-called ‘NaNoWriMo clause’ was a sticking point in the negotiations, delaying resolution for several weeks.

"Initially the strike was about securing a satisfactory payment scheme for new media distribution, but also fundamentally about the way the industry treats its creative talent as factory workers rather than partners," said WGA West executive director and chief negotiator David Young. "We went on strike because the AMPTP refused to negotiate a fair deal — they wanted to pay writers even less, and make us flush their toilets too. So we struck, and picketed the shit out of them. I didn’t mean that as a pun — I’m a lawyer, not a writer. Anyway, it was entirely a coincidence that the strike began in the first week of National No Writing Month, but very quickly, the excitement of not writing at all overshadowed the petty concerns of getting paid equitably."

"People think that being a Hollywood screenwriter is all coke parties and nubile starlets," said writer-turned-director J.J. Abrams, "but really that’s only a part of it. There’s also a lot of writing involved. It’s a long, tiring job, sometimes up to eight hours a day, and often in an environment with a distinct lack of nubility. And the pressure to produce passable material on a regular basis really goes against the spirit of easy money that attracted most of us to the screenwriting business in the first place. The strike gave all of us a chance to remember that we have other choices, like skiing or doing odd jobs around the house. I’m looking forward to the next strike, so I can finish building my gazebo."

Robert Towne, legendary screenwriter of Chinatown and Tequila Sunrise, agreed. "Writers have been fighting for a fair slice of the entertainment pie for decades, but the producers would rather spend that money on accountants and lawyers to figure out ways to not pay us. I should’ve made enough money from Chinatown alone to buy a town in China, but I’m still scraping by, picking up a handful of script polish jobs a year, a measly quarter million dollars for a few weeks’ hard work. After spending some time on the picket lines, I’m thinking about packing in my typewriter and running some screenwriting workshops, because those young guns want what they think I know, and they’ll pay up front."

Hastily-erected security fences around famed restaurant Spago thwarted writers’ attempts to disrupt the power lunches within. – Photo by Lee Goldberg

"There was electricity in the air as we pounded the pavement and held our placards high," said screenwriter Lee Goldberg, about the picket lines in front of major studios and expensive restaurants where producers were known to gather. "We held fast to our belief that it was darkest before the dawn, and that we happy few, we band of brothers, would seize the day and emerge victorious. We had to resort to speaking only in clichés, as no-one was allowed to write anything original, but for most of us that wasn’t difficult.

"The first two weeks were the worst, because most of us writers haven’t seen sunlight or walked more than fifty yards at a time in years. But after that, a change came over us. We started to relax. We exhausted every possible conversation topic, every anecdote and opinion we had about Hollywood, and started talking about real things, like politics and sports and where we were from and whether that stuff Starbucks puts on our java chip frappuccinos is real whipped cream or some kind of cream substitute. It was like a mass epiphany. No-one was writing, and it felt awesome. Going back to work afterwards was a real drag, but those TV series tie-in novels just don’t write themselves, yet."

AMPTP president Nick Counter said the annual strike would be a win-win for writers and the entertainment industry. "Now, whenever we hear writers crybabying about how little actual money they will see from the new deal, anyone from the executive producers down to the makeup assistants and grips can say ‘Save it for November!’. They get some time off to recharge their precious little reserves of inspiration, and producers get eleven months to stockpile scripts to ride out the strike. Plus, we can spend that thirty days counting all the freakin’ money we’re making from new media distribution. That’s all the AMPTP was asking for in the first place, you know, just some time to count all this money."

National No Writing Month is an annual protest against the declining standard of fiction writing, screenwriting, poetry, journalism and blogging in America. "There are more crappy screenplays being produced in America right now than in the whole history of film and television," said Harlan Ellison, WGA award-winning screenwriter and patron of last year’s event. "National No Writing Month is an opportunity to step back from the electronic vomit box and think about whether giving tongue colonics to Harvard MBAs so you can play script assistant on Two and a Half Men is really the direction you want your life to take. Making the strike an annual event gives writers, and the entire industry, the opportunity to take a good look at itself. Afterwards, everyone can go back to work knowing they deserve exactly what they get."

Stephen Jayson Harris is the Hollywood-based entertainment reporter for Industrial Lubricants Quarterly. He is presently seeking a publisher for his book-length photo essay of the writers’ strike, featuring stark black and white images of writers not writing.