empty rhetoric

So, as a conservative, largely-Republican supporting, union-distrusting individual, I don’t think I’ve ever supported a strike in my life. However, after reading about the ongoing WGA strike in Hollywood, I have to say that I’m fully in support of the writers, and I frankly hope that the strike succeeds.

Maybe its because I think that creative individuals are overlooked and undervalued in our society– relegated to the ghetto of “entertainment” (where, it is worth noting, many of them still manage to produce profound and important works of art), or maybe its because I write music for an internet serial, which is a market these writers are currently being barred from making money off of. I dunno. But the more I read about the deals and negotiations, the more I’m inclined to support the creative professionals who are trying to obtain what I think is an exceedingly reasonable share of the enormous profits that studios make (and, as far as the internet is concerned, will continue to make) marketing and distributing the works of these people. Joss Whedon writes about the strike:

Reporters are funny people. At least, some of the New York Times reporters are. Their story on the strike was the most dispiriting and inaccurate that I read. But it also contained one of my favorite phrases of the month.

“All the trappings of a union protest were there… …But instead of hard hats and work boots, those at the barricades wore arty glasses and fancy scarves.”

Oh my God. Arty glasses and fancy scarves. That is so cute! My head is aflame with images of writers in ruffled collars, silk pantaloons and ribbons upon their buckled shoes. A towering powdered wig upon David Fury’s head, and Drew Goddard in his yellow stockings (cross-gartered, needless to say). Such popinjays, we! The entire writers’ guild as Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Delicious.

Except this is exactly the problem. The easiest tactic is for people to paint writers as namby pamby arty scarfy posers, because it’s what most people think even when we’re not striking. Writing is largely not considered work. Art in general is not considered work. Work is a thing you physically labor at, or at the very least, hate. Art is fun. (And Hollywood writers are overpaid, scarf-wearing dainties.) It’s an easy argument to make. And a hard one to dispute.

My son is almost five. He is just beginning to understand what I do as a concept. If I drove a construction crane he’d have understood it at birth. And he’d probably think I was King of all the Lands in my fine yellow crane. But writing – especially writing a movie or show, where people other than the writer are all saying things that they’re clearly (to an unschooled mind) making up right then – is something to get your head around.

And as work? Well, in the first place, it IS fun. When it’s going well, it’s the most fun I can imagine having. (Tim Minear might dispute that.) And when it’s not going well, it’s often not going well in the company of a bunch of funny, thoughtful people. So how is that work? You got no muscles to show for it (yes, the brain is a muscle, but if you show it to people it’s usually because part of your skull has been torn off and that doesn’t impress the ladies – unless the ladies are ZOMBIES! Where did this paragraph go?) Writing is enjoyable and ephemeral. And it’s hard work.

It’s always hard. Not just dealing with obtuse, intrusive studio execs, temperamental stars and family-prohibiting hours. Those are producer issues as much as anything else. Not just trying to get your first script sold, or seen, or finished, when nobody around believes you can/will/should… the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?” I’ll only bore you with one theory: because every good story needs to be completely personal (so there are no guidelines) and completely universal (so it’s all been done). It’s just never simple.

As a musician, I’m extremely sympathetic to the ideas expressed above. People don’t generally realize how much straight-up, honest work goes into producing art, how much carefully pre-planning is involved, and the constant and unending cycle of revisions and re-writes that inevitably follows the completion of a first draft. On the “television” front, I’d point out that for every 4-minute episode of Project X that I write music for, there are at least 5 revisions totaling at least 10 hours per episode. For only 4 minutes of music. Imagine what a composer like Howard Shore or James Newton Howard goes through to score an entire feature-length motion picture, which can have hours of music. (I know for a fact that Newton Howard worked from 9AMto 2AM for weeks on end to score King Kong).

So when I see that WGA writers don’t get paid even a cent when NBC monetizes an internet site streaming full episodes of “Heroes” or “Journeyman”, I get genuinely angry. There’s someone taking the work and talent of someone else and making off with it wholesale– re-purposing it and profiting from it, without any share making it back to the creative professional who conceived of the original story and labored long hours to ensure that it made sense and flowed properly– that it at once entertained but also supported itself and held together. Its a difficult job, and one that I don’t think a great deal of people really understand.

All of this to say, I’d encourage readers to support the WGA strike, as they are fighting a battle that I think really does need to be fought. Updates can be found here.