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I’ve been a member of the Writers Guild of America for 15 years. The day I received my guild card was only trumped in ecstasy by the day I received a check from Universal Studios for $60,000. Getting into the guild was a long-standing dream which symbolized to me that I’d crossed the line from being a hopeful writer to an actual writer. The Universal movie never got made so I have a different line now, the one marking the separation between a movie in development and a movie in the can.

Without having a movie in the can, I can’t say that the contract issues in dispute between the WGA and AMPTP (read studios and networks) directly affect me. They will, but they don’t now. Regardless, I’m more actively involved in this dispute than I’ve been since 2001 – the last time there was a realistic threat of a strike.

As of this writing, I’ve been on the picket lines for five days. Three thousand of us are fanning out across the city every day, and walking around in circles for four hours at a stretch at the entrances of 14 studios. We’re joined by members of the Screen Actors Guild who are walking off the job and walking with us in support. Huge numbers of actors are showing up, some of them with famous faces. Teamsters who deliver film equipment are, in many cases, refusing to cross picket lines as well.

Here are a few brief facts.

The average television writer in Hollywood makes $94,000 a year. The average film writer makes $70,000. Employment is sporadic for most of these people, with 48% of them unemployed at any given time.

There are about two dozen issues on the bargaining table but two of them are hot buttons: DVD/home video sales, and “new media.”

Regarding DVD and home video sales, the WGA currently makes 4 cents on a $19 DVD. Last year, writers made just under $60 million in residuals for videos and DVDs. We are asking for an additional 4 cents, which we can assume amounts to basically another $60 million next year. If that sounds like a lot, as a point of reference let me just say that Disney made $35 billion last year ($1.5 billion of it in digital downloads, see below). Sixty million dollars is the cost of the average studio movie. Last year Viacom paid their ousted CEO a severance of $60 million, and CBS paid their CEO $30 million in salary and compensation. Basically, to the studios and networks, $60 million a year is peanuts. But boy do they hate to give up their peanuts.

The WGA has been unsuccessfully negotiating for these residuals since 1985. At that time, the WGA made a big mistake. They agreed to take a massive pay cut of 80% on this new, emerging market of home video with the understanding that the studios would give back when the dollars accumulated. For 22 years those dollars have been accumulating at an astronomical rate and the studios refuse to give back. It is estimated that the writers have lost out on $2 billion since 1985. Even the strike of 1988 did little to correct the problem. That strike lasted 154 days (5 months), the longest in history, and is reported to have cost the entertainment industry $500 million. The dispute was over residuals and writers were less than enthused by the compromise. So now writers are just hoppin’ mad.

We’re asking for 4 lousy cents. The studio-networks are unwilling to give up even one cent more. Their share of the $19 is $9.

And then there’s “new media” – internet, cell phones, and new technology distribution. Since no one knows how much anyone is going to make in this emerging market (though Disney is telling their shareholders they made $1.5 billion last year), the WGA is proposing to earn 2.5% of the gross revenue. You see the theme here? Another new market for which they would like creative folks to take a pay cut, this time 100%. The studio-networks are holding to their position that all of the creators of this content, including writers, actors and directors, earn nothing in new media. They say that since there is no fee to download content, the creators of the content should not be compensated. However, studio-networks make advertising money off those downloads, just like they make advertising money during the broadcast of television shows that viewers watch for free. As you can imagine, writers, actors and directors find this unreasonable, and that’s why film and television production is shutting down in droves. “We’ve all got the same dogs in this fight,” is something I heard on the line yesterday.

It seems absurd, right? It does to me, and I’ll be out there walking around in a circle for as long as it takes to get my 4 damn cents.

Category : Random Thoughts