Here's the latest from your friendly neighborhood WGA Captain. First, I'm not going to bury the lede: no one will know if the writers are striking until May 1st, the last day of the negotiations. Whether it ends with an agreement or a strike action, these things always go to the eleventh hour and that will be especially true for this year's talks. But here's what's been happening in the meantime...
Other major Hollywood unions have voiced strong support for the WGA, including SAG-AFTRA, the DGA, and the Teamsters. The former two have their own contract negotiations with the AMPTP coming in May and June.
Networks like Netflix and MAX (fka HBOMAX) have publicly touted their deep reservoirs of projects, making the claim that they can weather a strike better than anyone else. As a writer, I can't help but wonder: when these projects start shooting, who will handle studio notes and production rewrites?
Producers, managers, and agents - on the whole - fully assume a strike will happen. Yet many continue to ask me and fellow writers, "Are you REALLY going to do it?"
It all depends on whether the AMPTP can meet our proposals halfway. On the one hand, Carol Lombardini (AMPTP President and fellow UChicago alum!) has never allowed a strike to occur on her watch. She became President in 2009, on the heels of the painful '07 - '08 writers' strike, and has prided herself on preventing catastrophe thus far. And our negotiating committee is far from zealous and unreasonable either.
On the other hand, the issues and industry landscape have never been more complicated. Big problems that should've been resolved in 2020 were booted due to the pandemic and have festered until now. The relatively new yet gargantuan players in the producers' alliance, like Apple, Amazon, and Netflix, also alter the dynamic. It's truly terra incognita.
On top of all this, the negotiations are happening amid big corporate restructures, as evidenced most recently by the latest round of layoffs at Disney. To the writers, the studios claim they are vulnerable and hurting and could never meet our demands. To their shareholders, the studios proclaim cost-cutting efficiency and record profits. Sorry, I guess my bias is showing through...
Regardless, the WGA is preparing for the worst. We'll be releasing our strike rules soon. The captains are being trained to organize. The picket signs are drawn and ready.
I truly and sincerely don't want the strike to occur. I hope this week's talks yield real progress. We'll know more soon and I'll continue to share what I can!
Closer to Van Eyck
More updates to come on the WGA negotiations, but let’s take a break from that arduous endeavor to look at something fun. I wanted to share a recent discovery, a wonderful site called Closer to Van Eyck. As in, famous medieval / early renaissance painter Jan Van Eyck.
To give credit where credit is due (and to shoehorn in another recommendation), I learned about the site on The Rest is History podcast which is truly fantastic. They did an episode on Van Eyck and spoke about how he took some of the newly evolving painterly skills and styles of his time and brought them to the next level, achieving true apotheosis. He mastered total realism and combined it with religious imagery and fantastical scenes to make some of the most indelible paintings in history.
But on top of all that, THE DETAILS. And that’s where Closer to Van Eyck comes in. As his paintings have been recently restored, this website has uploaded them for public consumption. But what’s really fun is that you can zoom in to the microscopic level, to the level of the remaining cracks on the canvas. And what you’ll find there are astonishing details that evoke Eyck’s crafty, mischievous, and brilliant nature. A realistically detailed swan on a river that feels miles away, a mere speck at first glance. Or a self-portrait of Van Eyck, squirreled away amidst the crowds before God - a veritable Where’s Waldo of the Second Coming. Or the individual wrinkles by the eye of a wealthy merchant. You can spend all day scouring the backdrops. And I suggest you do! It’s more fun than scouring Twitter, I promise.
MBA Negotiations Begin
Quick follow-up to the previous post: the MBA negotiations between the WGA (writers) and the AMPTP (producers) officially begin today.
For those wondering what happens next, you’re not going to hear anything - anything legitimate or real - for the next two weeks. Both sides of the table will keep things confidential as they dive into it.
The WGA may be giving an update to its members around April 1st to review how the initial conversations have gone and how the rest of the negotiations through April are looking… So, anything you hear before then is likely a product of the industry rumor mill. Better to just keep calm and carry on WRITING :)
The 2023 MBA Contract Negotiations
For those outside of the entertainment industry hearing about this “impending writers’ strike,” and for those in Hollywood who are decrying the inevitable apocalypse, this is a brief post to clarify a few points. For the record, I’m a captain in the Writers Guild of America (West), I’m not an official spokesperson, I’m just a writer sharing his somewhat informed opinion on the matter.
To clarify, the negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP (the studios) have not started yet. They begin on March 20th. Anyone who claims “the writers are planning a strike” is simply wrong because we haven’t even started talking to the other side yet. How can we plan on using the nuclear option when we don’t even know the other side’s stance? Writers may be neurotic, we may be insecure, but we’re not irrational! The guild is still in the stage of reviewing and actively voting on our pattern of demands. And once negotiations start, no one will know anything for a while yet...
The contract expires on May 1st. Maybe we’ll have reached a deal by then, maybe not. Maybe the negotiations will extend another month or two, maybe not. Maybe we’ll take a strike authorization vote and, assuming our guild solidarity remains rock solid (it will), maybe we’ll have to threaten a strike. Beyond that, no one can truly know what’s going to happen. To say anything else at this point is to try to set up a self-benefitting narrative to one end or another. That, or folks are just expressing their sky-is-falling anxiety which, honestly, tends to go hand-in-hand with surviving in this crazy industry of ours.
But please remember that the sky is not falling; the industry goes through this every three years, and everything is ultimately cyclical, regardless of corporate, technological, and economic changes.
For more information, check out the guild’s contract information page: https://www.wgacontract2023.org/
Best,
EE
The Prisoner
Short post today, simply to rave about The Prisoner - the 1967 TV show created by Patrick McGoohan, who wrote, starred, and directed. Luckily for all of us, the show is available for free and in HD on Youtube.
I’m of an age that I saw The Simpsons episode that parodied The Prisoner, titled “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes,” long before I ever learned of the show. At the time, I faintly and intuitively understood that the Simpsons was riffing off of some cultural milestone but I had no idea what. Sadly I never looked into it and only discovered the Prisoner recently while researching the history of TV sci-fi.
How to describe this thing? It’s on the metaphoric and surreal level of The Twilight Zone, yet serialized, and also cheeky, sly, extraordinarily British, with a psychedelic 60s aesthetic shot in glorious 35mm. The pilot is… a perfect episode of television and packed with suspense, wit, and sheer momentum. To be honest, I never knew much about McGoohan beyond his terrifying performance as Edward the Longshanks in Braveheart. He’s like some sort of TV-ied Charles Laughton, a brilliant actor with a perfect one-off writer/director turn as the creator of this show. I look forward to completing the full run of the show and reporting back.
I’ll end with a simple, provocative quote from the first episode - something posted on the wall of the paradoxical Village’s bureaucratic headquarters: “Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison to oneself.”
Advice on Writing: None
To give advice in writing is one of those paradoxes. Inevitably, whatever “lesson” or “rule” you learn will be proven wrong by some amazing exception. And then another, and another. Until you’re not sure if the rule ever made sense. Or, perhaps more efficiently, a real-life writer will immediately rebut you, “No, actually, my entire writing strategy rests on the opposite approach to what you just said. Did you like my novel? Well, I wrote it–” with no outline, with no commas, from the 2nd person POV, ad infinitum.
Well, I wanted to share one fantastic article that picks apart the idea of “killing your darlings.” Redefining Ornament: An Argument for the (Seemingly) Inessential by Ayşe Papatya Bucak. A good friend and fellow writer shared it with me because she felt utterly liberated after reading it, and honestly, so did I.
Bucak makes a compelling argument for allowing the writer to take detours, to sit and listen, to be with a tertiary character for a minute, to add lots and lots of detail. The argument is not to be as excessive as you like. Some darlings do indeed need to be killed so the reader doesn’t get lost. Unless of course, the point is that they get lost…
But I digress. Instead, I believe the takeaway is to allow yourself the potential to find hidden connections in the apparent “extremities” of your story. Why did you feel the need to describe the wallpaper? Is it blue for a reason? Because blue was calming to the main character’s mother long after she lost her memory to Alzheimer’s? What if you don’t spell that out – is it still “essential?” The reader doesn’t have to know why it’s blue. So long as it’s part of the DNA of your story they will feel it.
So, there’s my advice, until someone proves me wrong of course.
Veterans Writing Project - Applications Open
This is a general call for any and all military veterans who are passionate about screenwriting!
The Veterans Writing Project is now accepting applications for the next class. I've had the honor of mentoring with the Project for the last three years and I can honestly say there's no other program like it. We'll teach you how to network in the entertainment industry, how to pitch your stories, and we'll help you develop and hone a powerful and original work of writing. Not to mention, all the great panels we moderate with industry professionals (writers, directors, executives, managers, agents, and much more).
Check out the program here.
You can apply directly here.
If you're a veteran who wants to work in Hollywood (or already does), there's no reason not to apply!
Let the 2022 Lists Begin
These are not my top 8, just a tiny sliver of the epic releases of 2022.
I always find “Best Of” lists difficult. It’s hard to compare films that are utterly distinct from one another. But like any list, it’s a purely subjective exercise at the end of the day - and it should be for fun. So I’ll just kick things off with a few of my top films that immediately, undeniably jump into my mind.
Tár, The Fabelmans, Banshees of Inisherin, Nope, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Decision to Leave, Crimes of the Future, Top Gun: Maverick, Holy Spider.
Look, that’s nine already without breaking a sweat! Some close contenders perhaps: Bros, Bones and All, Triangle of Sadness, and Three Thousand Years of Longing, and The Batman.
I might add another category specially for 2022 - the year of the decadent, messy epic. Decadent and messy can manifest in many forms. But epic, among other things, means runtime. Some films that I loudly applaud for existing, despite their shortcomings, they are feats of production… Babylon, Avatar: The Way of Water, All Quiet on the Western Front, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Athena, and The Northman. You may not have been perfect in my eyes but you were a good time and cinema is the better for it.
More thoughts to come soon. After all, I haven’t even finished watching them all!
Why Does a Movie "Hold Up" or Not?
Alright, first post of 2023! Over the holidays, my wife and I had some serious movie marathons, which mostly comprised of films she missed when they first came out. They’d been hanging over her head for years and it was time to right some wrongs...
Avatar (in advance of seeing Avatar 2). The Fugitive. Rush Hour. Wolf of Wall Street. Easy A (that one was for me, she’d seen many times before). Police Story. Eclectic, I know!
Most of these held up, some better than others. Rush Hour was still charming and hilarious, the physicality of Jackie Chan is timeless (as evidenced by the ever-perfect Police Story), the odd chemistry between Tucker and Chan is still vibrant. But there are plenty of moments that “bump” today’s sensibilities — anti-Asian jokes, Black man stereotypes, misogynist jokes that were eviscerated by #MeToo. Despite these moments, the film worked - we were still rapt, and laughing, and cheering for them. Then we tried to watch Rush Hour 2 - oof… it is somehow a magnitude more problematic. Especially in the gross misogyny department (the massage parlor, the spying on the DEA agent “strip tease,” it permeates almost every scene). And within thirty minutes we decided it did not “hold up” and we stopped watching.
What does it mean for a movie to hold up? It worked with audiences at the time of its release and doesn’t now - but what does that really tell you? Is the storytelling still good but its nature too problematic? Obviously there are problematic films that are still hailed as classics. Was it specifically responding to a moment that meant the particular historical audience connected with it - but we couldn’t because we don’t have the context?
Ultimately, I think it’s really an informal, personal equation. The peccadilloes of dated style and the larger offenses against progressive thought go up against the quality of the universal aspects of the storytelling. Rush Hour might have been problematic but it was inherently a good enough comedic romp. Rush Hour 2 was more problematic and ultimately, on its own legs, lower quality storytelling. Less original and leaned on its grosser instincts. So the equation tips.
Every film goes through this subjective sort of calculus I guess. Watching at home, so many years later, Avatar was strange. Without the spectacle to distract as much, on a smaller screen, you feel the runtime more. You notice the cultural appropriation. Does it hold up? For me, sure, because I go for the world and visual feast - I go to have a “video game” like roller coaster ride - not for much else. If the effects didn’t miraculously still look so good, it would’ve tipped the scales to “not hold up.”
The most interesting question to me is what sort of societal and industry changes will lead a movie made today to hold up or not twenty years from now. Some of my favorite movies of 2022 (separate post incoming) - Tar, Banshees of Inisherin, Fabelmans… will they hold up in 2042? Will they have stepped on some invisible boundary through history that renders them irrelevant?
Surreal Photography to Close Out the Year
Well, the year’s end is upon us and I am behind on my pilot rewrites. So, today’s post is going to be short and sweet and visually focused. And it might be the last one for 2022!
I’ve been exploring what’s going into the public domain in 2023 for potential adaptation and a lot of my research takes place on, surprise surprise, the Public Domain Review. It’s an incredible website, filled with sundry strangeness and eccentric stories and fascinating histories.
It was there that I came across two articles. In Search of True Color and The Kept and the Killed, both written by Erica X. Eisen. In these articles, Eisen surveys collections of alluringly flawed old photos and analyzes their time in history and the record they leave behind. Eisen provides the context, I’ll just share some of my favorites here. It might be fun to take them in standalone first, see what feelings they conjure up. I know I’ll be keeping them in my mind’s eye for inspiration, and perhaps a writing prompt or two in the weeks to come.
And with that delightfully odd note, happy holidays and New Year’s to you!