Why We Fight - Or - The Magic Cake

Good analogy. A building can be, and quite often is, constructed at great cost based on the blueprints provided by the architect.

Then the building is often sold over and over again in perpetuity, via what we call “rent”, and each time the architect collects a slice of the revenue.

Oh, wait.

I might be wrong about this, but wouldn’t an architect make money off the blueprints if those blueprints were licensed to another builder? Obviously we’re not going to see copies of Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao popping up all over the world. However, I believe that an architect can license blueprints for a suburban home to be re-used for addtional fees. So although you may not pay Frank Gehry every time you walk into the Guggenheim Bilbao, he would surely get paid again if his blueprints were used to build an identical museum in Des Moines. Just as a writer would get paid if a show he wrote for television popped up on the Internet.

That’s an interesting take on it all.

great, now I’m thinking about “ever lasting” cake.
I’m trying to figure out who you’re going to offend or piss off with this posting….there’s got to be somebody.

Good one. But amazingly, some people still don’t get it. They think that just because you made a magic cake doesn’t entitle you to a never-ending source of revenue, and arguments to the contrary otherwise fall on deaf ears. They side with the store that paid you $100, assuming that this somehow entitles the store to make money off the cake you baked forever, since they paid you for this right.

People who think that way can’t get their head around the claim that somehow screenwriters deserve more. So I don’t take this approach in trying to persuade them.

Instead, I show how others in similar situation are already in fact fairly compensated, so it follows that screenwriters should enjoy the same economic rights. Examples: inventors who hold patents, authors who write novels or plays, songwriters who sell records. The law protects them as creators to ensure they receive a fair portion of the economic benefits derived from the commercial exploitation of that which they create. Again, it follows that screenwriters deserve the same economic rights.

Maybe there’s even a better way to put it. I hope this is useful.

JP Wolff

I rather like that analogy -

But for John Q Public, It seems to me just comparing movies to books or CDs works pretty well, even though the copyright situation is different: it’s still “licensed re-use” so to speak.

99% of John Q Public doesn’t care, and the other 1% won’t get it.

But nice analogy otherwise.

How about this, I draw a comic strip, the syndicate and I split the money for the initial sales to the papers.
If I go on vacation and we run repeats we still split the money. If there are books, compilations of the strips, we both get paid again. Merchandising? We both get paid. The syndicate can’t sell/re-sell my work and cut me out of the deal. Charles Schultz made over a million a month just on merchandising.

Mmmmmm, everlasting cake …

.

mmmm… cake.

Nice analogy, Craig.

I think part of the disconnect comes form the “magic” part. The internet allows for a product… say a movie… to be reproduced EXACTLY and moved around and copied for practically nothing.

No packaging. No truck. No train. No warehouse or forklift.

Pennies.

Writers aren’t asking for 8 cents on that product. They’re asking for a fair proportionate percentage.

As you say: “a magic cake.” Writers aren’t asking for even a slice of the cake. Just a few of the crumbs.

“Mr. Scrooge, might I have a piece of coal for the fire… since I was the one to discover the coal mine in the first place?”

I’ve given you a hard time, Craig, and I’m sure we’ll disagree in the future, but that was a nice piece. Nice analogy.

Thanks.

Craig:

This is a fine analogy — and a little more to the point than August’s explanation. I would strike the architect explanation, however: you could easily extend the analogy of regeneration to apartments (an apartment keeps turning over, being “re-created” much like a piece of projected film). I know it’s not the same — but for the layperson…

…and speaking of laypeople…

I was at home this weekend. I have what I call the “mother rule” — basically that my mother is the bellwether of public opinion and cultural trendspotting. She has voted with the winning president in every election since 1976 (she voted for Gore in 2000, but I think we can agree on that) and if she likes a movie, it will be a guaranteed hit. Okay, she is admittedly a little bit biased on this strike, but for the life of her, she couldn’t understand WHY writers shouldn’t be getting paid when the studios were. It’s really that simple.

Look — the WGA is going to get bad press, not just because of the fact that the Big Six own the media (which isn’t really true; most media is trickle-down from the Times), but because most journalists are under-paid and cranky and have a lot of resentment toward screenwriters (I used to be a journalist).

But something that the WGA has mis-underestimated is just how fed-up with corporate control over entertainment, medicine, gasoline, etc. the average American is. Not to get all populist on you, but when you just explain to most people that the corporations receive money and the writer receives none — guess what? THEY GET IT.

Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t technically or legally matter who deserves residuals — the point is, if you have a union, and that union is strong, you can fight for whatever sort of remuneration you and your fellow workers believe you deserve, whether you’re a teacher, a truck driver, or a writer.

I tend to tell people that every time you buy a book, the writer gets a small piece of the sale. No reason it should be any different for film or tv writers.

And as for our IATSE friends who think we’re rich people fighting for more money - I like to point out that what the companies are doing is replacing reruns with internet delivery, trying to reduce residuals to zero. We’re not really asking for more, we’re fighting to keep what we already have.

And if IATSE folks don’t think our residuals cut affects you -

read this -

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/brief-history-of-union-residuals.html

especially the part of how your residual income resulted in 347 million dollars being contributed to the IATSE pension and health fund.

If they take ours, better believe they’re going to take everybody else’s too.

That Steve-O video was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.

Here’s a better anaology as to how the Companies see things. And I’ve heard it straight from one of the top suits.

He says:

The studios need to run like the pharmaceutical industry.

Therein, a brilliant and creativecrea PhD organic chemist creates a drug for the company that is then resold, renamed, repackaged ad inifinitum…

…and the creative PhD gets ZILCH beyond his contracted salary.

Certainly, that drug’s formulation is a magic recipe that the scientist created. It could even be considered the scientist’s intellectual property. It is authored and generates hundreds of millions in recurring revenue.

But the scientist gets ZILCH.

That’s how those you fight see things.

I hate it, too.

Lew Wasserman once said something about not having to pay a plumber every time he flushes the toilet.

But as someone on Huffingtonpost responded— the correct analogy is that someone INVENTS a whole new type of toilet (or toilet valve or whatever). Under patent law, he or she gets a residual payment (royalty) every time someone buys that toilet.

Now— you can argue the absurd length of copyright vs. patent (what, 20 years vs. death+100 years?!) and I won’t argue back, but the same principal applies.

This falls under promoting the “useful arts” in the constitution.

AYAAW

I might be wrong about this, but wouldn�t an architect make money off the blueprints if those blueprints were licensed to another builder? Obviously we�re not going to see copies of Gehry�s Guggenheim Bilbao popping up all over the world. However, I believe that an architect can license blueprints for a suburban home to be re-used for addtional fees. So although you may not pay Frank Gehry every time you walk into the Guggenheim Bilbao, he would surely get paid again if his blueprints were used to build an identical museum in Des Moines. Just as a writer would get paid if a show he wrote for television popped up on the Internet.

Yes.

If an architect designed a plan for a house that could be reproduced, that architect should collect royalties each time a house is manufactured from the same blueprint.

One other argument I heard in an online discussion I had recently that I’d like to counter:

“The spoiled crybaby writers make 200K average a year.”

Even if this WERE true, which I haven’t seen documentation for..

AVERAGE (mathematically known as “mean”) is not the same as MEDIAN, which is a much more typical estimate of what people in a given group make.

Average == add up total incomes and divide by number of people.

Mean == income by which there is an equal number of people making more and less.

Example: Take ten people who make $40K/year. Add Bill Gates. The average income will be ridiculously high. The median average will be $40K, a typical income for those people.

Look up “median vs. average” anywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary of a scriptwriter is $44,350.”

Source: http://www.fans4writers.com/strike.shtml

AYAAW

“The median average will be”

Replace with:

“The median income will be”

AYAAW

My dad produced, and wrote several episodes of Hawaii Five-O. He didn’t get residuals. And when you work without those expectations it’s no big deal. (Unless you live long enough) But you guys do get residuals. And you should be compensated fairly. And your miniscule increase of 4 cents per dvd should be a done deal. You should also be compensated for the internet downloads. With that said (and I realize that unless I start trolling or attacking someone - based on the last 474 comment post) that my remarks may be too passive and get passed over. That or I’m just not making a good case.

I would suggest you keep your public campaign in the realm of KEEPING IT SIMPLE. Because anyone outside of L.A and N.Y. is not going to understand.

you need a clear and simple mantra.

and the other point I was going to make was already made. and I quote

“But something that the WGA has mis-underestimated is just how fed-up with corporate control over entertainment, medicine, gasoline, etc. the average American is. Not to get all populist on you, but when you just explain to most people that the corporations receive money and the writer receives none � guess what? THEY GET IT.”

Right. First and foremost I agree with royalties and residuals. But, the problem with analogies, is that they can bite you in the arse. Journalists don’t get money on every newspaper sold, do they? Columnists? Do editors? Should editors? [Speaking of which do film or TV editors?] Architects was your’s. And I assume that if someone used his/her blueprints she/he would get something. But why use his blueprints when another architect can get you a copy for cheaper? Clothing designers? Can’t those be considered works of art? Hell, art for that matter. The artist gets paid once on his first sale. And never again. But that’s a unique original, and not a mass-made copy. Does Georgia O’Keefe’s estate get money for every poster print of a ‘flower’?

There’s a lot of murky analogies in there, and if anything determines what is considered art, it’s social norms. As for lesser copies of original works - like buildings and clothes. Well someone can make a rip-off movie and the original copyright holder would have to sue.

I think all I’ve done is succeed in confusing myself. In the end, I’m behind the writers, because they’re right. And I agree with the poster who pointed out that most of america is fed up with corporate control. The problem is no one can agree on what corporate control is.

Yeah. Still confused with myself. Good luck with getting a fair deal.

There’s a reason the inventor of the toilet never has to worry about money; they’re stinking rich because they own the patent. The patent is intellectual property. Every time a contractor builds a house, they pay Kohler to install the toilets, who, in turn, licenses the patent.

There’s an inventor who conceives the idea, a contractor who exploits it, a laborer who builds it, and a plumber who services it, all without whom crapping would not be possible.

But in our case, the contractor makes all the money because we sold the patent.

The question shouldn’t be: why do we deserve residuals? The question should be: why don’t we retain the rights to our intellectual property? Why isn’t that “rollback” on the table?

Analogies aside, residuals are a poor substitute for giving up our intellectual rights to corporations for unfettered exploitation but essentially serve the same purpose. If the AMPTP wants to take residuals off the table, then they can license the product. And hey, who knows, it might end this awesome run of unsupported sequels, remakes and television spin-offs.

What is it with the strike and baked goods? I was wearing my strike shirt on Thursday and I got stopped by a guy and had the following exchange:

Hey, are you a writer?

I wondered if was a bright move to don my shirt before heading out to the picket. Yes, yes I am, I told him.

I wanna shake your hand, he told me. We shook hands, and he continued. Y’know, it’s bullshit. It’s like you bake this big pie for the corporations, and they eat it. They don’t even let you eat a slice of the pie that you baked!

Blogged here: http://www.theslackdaily.com/2007/11/strike-two.html

Cake!

Cake!

That is a good analogy.

How do you think it will play in the media compared to “The Strike that Stole Christmas?”

http://sturly.com/c8 or Reuters:Hollywood workers fret as strike enters Week 2.

I wonder who will be cast as the grinch.

One final note then I’ll go away…

I think there’s a very strong argument that computer programmers who work in creative mediums, especially w/game development in story, music, character work, etc. have a good argument for deserving residuals too, and I hope to see them unionize because from what I read they are completely getting boned.

AYAAW

if you were paid to create the “magic” cake to begin with, then you only did what was expected. if the magical attributes came by accident, then you should get paid.

the problem lies with the fact it is all speculation if internet downloads create or entice NEW viewers (ones no one was expecting). also, we are still several years away from any logical format that will replace disc storage.

as an example, i was staying with friends (a family of 5) out of state that had purchased a new home and installation of their satellite dish was 10 days away. i got on itunes and bought the 1st season of “lost”. we connected my ipod and watched those episodes whenever there was nothing to do. since we had never seen the show on broadcast tv, we were able to catch up on the story and characters in time for the new season.

fast foward to present day. i (and my friends) have NEVER watched those episodes since and, you now have 6 loyal broadcast viewers.

NO one i know downloads tv shows intending to use the download as a primary source of viewing. it is more along the lines of “shit! i missed the show, now i’m going to have to watch it on my 21” monitor which makes me a sad panda.” and if i’m quick enough i can get it for free from youtube before it gets pulled down for copyright. i also have bit-torrent as a backup. sorry folks but thats the way it is.

The fact is that the vast majority of people in the world don’t create intellectual property and are apt to compare screenwriting to his or her own job. “I get hired to do a job, I get a weekly salary and that’s it. I don’t get anymore, why should they?”

Rather than try to explain it to people of that opinion I just say it doesn’t really matter whether they believe in copyright for intellectual property because you know who does?

The motion picture and television studios.

Just try putting a sign outside your house advertising a sale of DVD copies you made of, �A Night At The Museum,” and see how fast you get a visit from the FBI.

This isn’t a fight over whether intellectual property copyright is right or should or shouldn’t exist it’s simply a battle between two groups of true believers over what the split should be.

The increasingly powerful companies are just using their might to dispense with quaint, old fairness and trying to establish the split on internet streaming as something like, oh, let’s say…100% for them and ZERO for the creators of that intellectual property.

You see, they believe it�s wrong for the consumer to continually profit from material they were sold for one, specific use but have suddenly become convinced they should not be held to the same standard. A standard they�ve agreed to for the past fifty years.

And they are doing that for the oldest and worst reason there is: because they can. Or at least, drunk on their own power, they think they can. By withholding our work, shutting down shows and picketing our hearts out, we are doing everything in our power to convince them otherwise. Wish us luck. We�re going to need it.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the local News is giving the Broadway strike much more airtime than the WGA strike?

Okay, just wondering…now get back to your cake.

When Fitzgerald published ‘The Great Gatsby’ it sold 25000 copies in it’s first year.

Last year, 2006, it sold 25000 copies…every two weeks.

Intellectual property is worth fighting over. The future is not tomorrow, it’s now and drawing a line in the sand is sometimes the only real way to get the attention you deserve.

Now, that said, I wish everyone would put their dicks away and get back to the BUSINESS at hand, which is negotiating a deal so everyone can get back to work.

For the record. I like the everlasting cake analogy.

66sputnik, then how are the studios makign billions of dollars off of new media? Just because you and your circle of friends don’t watch internet media? Last time I checked, you weren’t the sun.

Magic cake.

Jesus.

I know. It seems innocuous. How could Olson possibly have a problem with this one? Well, because this one typifies so much of what’s wrong with Mazin and this site.

Follow me:

It’s a shit analogy. Don’t get me wrong - it’s cute and lovable. A magic cake, kids! But it’s still a shit analogy, and it’s a hell of a long way to go to explain something that’s REAL fucking simple:

I write a book. A publisher publishes it. Every time the book is sold, I get a piece of the action. There isn’t a single person on the planet who has a problem with that. And the few people who don’t understand residuals will if you point them in that direction. (Ted, I’m sure, will come in and explain the whole copyright/authorship thing as it pertains to what we do, and how our situation is different from authors, but as analogies go, I humbly submit that comparing us to novelists is significantly more apt than comparing us to elven bakers from the land of Snickety Poo.)

(Also, as a side note, if I start selling cupcakes tomorrow, I’m not obliged to pay the person who came up with the recipe. Although, I suppose, if it was a magical recipe, there might be legal ramifications that I’m ignorant of at the moment. I’ll check with my attorney, Gandalf, tomorrow. )

The notion that you have to go as far afield as to make up a story about a magic cake to explain residuals, well, it’s not helpful. In fact, it’s damaging. Because if that’s the lengths we have to go to explain residuals, we’ve lost.

Craig’s effectively stating that residuals can’t be defended in the real world. You have to resort to fairy tales to explain them. It’s an incredibly simple issue, one everyone understands, but when a guy who gets quoted in Nikki Finke and the Wall Street Journal acts like it’s this complicated, obviously, them writers aren’t on such solid ground.

[Craig, as usual, will claim he’s not trying to be a spokesman for anything, and yet, this post knocks the air out of that one. This is, essentially, a press release. “Here’s what to tell people when they ask you about residuals.” That’s kinda what a spokesman does. I’m just sayin’…]

It’s also patronizing as hell. You’re asking me to explain basic business practices by going to magic cake? Only when I’m talking to five year olds. If you use this analogy on an adult, not only do you risk him thinking you’re an idiot (“Dude. I get it. It’s just like a book”), but you’re insulting his intelligence, as well. Craig do like to talk down to the people.

It’s deeply telling as well. You have to scratch at it, and what’s underneath is this - Craig has spent so much time in his special world that he actually has a hard time justifying residuals to himSELF. He’s so grateful to massa that he’s swallowed the lie that we don’t really deserve residuals. He knows, deep down inside, that we do, but he’s lost sight of why, so he has to go to these massive, absurd and childish lengths to justify them to himself. Honest to God, he’s forgotten why writers deserve to get compensated when someone buys their work. Thus, magic cake.

And lastly, it’s just bad writing. One of the tools those of us who ply our trade in the yarn biz have to have is the ability to craft solid analogies. Residuals are not like magic cake. They’re part of the real world, and if you have to resort to fantasy to justify them, you’ve already lost the battle.

A plea, Craig. One that’ll almost certainly fall on deaf ears, but I live in hope…. If you really care about your fellow writers and winning this strike, stop trying to help. Just finish your job, then come out on the picket line and do your time among your fellow writers until we win this fucking thing.

Good one. But amazingly, some people still don�t get it. They think that just because you made a magic cake doesn�t entitle you to a never-ending source of revenue, and arguments to the contrary otherwise fall on deaf ears. They side with the store that paid you $100, assuming that this somehow entitles the store to make money off the cake you baked forever, since they paid you for this right.

Here is how you explain it.

Yes, if you sold the magic cake for $100 outright, you don’t deserve any future compensation — for that cake. You sold it voluntarily, you agreed on the compensation, and if you realized after the fact that the company you sold it to can exploit it to make more money in perpetuity, you can’t go back and rewrite the terms of sale.

But… you would be a fool if you ever sold another magic cake on the same terms.

Given that consumers like variety, that the same cake day after day, no matter how good it is, becomes boring and unappetizing, the company is going to come back to you to ask you to bake another magic cake of a different flavor. At that point, the fact that they bought the first one for a fixed $100 is irrelevant. You now know that there is an expectation that your new magic cake is worth tens of thousands of dollars (at the net present value of the cashflow it will generate to the company). You have the basis to negotiate for as much of that net present value as the company is willing to give you in return for the right to generate that cashflow.

And wouldn’t you be an idiot if you asked for anything less?

better analogy…

You are constructing what will be the tallest building in the world. you commission a painter to create a mural for the lobby. since the painter knows this will be a tourist attraction he says he will do it for below his normal rate if he can get a monthly fee for foot traffic. you agree. you don’t get the amount of visitors you had thought you would, so you decide to try and generate more revenue and foot traffic by photgraphing and printing postcards of the lobby and mural, do you owe the painter for every postcard you sell or give away?

At the end of the day it all comes down to copyright. I write novels, I own those works. No matter who publishes them, what press, hardcover or paperback, no matter what country or language they’re published in, they are my property because I created them. I get royalties from my publisher every time they sell a book. If they stop printing the book, I can sell it to another publisher. I control the copyright.

It’s the same in the music business. Songwriters retain ownership no matter who performs the songs or what company releases them.

For some reason, (and I think we can all take an educated guess here) years ago studios rejected allowing the writers ownership of the copyright. The studios came up with this residual formula to pretend that they were paying royalties. Now they want to stop doing that.

Screenwriters can never get ownership back, (although THAT would be something to strike for) but we need to remind the studios that original ideas - writing - comes from people who in any other media would be the owners of their creative labors and we should get a reasonable helping of magic cake.

(is that like cake from Amsterdam?)

I have noticed that. Front page of the Times today. But I also haven’t heard much from IA about the poor actors and other dependent workers whose livelihoods are being negatively affected by Local One’s contract issues. It goes both ways. I was thinking of going down and picketing with them tomorrow in an effort at job action fence mending.

A lot of you need tor ead John August’s post, which is provided in the main post. Mark Haskell - your question on why screenwriters aren’t considered ‘authors’ is answered there. If we had full ownership, shit wouldn’t work in Hollywood.

Doesn’t the guy who invented the intervals for winshield wipers get paid every time that option is used on a car? Which is on every car? Doesn’t apply, maybe.

It’s funny, a song writer—let’s say Dr. Dre—writes a song. Gwen Stefani sings on his music track. Dr. Dre gets paid every time that song gets used. As does Gwen.

Even when those songs are used in movies.

Carlo, show me the MONEY. show me if it’s from page views, fan message boards, or streaming media. the fact is YOU can’t.

“So if someone asks you why we deserve to get paid each time someone buys a copy of a movie, tell them about the magic cake.”

Dude, can’t I just tell them about books? That seems to be the simplest way because everyone understands books and printing and reprints and shit like that.

But cake? Magic cake? What the fuck?

Are we living in the land of Sugar Plum Fairies now? Are we picketing the gates of fucking Hogwarts?

You lost me, buddy.

Or someone makes a song that wins an award. And then a recording studio steals that song and is sung over by a ‘talented’ rap/hiphop ‘musician’. And the person who got his song ripped by the recording studio gets jack all simply because they changed one note.

I never like analogies because they’re always about some other thing, not the thing you really are talking about.

Anyway, what I don’t get is why the argument isn’t simply about who gets the profits? It seems to me the production companies are middlemen. They pull the resources together and make it happen. But who actually does the work? The artists do. So the artist should be first in line to get the money. The producers are the ones whi should have to negotiate their cut.

When you hire an agent they don’t say, ‘I’ll take all the profits and dole you out your agreed fees and some residuals’, while keeping the rest. No, it’s you who takes the profit and gives them a 10% cut. They find the work. But you get paid, not them.

It�s deeply telling as well. You have to scratch at it, and what�s underneath is this - Craig has spent so much time in his special world that he actually has a hard time justifying residuals to himSELF. He�s so grateful to massa that he�s swallowed the lie that we don�t really deserve residuals. He knows, deep down inside, that we do, but he�s lost sight of why, so he has to go to these massive, absurd and childish lengths to justify them to himself. Honest to God, he�s forgotten why writers deserve to get compensated when someone buys their work. Thus, magic cake.

Josh Olson! Who is really resorting to fantasy here? “Grateful to massa?” WTF? Seriously, WTF?

66sputnik, have you heard of something called advertising? This is how the studios make money on new media. Advertisers are paying to be on streamed media (and so forth). Show you the money? What the heck are you getting at. It’s all advertising. Why do advertisers pay so much to have an ad spot on internet media? Because tonnes of people watch it!

The proof behind how successful new media is in the advertising agencies and other ‘big boys’ in the corporate game. Don’t try to complicate it by asking for ‘proof’. That’s like asking me to prove the CN Tower in Toronto… well, exists.

We want to have our cake and eat it, too? :snark:

You think the AMPTP is bad.

Betty Crocker will crush you.

For she has the mighty and delicious power of the much feared devil’s food behind her.

ps. The CN tower in Toronto DOES in fact exist. Google isn’t needed here.

Josh Olson:

Can you recommend a good cleaning product to remove spittle from computer screens?

Thank you,

Alan

Josh, please don’t leave my magic cake out in the rain.

I think it’s a mistake to try to justify why we get residuals to laypeople. Tell them were like songwriters. And why does no one question songwriters on this?? They’re paid in perpetuity and it’s widely understood that it’s because they wrote the songs. There is no difference here.

It isn’t plumbing no matter how many tortured analogies are designed. I’m not selling faucets, I’m selling intellectual property. And newsflash, plumbers get paid every time they step foot in someone’s house whether they actually fix anything or not. That ain’t such a bad deal in its own right.

Carlo, if your scripts are as simplistic as your idea of how business works it wouldn’t surpise me to find out you are one of the “poor” writers.

fact is, it’s not a zero-sum game you are playing. how many pilots get made where the writer got paid and the studio didn’t make a dime because it never got a pick-up or even broadcast?

Craig…your magic cake story sucks…get more sleep and focus on the job that is paying your money right now. If you want to be considered an author…then get paid the same way a novelist does. You get your upfront money, and then you don’t get anything unless the book is a big hit. The old excuse about the studios bookkeeping making a share of profits impossible to track is obsolete. The real problem is that no one has even tried to design a mondern accounting system that would make profit based resiguals or royalties work. I’ll be WalMart could. I’ll bet the WGA doesn’t want to. You’re desire to support the guild is very touching, like watching a boyscout’s chest swell with pride on receiving a merit badge. And now it is time to grow up and admit that if the guild can’t do a 21st Century job of representing writers, then maybe writers should consider new representation. The strike is the direct result of the guild saying this is what they wanted and were planning to do. The AMPTP is just taking logical defensive action and “Counter” attacking (not a bad pun if I say so myself). Maybe someone can talk everyone back to the table…but I think the AMPTP has decided that if the guild wants their assed kicked, then the AMPTP might as well do it now.

In many, many businesses, people get paid commissions, bonuses, overrides, etc. for units sold, hours billed or performance. It’s not that farfetched.

Susan

I’ve been on the picket lines every day.

I’m a strike captain. I was gung-ho. I thought we could make a difference.

But the general consensus I’ve experienced on the lines is that picketing is just a big fat pat on the back wank session.

The agencies stop by every day. We get free cookies, free pizza, and lotsa thumbs up…so why do I feel like nothing is being accomplished?

By the way, DON’T TALK TO THE PRESS! The WGA won’t let you, even though you’re out there every day. We’re not smart enough to have an opinion.

But what about stopping scabs from entering the studios gates, you ask? Get real. As if the internet doesn’t exist? Telephones? Emails? Reality check. If scabbing’s gonna happen, picketing ain’t stopping it.

But like Olsen and unlike Craig, I got nothing better to do, so I’ll be out there every day, and I’m sure Craig will be out there too when his shoot’s wrapped. I know because I’ve seen Ted Elliott out there out there walking too…every day. And he’s vocal in his dissent.

I’ll be out there every day. Even as this drags on for months.

I’m pro-union, but I’m not deluded. I know that the only people who are truly hurting the AMPTP are the people refusing to write.

Actually, if the cupcake is unique in its proprietary ingredients — sort of like a piece of intellectual property, to stretch for an analogy — you would have to pay the guy who came up with the recipe. So maybe magic cupcake is better than magic cake.

Jesus, it’s even simpler than that.

Residuals are to writers what stock options are to employees.

Stop options represent the bet a worker makes against of the real value of the work that he/she puts into a company. Work that they are not compensated for in their salary. In other words, it means that the company can pay them less, in exchange for them betting on the future of the company to pay them more over time.

Residuals are what writers get for making the same bet on the content they produce. The production company hopes to make millions if not billions off of the writer’s work. So the production company pays the writer an industry standard, plus a residual for not making said company pay the millions and billions the content might prove to be worth.

So everyone bets on the future. That incentivizes the writer to create content worth millions and billions, and it incentivizes the company to invest in content that might be worth millions and billions.

Until the company starts saying it doesn’t want to invest in that sort of content anymore. Which if you think about it, is really what they’re saying now.

So writers make magic cake? With most movies, it’s more like magic brownies.

Studios are worst than Marie Antonette. At least she offered cake!

What’s dumber? Them fighting us over crumbs. Or us giving up our bread over crumbs?

Wow, someone has the munchies.

Also, was that really Josh Olson, or someone doing a satire of Josh Olson?

How about:

Screenwriters get residual payments because the total value of a script cannot be determined at the time the script is sold to the production company.

(by total value i mean what a movie based on a given script makes upon release, year after year. and that value cannot be known at the time of sale of the script because no one knows how a given movie will perform in the market place until they actually release it; they may have rough ideas at the moment the script is purchased, but those estimates can be way off)

Does that make sense/is it an accurate statement?

• Sujewa

Josh:

If you really care about your fellow writers and winning this strike, stop trying to help. Just finish your job, then come out on the picket line and do your time among your fellow writers until we win this fucking thing.

What does the AMPTP need to do for you to consider us to have won this strike?

• Ted

“Studios are worst than Marie Antonette.”

I say, “Let them eat Craig!”

John #20,

Journalists don’t get paid for every newspaper sold, no. They’re paid employees, on a salary. Most articles by most journalists are not worth reprinting, unlike films/TV shows, which are shown over and over on many formats. So there’s no real comparison between the two. I should know - I was a journalist for 17 years until recently.

On the paper I worked for, journalists DID get some additional compensation from the company in exchange for the right for the company to reprint their work in the (very) occasional book. We called it the Copyright Bonus. Usually around $1000 a year, paid around Christmas time (came in handy). And yes, editors got it as well.

Sometimes I think too much emphasis is put on the residual as though it’s sacred and an inalienable for an artist to collect it.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. If I said to a writer, you have a choice, I’ll pay you a one time $200K fee for an episode of CSI: Barstow, or I’ll pay you $30K plus 2.5% for reruns and home video, I think it’s safe to say the writer would intelligently choose option option A.

I think it’s more comprehensible to the general public to say; look the bottom line is we have to earn a living. For the past 50 years that’s been predicated on an upfront fee plus additional money paid out as the program was replayed. That model has now changed, reruns are becoming a thing of the past so we need to find an equitable way to get paid enough money so that we can survive.

I think a good analogy for “John Q” is: How would you feel if I hired you as a waiter for a modest base salary plus tips, and then after 50 years of doing it that way announced unilaterally that from now on I was keeping your tips (because after all my rent has gone up and the cost of food has doubled). Obviously the waiter could no longer afford to work for the restaurant and I think in the view of the public it would be fairly reprehensible of the owner to do it.

I wonder if anyone has ever broached the idea of raising the WGA minimums in exchange for buying out the back-end? As I recall during the commercial strike something along those lines was proposed to the actors. I’m sure tracking residuals and paying them out is not an inconsequential expense to the studios. Maybe they’d be better off giving that money to the artists in the form of higher up front fees.

And 59#, I’m not sure that the real reason for residuals, but I think it’s a good way of thinking about them

In reply to # 15: “The correct analogy is that someone INVENTS a whole new type of toilet (or toilet valve or whatever). Under patent law, he or she gets a residual payment (royalty) every time someone buys that toilet.”

That is nonsense. I am the inventor on a few patents. Generally the ‘assignee’ of the patent is your employer .. and you get no more money from it. No royalties. Nada.

That’s the deal you generally agree to in your employment contract. Despite your claim, there is no requirement in patent law to get a payment every time someone buys the invention. In other fields, original writing while an employee also gets zero royalties or residuals.

I’m not complaining - that’s the deal I chose to agree to when I become an employee. Writers in the WGA have chosen to get a better deal .. good on them.

A design engineer who is hired as an employee to create a new invention by a company gets zero residuals. A writer who is hired as an employee to write episode # 283 of an existing TV series gets residuals.

I can’t really see that it is a ‘moral’ argument … that the writer of episode #283 has a moral right to the residuals when compared to the inventor.

The ‘magic cake’ argument applies 100% to many other employees of a companies.

eg:

1. Computer programmers who may create an entire software package for their employers.
2. The writer of the instruction manual for your $30,000 car
3. The writer of episode #283 of a soap opera
4. The staff-writer of a press-release

Can we make a logical argument for SOME of these employees getting residuals and not others? Clearly it isn’t a case of ‘artistic worth’ , ‘usefulness to society’ or effort. They are all employees of their company so it isn’t that, either.

Mac

(PS: I think I’m basically just agreeing with John Q’s post #63)

If there were only one time payments the conversation over a fair script payment would be something like:

• Writer: This script is worth $12.5M, because it’s so good it enables you to make $500M over all the new ways you will use it for the next 50 years.
• Studio: This script is worth $1k, because I’m not going to even recover my costs on this piece of garbage (but yes, I want to buy it anyway)

So what’s the solution when you can’t tell who’s right at contract time? Share the risk and reward into the future. If it’s good based on the how it does in the market, I’ll pay you a lot, if not, I’ll pay you a little.

From my outsider point of view, this strike is simply about fair compensation. But could it be that why royalties/residuals are most fair in these situations is just too subtle for a John Q public soundbite?

Just so people know, the architecture comment was mostly likely inspired by the moronic Brooks Barnes article in the New York Times a while back.

It’s also a comment I’ve heard (like the plumber one) before in discussions about the strike. Hopefully Brooks isn’t that influential and it’s just a coincidence.

…and Yet another Anonymous Writer,

I read somewhere that the median salary for a WGA member was $5,000. Not sure how accurate that it.

I like analogies. I like cake. Put the two together and I’m happy.

But maybe explaining the screenwriters position isn’t so complex as to require an analogy.

Certainly the book thing doesn’t work. You pick a book up, you know in a half second who the author is. You watch a movie, you have to sit there for ten minutes after it’s done. The screen is a collaborative medium. The closest thing to an author is the writer-director. But the cinematographer and a few other people might have something to say about that.

And writers certainly aren’t the only elves in the tree baking magic cake.

Analogies, being analogies, always break down. And writers can’t afford a plothole in this story.

Maybe the easiset way to explain it is to say that screenwriters write screenplays which get made into movies or tv programs and the more successful those movies and shows are and the more money they make, the more money the screenwriter should make.

Screenwriters don’t write movies or tv shows. No one does. No amount of writing will bring a movie into existence. We write screenplays. It is a unique art and the standard of fairness is not the same as writing a book or baking magic cakes.

It is what it is.

And yes the production company/studio that pays to make the movie or show takes the biggest risk and deserves the biggest cut. But they minimize their risk by choosing talent.

The writer can write a great script and have a great director fail the script and make terrible choices. The wrong cinematographer. The wrong shots. The wrong music. And it fails and there are no residuals for anyone to argue over. And no one is going to say “well the script was great, let’s send the writer a dime.”

But if things do work out, the writer… the FIRST PERSON who has to be at his best in order to make a successful movie… deserves fair compensation. A reasonable percentage of the dollars generated by his creative effort… whether that dollar was generated by the sale of a DVD or an itunes download or what have you.

We don’t need a fair deal on DVDs. We need a fair deal on use. Period.

Then we won’t have to be back here in a decade fighting over direct-to-brain total submersion downloads or whatever the hell is around the corner. This is the 21st century and new media comes and goes too quickly to be chasing in slow motion every 20 years.

That seems simple. Easy as pie… if not cake.

The John Q Public soundbite…

Of course, everyone wants to be understood and apprciated by the masses, but John Q Public can’t name three screenwriters. His understanding will not win the strike. His opposition will not lose the strike.

But Johnny Q’s refusal to sit home and watch reruns and reality horseshite indefinitely causing revenues to plummet… that’s what we need from Johnny Q. We just need him to be true to himself.

We don’t need no stinkin’ soundbite. Just give Johnny Q his remote and he’ll do the rest.

I like the analogy comparing a script to a novel but the realist in me sees another analogy and I’ve had trouble justifying residuals under this scenario (until this morning - bear with me a moment) - a script and a painting.

I buy a Wyland painting. I can charge admission to others who want to see the painting I purchased. HOWEVER, I cannot make copies of the Wyland painting and sell them (or even give them away). I didn’t purchase that right.

The studio/prodco purchases a spec I wrote. The studio can charge others to see the movie it made from my script. The studios/prodcos can make a single film and show it to whomever they want for whatever they want to charge. BUT if they want to distribute copies of that film (another print, a video tape, a DVD, a download), they have to pay me for the right to do that as I would have had to pay Wyland for permission to make copies of the original painting.

For stubborn people like me, this might be an easier-to-understand comparison. Residuals are payment for permission to make copies of the single original film.

Just tryin’ to help here. If you don’t like this suggestion, please continue to badmouth Craig since he started it all with the magic cake. :-)

There might be a simpler response to the “I don’t pay my plumber every time I flush the toilet” thing:

Imagine two plumbers. Plumber #1 can fix your toilet, but it will only last for 10 more flushes before it breaks again. Plumber #2 can fix your toilet and it will last for 10,000 flushes.

Which plumber will you pay more?

So it turns out, you kind of [i]are[/i] paying your plumber for each flush. You’re just paying in advance.

The thing is, your plumber has a pretty good idea of what you’re going to be doing with your toilet after he fixes it. It’s easy for him to build that cost-per-flush into his upfront payment.

Scripts are different. When you have a script, you can’t know if it will languish unmade in development hell, or if it will get made and become an evergreen classic that makes billions for the studio.

So residuals are a way of hedging your bet. We’re saying, “Pay me upfront what you think this intellectual property is worth. But if it turns out to be worth billions more than that, I want a little share of the profits I’m making for you.”

Ted,

“What does the AMPTP need to do for you to consider us to have won this strike?”

Give us magic milk to go with the damn cake.

Vince,

“John Q Public can�t name three screenwriters. “

Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and George Clooney.

Haven’t seen ‘em on the lines, yet, but I’m sure they’re out there…

As for residuals, Jesus, people. We’re really discussing whether or not we deserve ‘em?

I write. You buy what I write, you pay me.

It’s that fucking simple, and that is the MORAL ARGUMENT (Sorry, Ted. I know you hate those) that underlies what we’re fighting for… what we’re ALWAYS fighting for.)

Josh Olson wrote in response to Ted’s simple question: “Give us magic milk to go with the damn cake.”

Please Josh, answer the question.

My bet is you can’t.

I really like Jacob’s analogy. I thought the stock-option scenario made a lot of sense as well.

The problem with the stock option analogy is the failure to consider the downside. If the movie makes less than what was anticipated when the writer was paid, does the writer have to return money? If not, why should he/she participate in unexpected profits?

It was nice to see this article on msnbc.com. It helps to counter that whole $200K/avg dreck. I’ve actually read a number of articles in the past day or two that do a reasonably good job of explaining why the writers are entitled to those extra 4 cents. It’s refreshing to see the PR swinging in the right direction.

It seems to me that analogies are always going to be picked apart and therefore, maybe we need to stop making analogies.

Maybe we should ask why no one is raising hell because JK Rowling makes some money every time someone buys a copy of Harry Potter? Shouldn’t she have just been happy with the money she was paid for writing it the first time?

Since no one seems to begrudge authors their due, I think we should try explaining that what we are paid to write a script is the same as an author’s “advance” against future royalties — except that their percentage is huge and ours is a pittance (I’m a longtime WGA member who has ve written a book, I know what I’m talking about) and once the author has earned back the advance, he or she starts to earn money from the royalties. Thus if the book does well, the author is rewarded. A fair system.

As opposed to a system where, let’s say, the book took over the planet like it did, and JK Rowling was only paid for writing it, and the publishing company pocketed the rest. I think even my deaf aunt would see that as unfair.

I’ll ask her and make sure.

I also thought #32 was a parody of Olson.

But it’s not.

This is a bad sign, Josh.

It�s deeply telling as well. You have to scratch at it, and what�s underneath is this - Craig has spent so much time in his special world that he actually has a hard time justifying residuals to himSELF. He�s so grateful to massa that he�s swallowed the lie that we don�t really deserve residuals. He knows, deep down inside, that we do, but he�s lost sight of why, so he has to go to these massive, absurd and childish lengths to justify them to himself. Honest to God, he�s forgotten why writers deserve to get compensated when someone buys their work. Thus, magic cake.

LOL!

Seems to me that the WGA is tackling the wrong beast altogether.

As long as writing for the screen is not able to be licensed in ways similar to books, this issue will continue to exist and multiply as ways to distribute movies increase.

Use your words to go write up some legislation. And while you’re at it, hover your bodies around some lawmakers instead of of standing outside a studio holding a sign.

I worked for years as an Architect before becoming a Screenwriter. They are very similar jobs. But when I design a building, my client owns the drawings only - I retain ownership of the design, since it is considered my intellectual property. The client can not (nor can anybody else) reproduce that building without paying me. That seldom happens, of course, because buildings have to be built - it would be like having to shoot and edit a movie everytime you wanted a copy. In fact, it happens so seldom that nobody depends on it ever happening. So they pay Architects roughly 10% of the cost of production to make it the first time. If I were to be offered that deal to write a $100M dollar movie, I would cheerfully take my 10 million dollars and give up the residuals.

I’m not even sure a “magic cake” metaphor is necessary. When people ask me why writers should get residuals…I just say, “should a musician get paid something for every record they sell? should an author get paid something for every book they sell?”

They always say yes, like that’s obvious. Then they get it.

In film and television, there are so many people between the writer and the product (producers, diretors, actors, studios) that I think the writers just gets forgotten. They are rarely a part of the marketing so no one hears their names.

And since films and television are much more of a collaboration, the writer gets a lot less in residuals or royalites than most musicians and authors. And as fate would have it, the WGA is asking for a LOT less than either of those two normally get.

That seems to convince people in about 20 seconds.

And honestly, the argument that residuals keep writers afloat during lean times kind of sounds like an argument for a hand out. I know it’s not, but that’s not a good argument. Truth is, even if you’re rolling in dough, you deserve the residuals. It’s simply fair.

CP:

If we were offered 10% of the cost of production, there is no doubt in my mind that almost all writers would take that deal as a buy-out on future residuals.

And come out waaaaaay ahead of what we normally earn.

Jimmy:

I agree that the “residuals keep us afloat” argument is a perilous one to make, for the reason you state.

I have a couple of questions hopefully someone here will be able to answer. Pertaining to TV advertising, can I assume that the ad rate is less for a rerun than a first run? Also, are the nets still offering ratings guarantees or did they learn from their mistake a year or two ago when they ended up having to give the advertisers free spots?

I still don’t understand how this issue over internet residuals is even debatable to anyone.

Are AMPTP people posting on here anonymously or what?

“The studio bosses insisted, however, that the process of creating movies was fundamentally different and more like an industrial assembly line designed to maximize profits (this predated the notion of film as art). The way they saw it, a playwright sold a product while a screenwriter sold a service.

Not surprisingly, it was the studio bosses’ vision that carried the day. They divided and conquered the writers in the 1930s by making special deals with certain favored screenwriters, by threatening to fire any others who sided with the guild — and perhaps most significantly, by paying enough money that writers could not bear to walk away. As Nancy Lynn Schwartz recounted in her 1982 book, “The Hollywood Writers’ Wars,” the producers knew that “an insurrection of this sort had to be stopped.”

The agreement reached with the newly founded Writers Guild in 1942 contained the defining clause that survives to this day: “The studio, hereinafter, referred to as the author …” making it clear where the writer stood after the sale of his work — or service, as it were.

Today, as writers walk picket lines in an effort to persuade the studios to compensate them fairly for their work in newly emerging profit centers such as the Internet, it’s instructive to remember that their predecessors long ago surrendered the fundamental principle of copyright and that they are unlikely ever to get it back.

That’s why the copyright to NBC’s hit series “Heroes” does not belong to Tim Kring, who created it and oversees it as executive producer, but to NBC Universal, the corporation that airs and distributes it (after having invested in its development and production).

Some would say that’s not a bad deal for writer-producers like Kring who, after all, don’t have to put up their own money to develop an idea and who are often handsomely rewarded for their efforts. Writers can earn millions of dollars for a movie script, and in the world of television, those who are perceived as successful can often achieve something close to authorial control.”

Why not solve the strike the easy way. The way the government does, the way the oil companies do. Pass the problem on to the consumer. DVD sales, since I can remember, have cost $18-$20. Why not charge $18.50-$20.50 for each DVD? This way the WGA get their residuals, and there is enough left over for the Directors and Actors. The consumer would not even notice $.50 and the DVD would still sell. You could also pass the download problem to the consumer. $.50 wouldn’t be bad, some might pay it and some might not, and the WGA would have their problem solved. Maybe the SAG and the DGA too.

cp #82

“I worked for years as an Architect before becoming a Screenwriter. They are very similar jobs.”

You make the above statement and then immediately contradict it. They are not similar because the builder is not, in fact, reproducing the exact same building tens of thousands of times over.

I think the book/song arguments are the easiest for the average person to comprehend. Screenwriters surrendered the full copyright protection those artists maintain in an ill advised deal years ago in exchange for the residual system the studio chiefs offered as consolation. And the companies have since continued to invent rationalizations for eliminating what they promised us in exchange for the better thing.

We no like.

TVGuy- there’s just too much downward pressure on consumer prices for this to work. I know it seems like a small incremental increase might not make a difference in DVD sales, but, trust me, it would. And Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest DVD retailer, is known for fiercely negotiating the wholesale prices it pays, down to the last penny. They’d never agree to up their costs/prices like that.

What needs to be factored into the writer’s strike is the question of “how to increase the penalties for thievery and copyright infringement by hack writers” to LONG TERM PRISON INCARCERATION. A lot of those writers marching for their rights steal and infringe against other writers, artists, regular peopkle etc… everyday. For example a hack writer named Tim Kring stole coppyrighted work from two NYC divination artists called “The Twins” and sold it to NBC as his own work, that work became the tv show “Heroes”.

According to stories on the internet “The Twins” filed a lawsuit against Tim Kring and NBC for copyright infringement in a NYC Federal Court. As soon as that story hit the net the character Isaac Mendez was written out, tim said the character “the artist that can paint the future” and his powers were to limiting and could not keep up with the pace of the show. Tim went on to announce all of the storylines were changing with a new cast of actors being added.

Why would a writer change a winning formula? Isn’t the rule “if it’s not broken don’t fix it”? It seems that now that tim could no longer use” The Twins” materials he was now like his friends hit tv show “Lost”, without any winning storylines for Heroes. Left on his own writing talent, season 2 opened with the viewing audience fleeing in droves. Today Tim Kring is own line apologizing for the failure of season 2 of Heroes and pretending he cares about other writers and their rights.

I am not a writer, I work with young children that are homeless. Many live in subway cars, Mc donald’s etc.. Most have already been to jail for jumping the turnstile etc… The question asked daily by these children is why is it when writers commit crimes they are not arrested, finger printed and mugged shot the way most of these kids have experienced?

some of the kids watched the first season of Heroes and I’ve kept up with the lawsuit filed by these artists and I think it’s heinous that Tim Kring is not in jail.

I went out and bought a few books on writing as a career,from what i read in each book integrity and having your own style and stories as a writer is important. That’s not Tim Kring, instead it seems his style is to find other people’s stories or look at other writer’s films and change a few details and put his name on it. For example the artists that Tim copied were first written about in the NY DailyNews in 2004 written by Lloyd Grove. The article said “The Twins” left Texas with a painting to stop September 11, 2001 before it happened. These artists were regular people that belived they had superpower abilities to paint and write the future before it happens on canvas according to the Daily news article. “The Twins” painted and copyrighted a painting in early 2001 called “The Atta Page”, the painting depicted two planes hitting the twin towers in NYC, the message ” a man name Atta attack twin towers sept 11 at 9:00 am ” and the additional message that the name ATTA is in the word manhATTAn. Wasn’t that the storyline for Isaac Mendez? The only thing Tim changed was 9-11-01 to nuclear blast, the race of Isaac and the drug problem . The real life artist that can paint the future said in an interview he does not use drugs to paint the future.

If that’s what being a writer is all about, stealing other people’s lives and work, then the networks owe the writers nothing. I’ve learned a lot about writers and so far a lot of you guys are really negative and not right.

Let’s be honest, if the writers “win” here…there’s not going to be a raising of prices on DVDs, or a lowering of the gigantic salaries of the executives. They’re not going to sit back and go “hmmm, maybe we should be smarter with our other expenses so we can pay writers fairly.”

They are going to cut assistants, mid-managers, pension funds, health care, and benefits for the regular Joes at their companies. Not one hair on the cent of any profit will be harmed.

The “victory” here will be a shifting of the money away from one industry middle class to another. And the only way to really prevent that is if there is a massive upheaval. SAG, DGA, IATSE, AFTRA and WGA would all have to walk at once to prevent it.

Since that probably will not happen here, writers should remain very humble even if there is a victory.

ANALOGIES and MEDIA

What I liked most about Craig’s Magic Cake is that it illustrates that this is not a zero/sum game. Writers are not arguing for a larger piece of a finite pie. Writers are not arguing for someone else’s slice. Writers are fighting for a fair share of an ever increasing stream of revenue generated by the telling of their stories. A stream that is about to be undammed as the advances in IT are on the verge of bringing exponentially larger profits into the studio coffers. That’s why the cake has to be magic to make the analogy work.

Writing for the screen is not similar to books. A book is a final retail product. A screenplay is not (until the movie is successful and the script is published as a book).

Because of this key difference, the pay system cannot translate.

A screenplay is purchased for the purpose of making a show or movie which is the final product.

The screenplay is the key element necessary to make the movie. You can’t tell the story on screen if no one has told it on paper.

Which gets to the crux of the matter. While Ted and a few others want to insist that 120 formatted pages are our product, obviously it is not. Those pages are our medium for delivery of the real product.

Our product is story. We deliver our product in the medium of ink smears on paper or bytes in an email attachment. But the product is story. Whether that story is an original or whether it is adapted from another medium to work on screen, we are in the storytelling business.

The only way we’re ever going to get in the driver’s seat similar to the book author or the playwright is if we stop selling 120 formatted pages and start selling stories that happen to be told in 120 formatted pages. There’s a key difference. Stories we can control and license.

I understand that this is not going to happen any time soon if ever. So, in the meantime, writers who want to see their visions make it to the screen intact must push to direct their own scripts.

AMPTP spends their time berating the writer’s job and trying to equate it to blue collar work to win the PR war and convince the public that all screenwriters are rich and greedy. They’d love to go back to a studio system, chain writers to a desk, pay them $600 a week and crack the whip. “You’ll write what I tell you to write, maggot.” But then, why spend the overhead when so many people calling themselves screenwriters are already subservient to the visions of their masters, lacking their own.

We only help AMPTP when we start using analogies about toilets. Looking at the crap down at my local cineplex, I can understand why some writers might naturally corelate their product to commodes, but I don’t think that’s constructive for the purposes of the strike.

No. You don’t have to pay a residual for every flush. But then, you don’t have to pay a residual every time you watch that DVD either, though in some cases they have the same entertainment value.

15 years ago, only about 10% of homes were online. VHS was king. Things have changed. And the message is not the medium. If we dwell on media, the new MBA will be obsolete the moment it’s written.

The only thing that keeps DVDs alive now is the nostalgia for the physical product. Soon enough, a home entertainment system will be primarily internet oriented. There will be two dominant models. In one, the ownership model, you will have an enormous hard drive on which you store all your movies, music, photos, etc. You will watch them at the push of a button. You will pay to download them. You might back them up on DVD, but most likely, you’ll back them up on a secondary drive or partition.

Or, the lease/membership model, in which you will pay a certain amount each month for access to an online library of films that you can access as long as you pay your monthly fee. Nothing to store. Nothing to back up.

But both will generate enormous revenues that do not require the production of plastic that must be packaged and shipped and stocked on shelves in stores. Which means that they can be sold for far less than a DVD and still generate more profit. And this means that the consumer who can purchase one DVD a month can buy or rent numerous movies with the same budget, generating even more revenue for the industry simply because it doesn’t have to be diluted through a dozen other industries to be produced and delivered.

The economic potential makes this a certainty. The WGA must position us now if we are to have a seat at this table.

This is the 21st century. Instead of dealing for what we should have had when DVDs were new, let’s take media out of the picture and make sure we get paid a fair percentage for USE. Period. Othewise, we’ll be chasing developing media forever and watching it and the MBA become obsolete faster and faster.

“Residual for USE” is the phrase that petrifies AMPTA. They want to keep this strike about “media.” “Emerging media” sounds good, but it leaves too much for the lawyers to screw us with. “Use” works better.

If our stories generate a dollar, whether its from DVD, advertising, downloading, happy meals or commemorative plates, we should be paid a fair percentage. Period. And all new uses should fall automatically into place with a percentage going to the writer.

If those emerging media fail, that percentage won’t yield much anyway. If they succeed, the will. Either way, it will be fair.

And next time we have to negotiate a new contract, all we’ll have to do is raise the dollar amounts on the front end and keep writing.

If you want to continue using analogies, I believe this might qualify as Josh’s “magic milk.”

But I fear the deal will end up being more akin to a magic toilet. No matter how AMPTP shines up the porcelain… we can smell what’s inside… and it ain’t magic cake anymore.

I’m not a WGA member. I spent ten years or so as a standup, and have lots of longtime friends who are in the WGA. But sadly for me, my writing skills were more suited to reporting than scriptwriting.

So I’m a sympathetic audience, and one that writes about TV every day. So here’s my take on a couple of things in this thread.

Yes, not every “average joe” understands why the strike happened. But just about every American has dealt with unfair compensation, greedy management and the impact of the Internet. When they’re given a chance, most people do “get” it.

And the explosion of blogs has had one side-effect that helps the WGA. If you’re ever blogged daily, you understand how hard it is to crank something out worthwhile. Even if you’re blogging about your cat, it’s not easy.

Have faith in the public, and somewhat more faith in the press. Yes, the big media journalists won’t have much interest, but there are a lot of other options.

As far as not talking to the press, I understand why the WGA would want that. But honestly, if you’re going to engage in long threads on sites like this one, you would probably be better off spending the time reaching out to the public and to smaller news organizations.

The biggest advantage the WGA has over management is that they have a good story to tell. And who better to tell the story than a bunch of writers?

rick@allyourtv.com

Completely a side-note, and don’t want to distract from this very important topic, but this is worth recognizing:

“Residuals are not like magic cake.”

Probably the funniest line in the history of the world.

Wow.

I mean…wow.

Everyone, let’s not forget what’s most important. Right now there are millions of people that have been affected by this strike. Before they go to bed they stare at the ceiling and wonder how much longer they can go without a paycheck. They wake up in the morning and think about the day they may have to ask their teenage son to recommend him/her for a job at the motherfucking Gap. They think about this strike lasting until January and the day they have to explain to a 5 year old that Christmas is gonna be a little different this year.

They think about their healthcare running out.

They think about pulling their parents out of the decent nursing home to the one where asbestos lines the walls.

They think about not being able to feed a family of 5.

They is Us.

This is fucking serious. But no, we’re 90 post deep in a thread about a goddamn analogy. How out of touch do you have to be to attack a fucking analogy? How totally unaffected do you have to be?

Guess what? If the AMPTP or the general public do indeed read this blog, we don’t need to worry about leaking strategies. Maybe we should worry about looking like infantile assholes that have nothing better to do than discuss what the proper analogy should be.

This is sick.

Kevin, the reason coming up with a strong way to explain the writers side is important because it will help END THE STRIKE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

The writers actually understand and care that the strike is causing a lot of tragedy for innocent bystanders.

Do they AMPTP companies care? Doesn’t seem like it. Not even a little.

I’m tired of writers being called greedy and selfish when that is EXACTLY what they are standing up against.

If the AMPTP actually cared about all the people this is effecting, they would end the strike today with a fair deal.

But they don’t because they know people like you will be short-sighted, and blame the writers. And they’re totally off the hook.

Actually Wal-Mart make very little on a new release DVD sale. Often selling it at a loss. The studios pocket the vast majority of the retail price.

Jimmy, are you serious? anytime someone posts questioning the strike or reasons for it. they get called a shill or a corporate lackey. i don’t see any sympathy. now get back to your gay orgy man pile. south park rules

Sorry, Josh, but your facts are simply wrong regarding book sales.

Most authors of books NEVER get extra money beyond their initial advance.

Most books go out of print.

The only ones that make money for the author in the form of royalties are books that sell well, that are popular.

So this analogy does in fact work very well with TV and Movies.

The shows that are popular continue to be consumed by viewers, (reruns in the old days, reprints in the form of books). Now that continuned viewing is in the form of DVDs.

But mainly it will be in the form of the internet, watching tv and movies on your computer.

Josh, i really don’t understand your anger or viciousness. But i do understand that you lack information and resort to twisting facts to suit your reality—exactly as the AMPTP does.

and for the record—i’m an a WGA on-strke writer who can’t afford to be out of work, but support my union.

-Jack

Magic cake? I am going to use this analogy just because of the looks I will get! Seriously, it is an interesting way to explain it.

Does anyone think that having separate agreements for TV residuals and Film Residuals would be a good idea? I think a lot of the complexity related to this issue is based on the converging means of distribution and revenue streams across TV, Internet, DVD, Theater, etc…

It would seem more fair to me if they could come up with a means of defining residuals based on profits…that way the writer of a small film that turns a profit has a shot of making money on modest DVD sales while the writer of a wildly unprofitable tent-pole movie gets nothing on the back-end. That seems to be a better moral argument. Of course the accounting practices of the companies makes this a near impossibility.

Don’t directors get 10% of the budget on a studio movie?

Jimmy,

Kevin, the reason coming up with a strong way to explain the writers side is important because it will help END THE STRIKE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.”

But they don�t because they know people like you will be short-sighted, and blame the writers. And they�re totally off the hook.”

Read my post again.

I’m referring to this stupid ass analogy war on why someone else’s is wrong or incorrect. What I’m saying is:

Who gives a fuck?!

We can do better than this. I know we can.

The problem with the stock option analogy is the failure to consider the downside. If the movie makes less than what was anticipated when the writer was paid, does the writer have to return money? If not, why should he/she participate in unexpected profits?

That’s not how stock options work in the known universe. They work like this — you earn a certain number of them at a certain market price based on their value at the time you earn them. If the stock price continues to rise, their value rises. If it doesn’t their value doesn’t rise.

What makes them rise? Lots of factors, one of which is your work to make the company succeed.

In the entertainment industry, since most of the content creators are not employees, everyone makes the same bet on the content itself rather than on the company. But the bet is the same — the value resulting from the writer’s work will increase over time and keep making the studio money over time.

Residuals are part of what a studio pays for the writer to create that sort of content, without having to pay them the full value of it up front.

As #59 mentioned above, that value is unknowable. But the one thing that is knowable is that no publicly traded studio/media conglomerate will invest in content that it believes will NOT make money. So the baseline value is already established — the budget to produce, market and distribute the content, plus profit. And that’s predictable early on in the process.

Got a $150 million movie? Double it for costs to $300 million. Add a meager profit of, say, 6%. The studio purchases the content from the writer, projecting (not expecting, projecting) to make around $318 million.

And don’t get hung up on the numbers — the formula applies to $30 thousand as well as $300 million.

The next argument will probably be that, well, if the content is out there but not profitable, why should the writer make any money if the studio isn’t? Well, the studio is making money. It’s called cashflow. But not being an employee, a writer has absolutely no input into whether or not a company is run well enough to profit from the content he/she created that provides said cashflow.

Which is why it’s residuals and not stock options.

Malcolm asked:

Don�t directors get 10% of the budget on a studio movie?

Not too often. Depends on the budget and the director. For instance, I’m getting paid more to write my movie than I am to direct it.

The reason why it’s a bad analogy is because the purpose of an analogy is to explain and clairify, usually by referring to something people know and can relate to, not to something abstract that itself needs to be explained… like magic cake.

The reason why it’s crucial to not make bad analogies in the attempt to explain residuals is because to gain the public’s interest and support the public needs to know and understand what the issue is.

Try again, Craig.

In the case of this ‘cake’ analogy, well intended as I’m sure it is, there are only a very small group of WGA members who will have their cake and eat it, too.

Comment #96 proves why it’s so important for some of these so-called writers to steal other’s work. What a selfish and desperate comment, with the fear of no health care and having to work at the Gap thrown in for special effects. Why not do what the rest of america has to do for health care? Rely on the 12 hour emergency room wait. Get a 2nd job if you’re worried about feeding your kids. UPS is always hiring. If you’re a writer and worried about health care etc… then you should change careers. Maybe writing is not for you, because you’re not successful if you’re worried about paying your bills. How is that healthy? Cancer comes from this type of silliness. A successful writer with talent is not worried about working at the Gap because that writer has enough money to buy the Gap. Step your game up, that’s the answer.

CVCOBB01—-I think you are missing the point about stock options. They are worthless unless the price of the stock goes up- whereas residuals are a straight line share of revenue more analogous to commissions paid to a salesperson.

Your profit equation is also off the mark…studios do not anticipate profit on most films—they know it is about diversifying risk and the five marginal losers are outweighed by the one blockbuster.

Likewise your argument that ‘cashflow’ means making money is also incorrect. Think of it this way…when a movie is made there are massive cash outflows prior to any cash inflows…then on the back end the equation flips and cash inflows begin through distribution. If you are considering CASH IN—-you must also consider CASH OUT.

November 12, 2007 — 7:15 a.m. EST

A Hollywood Story Without an Ending By JOSEPH SCHUMAN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

In Hollywood, the West Coast capital of conventional wisdom, several theories about the Writers Guild strike are widely held: The longer writers and their production patrons stay away from the negotiating table, the harder it’ll be to come back; no side is likely to emerge unscathed; and a lengthy disruption of storytelling at the heart of film and television could help alter an already rapidly evolving media ecosystem. What nobody claims to know is how. As the second week of the strike begins, layoffs have already spread across parts of the TV sector and hostility is growing, with the pain expected to widen next month when the networks and studios can begin to apply the “force majeure” clauses in many contracts and thus walk away from deals and cut actors’ pay, as Variety reports. “Because force majeure clauses usually require six weeks after a strike has started to kick in, there’s a lurking suspicion that the companies won’t push for a quick return to the bargaining table,” Variety says. The guild told star-strewn supporters to hit the studio-lot picket lines again at 6 a.m., following up on the 3,000-strong rally outside Fox’s Century City headquarters on Friday. Fox in particular has drawn the writers’ ire thanks to a comment from Peter Chernin, president of parent company News Corp., who suggested to analysts during an earnings conference call that the strike could “probably be a positive” for the company, as the Los Angeles Times reports. “We save more money in term deals and, you know, story costs and probably the lack of making pilots than we lose in potential advertising,” he said. And the Times notes that Mr. Chernin is probably right, at least in the short term, since Fox’s reliance on reality shows like “American Idol” puts it in a better position than rivals. As in many labor standoffs, the striking writers — despite the evident wealth of some picketers — may inspire public sympathy by facing off against corporate masters, but that isn’t likely to last, as Damon Lindelof, co-creator and head writer of ABC’s “Lost” wrote in the New York Times. “I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for ‘Lost’ to come back. And who could blame them?,” said Mr. Lindelof, who is also at the top of the writing hierarchy as one of the show’s producers. “Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on ‘America’s Next Hottest Cop’ and ‘Celebrity Eating Contest,’ I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us.” Mr. Lindelof and other showrunners do pretty well financially, but many of their picket-line comrades, as the N.Y. Times’s David Carr notes, earn just “a decent but not spectacular living by making people laugh or cry.” And if Mr. Chernin’s comments galvanized the writers, the hard line taken by some strike leaders may cause dismay as well. David Young, chief guild negotiator and a strategist behind the strike, may find little sympathy from the many production workers now out of a job with such a half-joking but unapologetic quip as he made to the L.A. Times: “I just lay back and look at the havoc I’ve wreaked.” As Mr. Lindelof noted, the strike, to writers, is all about getting their fair share of revenue for the works they create once those works have been recycled in digital media that weren’t a factor when the last writers strike hit the industry in 1988. But if the likes of DVDs, TiVo and streaming media have altered the playing field since then, “the underlying issues in the strike were pretty much the same as they are this time,” as The Wall Street Journal points out. “New technologies and markets were out there, but no one was sure what form they would take. And by the end, television had been set on a different course, accelerating a shift in viewers to cable and an increase in unscripted programming.” The likes of YouTube “may make the industry even more susceptible to drastic changes in viewing habits and programming styles this time around,” the Journal adds. Adding to the uncertainty are doubts not only about the viewing platform but about ad revenue models. Maurice Levy, chairman and chief executive of Publicis and an eminence grise of the ad industry, argued over the weekend that too many new media firms are competing for too few advertising dollars, the Financial Times reports. “Everyone is seeing advertising as the manna,” Mr. Levy told a media conference in Monaco. “Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone.” Still, at some point the revenue doubts will settle — until the next big change — which to some writers translates into more pressure to bargain now. “Because when television finally passes on, there will still be entertainment; there will still be shows and films and videos, right there on a screen in your living room,” Mr. Lindelof wrote. “And just as the owners of vaudeville theaters broke down and bought hand-crank movie cameras, the studios will figure out a way to make absurd amounts of money off of whatever is beaming onto whichever sort of screen.”

The baking analogy in the New York Times:

Screenwriters Seek Bigger Slice of Half-Eaten Pie

Let’s make that a bit more readable….

November 12, 2007 — 7:15 a.m. EST

A Hollywood Story Without an Ending By JOSEPH SCHUMAN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

In Hollywood, the West Coast capital of conventional wisdom, several theories about the Writers Guild strike are widely held: The longer writers and their production patrons stay away from the negotiating table, the harder it’ll be to come back; no side is likely to emerge unscathed; and a lengthy disruption of storytelling at the heart of film and television could help alter an already rapidly evolving media ecosystem. What nobody claims to know is how.

As the second week of the strike begins, layoffs have already spread across parts of the TV sector and hostility is growing, with the pain expected to widen next month when the networks and studios can begin to apply the “force majeure” clauses in many contracts and thus walk away from deals and cut actors’ pay, as Variety reports. “Because force majeure clauses usually require six weeks after a strike has started to kick in, there’s a lurking suspicion that the companies won’t push for a quick return to the bargaining table,” Variety says. The guild told star-strewn supporters to hit the studio-lot picket lines again at 6 a.m., following up on the 3,000-strong rally outside Fox’s Century City headquarters on Friday.

Fox in particular has drawn the writers’ ire thanks to a comment from Peter Chernin, president of parent company News Corp., who suggested to analysts during an earnings conference call that the strike could “probably be a positive” for the company, as the Los Angeles Times reports. “We save more money in term deals and, you know, story costs and probably the lack of making pilots than we lose in potential advertising,” he said. And the Times notes that Mr. Chernin is probably right, at least in the short term, since Fox’s reliance on reality shows like “American Idol” puts it in a better position than rivals.

As in many labor standoffs, the striking writers — despite the evident wealth of some picketers — may inspire public sympathy by facing off against corporate masters, but that isn’t likely to last, as Damon Lindelof, co-creator and head writer of ABC’s “Lost” wrote in the New York Times. “I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for ‘Lost’ to come back. And who could blame them?,” said Mr. Lindelof, who is also at the top of the writing hierarchy as one of the show’s producers. “Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on ‘America’s Next Hottest Cop’ and ‘Celebrity Eating Contest,’ I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us.” Mr. Lindelof and other showrunners do pretty well financially, but many of their picket-line comrades, as the N.Y. Times’s David Carr notes, earn just “a decent but not spectacular living by making people laugh or cry.” And if Mr. Chernin’s comments galvanized the writers, the hard line taken by some strike leaders may cause dismay as well. David Young, chief guild negotiator and a strategist behind the strike, may find little sympathy from the many production workers now out of a job with such a half-joking but unapologetic quip as he made to the L.A. Times: “I just lay back and look at the havoc I’ve wreaked.”

As Mr. Lindelof noted, the strike, to writers, is all about getting their fair share of revenue for the works they create once those works have been recycled in digital media that weren’t a factor when the last writers strike hit the industry in 1988. But if the likes of DVDs, TiVo and streaming media have altered the playing field since then, “the underlying issues in the strike were pretty much the same as they are this time,” as The Wall Street Journal points out. “New technologies and markets were out there, but no one was sure what form they would take. And by the end, television had been set on a different course, accelerating a shift in viewers to cable and an increase in unscripted programming.” The likes of YouTube “may make the industry even more susceptible to drastic changes in viewing habits and programming styles this time around,” the Journal adds.

Adding to the uncertainty are doubts not only about the viewing platform but about ad revenue models. Maurice Levy, chairman and chief executive of Publicis and an eminence grise of the ad industry, argued over the weekend that too many new media firms are competing for too few advertising dollars, the Financial Times reports. “Everyone is seeing advertising as the manna,” Mr. Levy told a media conference in Monaco. “Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone.” Still, at some point the revenue doubts will settle — until the next big change — which to some writers translates into more pressure to bargain now. “Because when television finally passes on, there will still be entertainment; there will still be shows and films and videos, right there on a screen in your living room,” Mr. Lindelof wrote. “And just as the owners of vaudeville theaters broke down and bought hand-crank movie cameras, the studios will figure out a way to make absurd amounts of money off of whatever is beaming onto whichever sort of screen.”

The studios are up in arms over video piracy. They are missing out on revenue that their legally reproduced copies could be making. They are protecting what is theirs. The writers are doing no less.

People understand why it’s wrong for me to make creme-filled spongecakes in my kitchen and sell them as “Twinkies” but they can’t comprehend why a writer should be entitled to compensation of a likewise property.

Good luck guys, I hope it works out soon!

“How totally unaffected do you have to be?”

It’s not about being unaffected. It’s about being a theorist instead of a realist. People deal with stress in different ways, some, those types who would become writers, fall back into their minds.

Though I guess you know that. And yes, we/you/they can probably do better.

These discussions on whether or not writers “deserve” residuals are kind of pointless. Nobody deserves anything. You get what you fight for.

‘Comment #96 proves why it�s so important for some of these so-called writers to steal other�s work. What a selfish and desperate comment, with the fear of no health care and having to work at the Gap thrown in for special effects. Why not do what the rest of america has to do for health care? Rely on the 12 hour emergency room wait. Get a 2nd job if you�re worried about feeding your kids. UPS is always hiring. If you�re a writer and worried about health care etc� then you should change careers. Maybe writing is not for you, because you�re not successful if you�re worried about paying your bills. How is that healthy? Cancer comes from this type of silliness. A successful writer with talent is not worried about working at the Gap because that writer has enough money to buy the Gap. Step your game up, that�s the answer. ”

This is a fantastic spoof post. A tremendous parody of ignorant yahoo with no knowledge of the industry spouting forth on a drive by.

And people say the art of comedy is dead. Well done this poster. That is creative writing at its best.

Kevin: It doesn’t take me long to think about how we’re going to pay the bills. The answer is: I don’t know. The kids are already job hunting. I’m already pricing everything I own but can live without for my upcoming estate sale. Everyone in the family has been informed that life has changed drastically, overnight. They also understand the concept of sacrifice. (Well, except for the teenagers, but they’re getting a chance for some hands-on experience.)

Dissecting analogies gives everybody a break from worrying about how we’re going to pay the bills. Other than thinking that getting public opinion behind us a little more (since the MSM is 100 percent against us, when they cover us at all) might be in some way helpful in bringing this to an end.

Other than picketing and doing what we can to get the message out, I’m not sure what “serious” thing we should be doing. WGA members are not unaware that people are losing their houses. Are other people aware that WE are losing our houses? Mine is going on the market as soon as we can clean it up enough for strangers to walk through it. We need the money to live on. We’re going to lose money by selling it at the worst possible time, if we can sell it at all. If we can’t, I literally don’t know how we’re going to pay the bills. I guess the three kids in college are going to have to drop out.

Is that serious enough?

111 - holy wall of text, batman

Let me get this straight. You say you got screwed on the VHS deal because you didn’t understand how profitable it would become. Now, you are trying to negotiate internet media with the same unknown potentials? Don’t you learn from your own mistakes?

Karen, you are giving all that up for a few extra bucks? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face…

CVCOBB01�-I think you are missing the point about stock options. They are worthless unless the price of the stock goes up- whereas residuals are a straight line share of revenue more analogous to commissions paid to a salesperson. Your profit equation is also off the mark�studios do not anticipate profit on most films�they know it is about diversifying risk and the five marginal losers are outweighed by the one blockbuster. Likewise your argument that �cashflow� means making money is also incorrect. Think of it this way�when a movie is made there are massive cash outflows prior to any cash inflows�then on the back end the equation flips and cash inflows begin through distribution. If you are considering CASH IN�-you must also consider CASH OUT.

You need to reread my post. I do this for a living, so you’re probably lecturing the wrong person. To anyone who understands business, I very obviously take into account both studio profits and cash out (or as we call that in business, “expenses”).

Studio profits aren’t worth debating becuase they run themselves as a non-profit, meaning they throw all cashflow into some nebulous rolling break-even point. Any other business would fight to contain costs and show a profit, but the studios have massive incentives not to. So let’s not get into a debate about studio profits. Anyone who takes that idea seriously should be laughed at.

Which is why profits don’t matter as far as residuals go. Studios have come and gone, but the content has remained. Just because the business wasn’t run well (in most businesses we tend to call that “profitable,” but studios operate differently) doesn’t mean the content is without valuable. When MGM tanked what did it do? Sold it’s content.

The studio and its products are intertwined, but the former is almost without value without the latter, though the opposite is not true. Residuals recognize that and are valued accordingly.

Simple concept. Easily understood.

i absolutely believe that stressing that we deserve residuals as exchange for copyright is the exact tactic to take. i think we are wrong that people dont “get it.” we live in an aspirational world where lots of people have an idea, an invention, a dream of cutting a record. they all understand getting a return on that. thats fairness. its understandable.

the problem with stressing the middle class writer who needs residuals to stay afloat is that it feels like charity, not fairness. either its fair and right that we get them, or not. if we’re just getting them to stay afloat, we are vulnerable to the critisism of all the below the line people who complain they dont get them, and work in the same capricious, unpredictable business. we are also vulnerable to the suspicion of the average american that our business is unpredictable. so what? so is everyone’s. get another job. no one is guaranteed a float on the career of their choice. no, the only argument is that we deserve them in exchange for copyright, no matter how rich or poor we are.

Craig, Josh O, and Company

Why don’t you power broker guys/gals have a meeting before the next post? Maybe you can hash something out. It appears that the internet isn’t helping in this case.

I still think you need a unified, simple mantra. Personally I don’t think that mantra is about residuals, cake, or stock options. I think it’s more about David vs Goliath. Because that’s what everybody ELSE can understand.

Essentially, your blog has become too big not to form a council.

One thing that might help is to convey that residuals is the “norm.”

At least i think it is.

I mean, writers/creators of things get residuals because it’s always made sense. The “money” people have always understood this, right? That’s why we get them. That’s why residuals are paid in other countries.

Or am I wrong?

Craig (or anyone) how often do Directors get 10% of a movie budget, if they’re not also Producing?

I recall Coppola got 10% gross for The Godfather Part II, so I assumed it was quite rare they got such big paydays.

Side note: Does anyone at the AMPTP wonder whether their position of no payment for internet re-use undercuts their own anti-piracy p.r. strategy? How do they tell the public writers don’t deserve compensation for internet re-use but media congloms do? Seems like they are on dangerous ground.

It’s clear that the most important thing in this strike is which analogy is best, so I’m putting together a short list of analogies you can refer to when trying to convince struggling elementary school teachers that you really deserve that Cyan Mercedes Benz in order to complete the CGA color spectrum.

1. Residuals are like novel or song royalties.
2. Residuals are like royalites you might receive for blueprints used by KB Home to construct thousands of houses that are all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just alike.
3. Movies and TV shows are like toilets and screenwriters are like plumbers because they keep the shit flowing.
4. Screenplays are like magic cake.
5. Craig Mazin is like Uncle Tom because you’re a traitor to your race if you come up with strained analogies such as "screenplays are like magic cake."

Craig, I’m a fan and etc. But the magic cake is a terrible analogy. All is forgiven though as I know you’re working 7 days a week these days so my analogy expectations are low.

I’d just stick to music/radio play analogies. No need to invoke magic cakes, carrots, beans, bread, pie, milk, cookies or pudding.

As always — I support you guys and gals on the picket lines (and would visit to show that support if I weren’t in RI right now).

FWIW< Studios are resorting to the accounting defense now:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117975782.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

I find it suspect that a study backing studio accounting comes out two weeks after the strike started.

cvcobb01…OK so you’re in the biz…that doesn’t change my assertion that you misused the term cashflow and your analogy to stock options is apples to oranges. Of course, you’re right about profits being impossible to figure out…that said i guaranty you that studios are incented NOT to waste money—it’s called a stock price.

BTW- I think we’re on the same page that writers deserve much higher compensation for the backend performance of the content they create.

I’ve sought easy, real-world analogies myself for our side of the fight, and I’ve found the book/music one most helpful — because when you think about it at all, it’s not an analogy. It’s just the way it really is.

I tell people, “Say you’re Stephen King, and you’ve been struggling for years to get a novel published, and after being broke forever finally you sell CARRIE. And they pay you $10,000 for the book (not uncommon), and lo, it becomes a bestseller in hardback.

“But you never get another check. And when you call to ask why, the publishers (who have since each purchased a private jet) tell you that your book has actually lost $225 million and will likely never generate a profit, and that part of the problem is that writers like you get paid too much to begin with.

“Then they publish the paperback, which sells five or ten times more copies than the hardback did, and they tell you, ‘We already paid you once, we don’t pay the plumber more than once,’ and they still don’t give you a dime for it. Thirty years later your book CARRIE is still on the racks in every bookstore in America, yet you never see a dime.

“Then they make a movie out of it, and they don’t pay you anything for that either, because they say the movie is ‘promotional’ — it’s to help sell the hardback. (Which is now out of print.) And they don’t pay you for the audiobook either, which they had you narrate for free. And they don’t pay you for the DVDs, nor the ITunes downloads, nor the TV miniseries remake of CARRIE that gets made a few decades after your book sells.

“By this time your wife has left you, you HAVE become a plumber, and you’ve burned those other nascent novels of yours like THE STAND and THE SHINING, because if there’s one thing you’ve learned from all this it’s that it is impossible to make any kind of profit in novels.

“That sound like a good deal to you?”

Or if you’d rather, substitute Springsteen. “We paid you for the vinyl copies, but you don’t get anything for the CD, that’s a different medium. Nothing for ITunes, either. And when we use your song in a car commercial, that’s promotional use, it’s on free TV, nobody pays to watch that, so zip, Bruce.”

Bill

Just wondering if anyone else is slightly pained by the unintended irony here, so for whatever it might be worth to point this out….

Doesn’t it seem like slightly bad form, in the context of a discussion about why creators should be paid for the reuse of their content, to cut and paste entire articles that were written by someone else and published by someone else into the comments section of a blog? Thus depriving the publisher and, at least indirectly, the author of said article from whatever money they might otherwise have made by having this site’s probably-numbering-in-the-thousands readership visit their website and view their ads in the process of reading the article at its source? Would posting a link to the article be too much to ask, if only for the sake of maintaining our claim to the moral high ground?

(But it’s a subscription site, and people wouldn’t be able to read the article unless they paid, would be the obvious, if whiny, retort, I guess. Well, yeah. Isn’t that the whole fucking point of this discussion? Don’t content creators and publishers have an inalienable right to be paid when people read/use/view their content? If you think nothing of cutting and pasting someone else’s work and sharing it with the entire world simply because it’s convenient for you to do so, then how can you bitch when someone else “cuts and pastes” your movie/show/whatever else onto their website and shares it with the world—minus any pesky intervening compensation to you—simply because it’s convenient for them to do so?)

(Which means they’ll feel better about doing it to my movies, too, which pisses me off quite a bit more, frankly.)

I realize I’m probably sounding like a bit of a pedantic ass here, but I’m pseudonymous anyway, so what the hell. Is even a modicum of philosophical consistency too much to ask for at a time like this?

Principles = Good

Karen, you are giving all that up for a few extra bucks? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face�

Why don’t people understand that there is a principle at stake here? A principle about fairness, decency, and the right to be paid for your work.

I think most writers know that they will lose more money in the short run than they might ever earn in the long run.

This is about drawing the line to a coporate system that will continue to ask for more and more and more in unfair cuts and rollback until there’s not only a short term loss, but nothing long term to even fight for.

And this is why that the AMPTP constantly responds to the strike through the filter of money “those greedy writers”, “the world record for millionaires”, “suspend their pay”, “cut their contracts”…because all they understand or process is money.

There’s a principle at stake here. And I really respect everyone who’s willing to give up so much to help protect my future as an aspiring writer.

Thank you.

Bill,

Brilliant, from top to bottom. You have won the game, sir.

(This post, alas, is probably your entire prize. But at least you can always say you won.)

Karen, you are giving all that up for a few extra bucks? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face…

Why don’t people understand that there is a principle at stake here? A principle about fairness, decency, and the right to be paid for your work.

I think most writers know that they will lose more money in the short run than they might ever earn in the long run.

This is about drawing the line to a coporate system that will continue to ask for more and more and more in unfair cuts and rollbacks until there’s not only a short term loss, but nothing long term to even fight for. If it could be a legal sweatshop, they’ll take it. Guaranteed.

And this is why the AMPTP constantly responds to the strike through the filter of money; “those greedy writers”, “the world record for millionaires”, “suspend their pay”, “cut their contracts”…because all they understand or process is money.

They think the writers are fighting for more money. So they threaten their money thinking that’s a good tactic. The writers are fighting for fairness. They are fighting for a stake in the future of their industry.

There’s a principle at stake here. And I really respect everyone who’s willing to give up so much to help protect my future as an aspiring writer.

Thank you.

Craig,

Laugh all you want, houseboy, but while you continue to insist we have a PR problem, and that we’re having a hard time explaining ourselves to John Q. Public, John Q. Public actually gets what we’re doing, and supports the strike in overwhelming numbers. But hey, if you can dishearten one writer, convince one person to chuck it and stay home today, you’ll have proven your worth.

Kevin,

“Right now there are millions of people that have been affected by this strike. Before they go to bed they stare at the ceiling and wonder how much longer they can go without a paycheck. “

Let them eat cake. Magic cake.

“How out of touch do you have to be to attack a fucking analogy? How totally unaffected do you have to be?”

More to the point, how stupid do you have to be to think this is about an analogy. It’s about a guy who takes every opportunity he can to denigrate what we’re doing. The issue isn’t that the analogy sucked (which it did), it’s that Craig’s asserting that we need analogies to explain residuals, and that this is a problem we face right now. We don’t, and it isn’t. But if all you do is look for any way possible to attack the Guild, the strike, and the men and women who are out there on the streets, this is as good as any. “You guys are losing the PR war. Here’s an analogy that will make things even worse. Have a nice day.”

Step back and look at this place, Kevin. Folks are finally getting it. They finally understand what Craig’s up to here, and how harmful he tries to be. Call me a nut, but I won’t be satisfied until even you get it.

Jack M,

“Sorry, Josh, but your facts are simply wrong regarding book sales.”

Wait, so writers don’t keep getting paid if their books continue selling, and are reprinted in other languages, and adapted into movies, and and and….? Okay. You’re right. I apologize. My analogy got the facts wrong. But Craig’s magic cake… that’s really how it works, man!

Heh. I knew someone would crawl out of the woodwork to attack it. No, my facts aren’t wrong. The situation is simply not a perfect analogy. I acknowledged that openly. But that you would criticize mine, which is hella close, and let Craig’s - which is utter, imbecilic malarkey - stand, kinda ends this one before it starts.

“Josh, i really don�t understand your anger or viciousness. “

My anger comes from the fact that like a lot of people, I’m out there every day, on the line for my union, and I come home to find this guy doing everything he can, no matter how picayune, to undermine the strike. All because he either wants to take a run at the Guild himself some time, or to shore up his ego by making himself a central character in this story, or both.

Viciousness? Eh. A matter of interpretation. The dude’s doing the devil’s work here. I reserve the right to kick back.

“Karen, you are giving all that up for a few extra bucks? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face�”

To the anonymous AMPTP troll who wrote that…

It isn’t for a few extra bucks. It’s for something you should be in the market for… integrity.

Writers understand that we’d still be chained to a cubicle getting a weekly sustenance check to grind out hackwork if those who came before us hadn’t made sacrifices and taken this profession forward.

We aren’t prepared to take backward steps on our watch. We aren’t going to have the next three generations of screenwriters look back at us with shame.

You know what shame is don’t you, you sad little unprincipled sack of slime? The next three generations of corporate lackeys won’t bother looking back on you at all.

Sleep tight.

Scott,

“Personally I don�t think that mantra is about residuals, cake, or stock options. I think it�s more about David vs Goliath. “

Happily, that’s how the majority of the general public seem to see it, too. Which is a good thing.

Ted,

It’s all right if you think I’m stupid, but don’t talk to me like I am.

You think I don’t know what your intention is? Hilarious. Yes, you have the mutant ability to retain every piece of contract law and negotiation document that you read, and I do not. You live for the moments when you can explain to someone that their reading of these things is wrong, because they’ve fallen prey to the old “is means is” fallacy.

You know just enough to be able to play word games online, but you still fall into the occasional hole, as you did earlier when you insisted that violating a contract to go on strike was somehow unethical, or wrong, and displayed a curious ignorance of basic contract law.

My reasons for being on strike are the same as most folks out there, if not all of them. And I’ll happily discuss them with anyone who isn’t a passive aggressive, plodding pedant who’s looking to create a moral context to justify his friend’s abhorrent behavior.

Now go back to telling us how craven the show runners are. Cos those posts are almost as funny as the magic cake, just in a sadder kinda way….

Oops. How’d the double post happen? If there’s an admin…please strike out #133. And maybe this one, lol.

Josh,

On the heels of your “massa” comment, you trot out “houseboy”?

You might want to rethink your agenda or your approach to its implementation, because one or the other is resulting in the use of language that could be considered extremely offensive to a lot of people.

First of all, I see this as another tale of exploitation. Corporations will try and get away with squeezing as much as possible from both their “employees” and the market. This is how they are set up — as perpetually feeding organisms which don’t have to produce anything but wealth. It’s important to understand that.

The plumber analogy leads to the quesion: why do consumers have to pay (with money or attention+time by watching ads etc.) for something which was created a long time ago? If we switch the analogy, it’s like paying the plumber to install a toilet and never own it, but have to pay 25c every time you use it. Yes, the cost of movies/tv shows is enormous, but that’s because everyone creating them gets paid. Very well. So an year or two after release, a movie has made a profit which allows for the people involved to make a very, very good living, even compared to the highest-paid plumber or an affluent doctor.

So the overly manipulated and extended copyright laws say that the corporation which invested into the making of the work and made a hefty profit, can charge the general public for the next 100+ years.

If this is the case, OF COURSE everyone involved should get a piece of that profit. But should something which costs almost nothing to copy, distribute and use (unlike baking a material cake) be always sold and controlled with profit in mind? This puts plumbers and doctors and anyone who isn’t involved in the production of “mass-entertainment intellectual property” or drug formulas far behind in the food chain.

If all industries demanded similar approach to their products, we would have pay per entry buildings, pay per pet cats, pay per wear clothes, pay per use toilets, pay per view watches.

100+ year copyright terms are a way for corporations to milk society. It is the same greed and insensibility which drives them to refuse giving a piece of the action to content creators. Let’s acknowledge that and address the core issue.

Hey, one last question - say my magic cake tastes like splooge, and they have to hire another elf to spice up the cake. And say that elf ends up cutting smaller slices when no one’s looking and sells them at night at Target, thus undercutting me and Walmart.

Is he a scab, or is he just a rewriter, and if so, can I turn him over to the Orc’s for punishment?

And if so, what’s the proper punishment? Banishment? Or can we transform him into a head of lettuce?

And if we do that, and it turns out he magically replenishes his own leaves, can I sell those? And if I do, and someone tries to flush one down the toilet, and the toilet clogs, and they have to call the plumber… do I have to pay the plumber every time I flush? Or can I just send a check to the architects’ union?

Mike K and the others that seem to be trying to play a race card or call Josh a racist need to cut the crap.

He did not use those terms in a remotely offensive way. Quite the contrary. He used them in a way that puts down racism, classism, and such.

Insulting him on these grounds and trying to suggest he’s a racist is utterly tacky. Either provide his Klan sheets or drop it and argue against his points.

I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a strike on and adults have more important things to discuss than your childish attempts at character assassination.

Mike K,

“You might want to rethink your agenda or your approach to its implementation, because one or the other is resulting in the use of language that could be considered extremely offensive to a lot of people.”

Please. When someone is so cozy with the bosses that they’ve lost sight of what their peers are going through, history provides us a perfect analogy. There are some illiterates and ignoramuses who do not understand history, or who abide by political correctness so rigidly they’d shut down any discussion that might remind people of dark times in our past… but hey, they can blow me, too.

Doesn�t it seem like slightly bad form, in the context of a discussion about why creators should be paid for the reuse of their content, to cut and paste entire articles that were written by someone else and published by someone else into the comments section of a blog? Thus depriving the publisher and, at least indirectly, the author of said article from whatever money they might otherwise have made by having this site�s probably-numbering-in-the-thousands readership visit their website and view their ads in the process of reading the article at its source? Would posting a link to the article be too much to ask, if only for the sake of maintaining our claim to the moral high ground?

I’ll take the responsibility for my post. But the article wasn’t published online, it was included in an e-mail newsletter — thus, no link to post.

I’m all for paying for content. I paid for my subscription to the Wall Street Journal, which is how I got the e-mail newsletter. I’m not aware of a practical way to share that content with the readers here — content that I think would be valuable to them — other than to cut and paste it with attribution.

Vince,

“Insulting him on these grounds and trying to suggest he�s a racist is utterly tacky. Either provide his Klan sheets or drop it and argue against his points”

Thanks, but it’s par for the course around here. Last week, I was a Nazi. This week, a Klanner. Good thing, too, cos my SS uniform’s at the cleaners, but I got sheets for days!

Vince,

Jesus called, he wants his cross back. Let me know when your “acension to heaven” party is, i’ll bring a date.

Call it what you like. Josh used both terms intentionally to be offensive. Personally, I don’t care if he’s putting down Craig, or me, or if he is genuinely racist (I don’t believe that, for the record). But the language was used to evoke a slave-master relationship, and it does just that.

That is what weakens an argument. Josh can do better.

Easy, big fella. It’s just a cake analogy. That’s all.

It’s just cake.

Easy.

Eaaaaasy.

There you go. See?

Josh Olson certainly loses all sense and reason more entertainingly than anyone else I’ve ever seen. And I mean that at least 98% in a good way.

May you never grow sane, please.

No, you people don’t understand! Craig used the word “was!” He’s talking in the past people! Don’t you see how damaging that is? We need to look to the future.

I’ve noticed he used conditional terms too. This blog is evil! “Magic cake” is a code phrase to his AMPTP masters.

Wake up! Wake up before it’s all to late.

I ain’ be unnerstannin this here magic cake bizness. All I knows is I be highly offended by Mr. Olson’s referencing to Mr. Mazin as a “houseboy.” We houseboys gots more integrity than that, and ain’ nearly so heavy-handed with our clumsy analogies.

“If all industries demanded similar approach to their products, we would have pay per entry buildings, pay per pet cats, pay per wear clothes, pay per use toilets, pay per view watches.” —Andre

This is why anaologies don’t work. It’s also why Andre is not getting calls from NASA.

You see, Andre, when you create something that other people want, you can set the terms for them getting it. If you don’t have the foresight to set terms favorable to yourself, you’re likely to watch others get rich while you get screwed. Look at Nikola Tesla as perhaps history’s greatest example of this.

But when there are enough people getting screwed in a particular industry, they set up this group called a “union” and that union engages in something called “collective bargaining” in an effort to try to get a better deal for the people in that industry.

The people in the toilet, watchmaking, and cat breeding industries are certainly welcome to attempt this.

However, they will need to be smarter than you.

Because, Andre, if you go out and buy a DVD of your absolute favorite movie or tv show… which I’m guessing is probably a Teletubbies collection… it’s yours. You can watch it over and over. You don’t have to put quarters in the DVD player to make it work.

But you can’t make copies of it and sell them.

You can watch your watch and pet your cat and flush your toilet to your heart is bubbling with contentment.

But you can’t manufacture toilets using Kohler’s patented design. You can’t manufacture watches that infringe on Seiko’s patent and even put the Seiko logo on it. And you can’t mate with your cat.

However, the AMPTP can do whatever they want with the writer’s work and do to him what you shouldn’t be doing with that cat.

And it isn’t right.

So stop trying to screw the cat with all that copyright being oppressive crap.

Don’t you have a Teletubbies DVD to flush?

Josh,

“…history provides us a perfect analogy.”

I had to allow myself a crooked smile given that it was Craig’s imperfect analogy that set you off. Congratulations on finding a perfect one. They are few and far between.

“There are some illiterates and ignoramuses who do not understand history, or who abide by political correctness so rigidly they�d shut down any discussion that might remind people of dark times in our past…”

I’m not sure which group I belong in. I will admit to an imperfect understanding of history, I suppose. And I think that you know better than to suggest I’m trying to stifle discussion. I think, but I guess I’m not sure of that either.

It’s just that with all your skill, I would hope you could find a better way of expressing yourself.

It’s moot, anyway. I promise you that I am not ignorant enough to believe for one second that you care what anyone else thinks.

Uncle Tom made my laugh.

The comment, not the book.

The book was just not funny at all.

out of work? need a job? sign up at tormentthewga.com! we have a vast pool of money from the AMPTP and pay top dollar for trolling writers guild blogs, websites, and news stories. meh… seriously, learn to debate.

Vince wrote: “This is why anaologies don�t work. It�s also why Andre is not getting calls from NASA.”

LOL!

The bomb would like to take this moment to announce his return from retirement. I have perused his thread and feel that I am needed to aid those who fall under attack from the probably-insane.

ps.

Good one, Vince.

The bomb laughed.

Hey, one last question - say my magic cake tastes like splooge, and they have to hire another elf to spice up the cake. And say that elf ends up cutting smaller slices when no one�s looking and sells them at night at Target, thus undercutting me and Walmart.

Is he a scab, or is he just a rewriter, and if so, can I turn him over to the Orc�s for punishment?

And if so, what�s the proper punishment? Banishment? Or can we transform him into a head of lettuce?

And if we do that, and it turns out he magically replenishes his own leaves, can I sell those? And if I do, and someone tries to flush one down the toilet, and the toilet clogs, and they have to call the plumber� do I have to pay the plumber every time I flush? Or can I just send a check to the architects� union?

Posted by: Josh Olson at November 12, 2007 11:31 AM

Wish I had an LOL icon. I truly did so loud I startled my dog. :)

Don’t be offended. I’m sure Josh was likening Craig to a Chinese houseboy. If he had been referring to an African-American in a similar position, there’s another phrase that includes the word “house” as a modifier that would be more specific.

“Vince,

Jesus called, he wants his cross back. Let me know when your �acension to heaven� party is, i�ll bring a date.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 12, 2007 11:41 AM”

Let me know when you grow a pair and start using your real name.

Let me know when you grow a pair and start using your real name.

fixed

Josh,

You must have a lot of time on your hands. What is it that you do when you’re not here?

Are you on strike?
Are you a writer of some kind?

What is your interest in all this?

Seriously.

-Jack.

my bad, i was gonna make it “you’re a fucking idiot”, but i was inspired to change it and the name box was so small i didn’t backspace enough.

Someone left the cake out in the rain I don’t think that I can take it ‘Cause it took so long to bake it And I’ll never have that recipe again Oh, no!

161 and 163

Nice try, but as a writer, I’m my own worst fucking nightmare. Sorry the position is filled. Good luck in your future endeavors…

And you might want to consider changing your real name. That’s gotta suck on your driver’s license.

Ooooh yeah, a dirty yellow Chinaman houseboy’d stab his own mammy in the kidneys just to gets in massa’s good graces, den write up 3000 words of mixed-metaphorical jibba-jabba ‘bout mojo-enhanced baked goods just to spite the rest of us houseboys. No sir, don’ truss em.

Let them eat cake!

Have your cake and eat it too!

One thing we call all agree on is that we all love cake. It’s magically delicious. In fact, not liking cake is downright un-American.

Cake is the new apple pie.

Josh:

Houseboy? I don’t get it.

You wrote:

Laugh all you want, houseboy, but while you continue to insist we have a PR problem, and that we’re having a hard time explaining ourselves to John Q. Public, John Q. Public actually gets what we’re doing, and supports the strike in overwhelming numbers. But hey, if you can dishearten one writer, convince one person to chuck it and stay home today, you’ll have proven your worth.

Of course, I complimented the WGA on their video right up at the beginning of the article, but like a mutual friend of ours commented to me today…

…you’ve jumped the asshole shark with this one.

Kind of the end of an era. Oh well. You had a good run.

Vince —

Actually, he was named for his great-grandfather, Uri Wurst Fuckenightmeir. But they changed the family name at Ellis Island.

That’s the first time I’ve encountered the phrase “mixed-metaphorical jibba-jabba” since Mr. T and I were discussing Reagan-era politics in the late 1980’s.

That T! What a guy!

Ohhh, I’m the houseboy….

Now I get it.

Aw, that’s cute.

I wish I could be an authentic writer like you. Is it awesome?

If any of you haven’t had a chance to look at the new video posted on www.unitedhollywood.com, watch it now. Anyone who is sitting on the fence about this strike will immediately turn sympathetic towards the writer’s side after watching this video, in my opinion. These are the quotes that are missing from Variety, Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times.

Josh,

I’m nobody, one of the aspiring masses. I love writers and I support the strike.

I was offended by the use of grateful to massa. However, not because I thought it was racist! And I was appalled at the smear attempt in another thread.

I just thought it was sad, fucked writing.

It pains me to see someone whose work I admire descend to the art of the Ann Coulter School of Rhetoric here. It’s the ploy of those without ideas, or those whose ideas are utterly effete and who hold their readers in total contempt. I hope that’s not you. That stuff should be beneath the contempt of a good writer.

Please. We are all rooting for you.

Thought: you guys should virtually consider “taking this outside.” The World is Reading and it’s starting to look really, really bad.

Note: Josh Olson has still not answered the simple question “What does the AMPTP need to do for you to consider us to have won this strike?”

The inflammatory Mr. Olson is a most curious form of internet parasite; unable to gain an audience of his own, he latches on to a larger, more successful organism, and desires to kill it.

There is something very wrong with a person who does not like cake.

pie pwns cake

Wrong! As mentioned above: Cake is the new pie!

Is this the same Josh Olson who adapted a COMIC BOOK to a screenplay?

And then had a project based on a VIDEO GAME cancelled? (Halo)

If so, that explains your hostility to writers…

So basically the “Scary Movie” movies are never going away. (shiver)

Let me be clear. I think calling people “houseboy” or “waiting on Massa” is pretty lame and shows a certain laziness of argumentation. Further, if a person is going to go that route, he really ought to commit and use the epithet “house n**r,” you know, for maximum shock value. Otherwise, people are likely to get lost in the subtlety of the rhetoric.

My personal opinion is that, in an ideal world, other guilds and unions would unanimously honor the WGA’s picket lines and shut down the industry to prove that each and every guild and union has the leverage of all of them combined. However, given that almost all the guild and union contracts in the industry include no-strike and must-work provisions, the reality falls far short of the ideal. If all DGA members refused to work during a WGA strike, that would be great. However, the guilds and unions all have contract provisions requiring them in practice to remain neutral in any strike but their own, and to continue to work on any portion of a production that isn’t struck.

So it would be a bit over-the-top, in my opinion, to call you a traitor or a slave for doing what all contracts (including the WGA’s) call for in this situation. Personally, I would applaud you for stopping directing work during the WGA strike as a show of solidarity, but as a practical matter, unless a majority of the DGA (hyphenates and non-hyphenates) did the same, it wouldn’t have much practical impact.

Have I made myself clear?

Stuart, what you’ve made clear is that you’re not in the WGA. You have no dog in this fight. But you insist upon giving us, writers with no current income, your views.

Also, when you write “my personal opinion,” it’s redundant as all get out.

181 — ha, yeah! Josh Olson adapted a comic book! Touche, sir, I think you’ve got him fair and square with that one!

Bill Marsilii,

That is probably the best explanation of the situation that I have read or heard so far. It definitely takes the cake.

Perhaps you should send it out to the WGA and Variety.

Speaking of pie, massa says if I punch up some of them Spooky Praxinoscope pages while I be pretendin’ to clean the chimney, he let me have a slice of Aunt Meldie’s apple pie! Don’t know much about enchanted pastries but I do loves some apple pie.

Stuart @ 183

I’d go just a little further and say that’s it’s unfair for writers to complain about SAG or DGA members not joining the strike, when it’s the WGA that pulled the trigger early instead of just waiting until the other guilds’ contracts were up so everyone could all go out together.

That said, it’s great to see so much support.

“Please. When someone is so cozy with the bosses that they�ve lost sight of what their peers are going through, history provides us a perfect analogy. There are some illiterates and ignoramuses who do not understand history,”

Would those be the same ignoramuses who are comparing not receiving residual rates for Internet distribution with actual physical slavery? Because, if so, we both agree that those people are being completely ridiculous and so melodramatic as to undercut their own cause. (And we would both agree that the fact that the metaphor is inherently tinged with racism, this does not mean that using it automatically pegs the person as racist.)

Also, posting a bad metaphor over why people deserve residuals makes Craig exactly the same as a Nazi denying the Holocaust. And also, this situation is a lot like the one in Darfur, I bet.

(That said, Josh, every post you’ve made about the magic cake has been really good and dead-on, and 142 was my big laugh of the day… it’s just your vitriolic hyperbole that I’m mocking.)

Craig:

The main problem I find with your rather convoluted analogy is that it could not only fail as a strategic message but alienate the public from the cause.

For one thing, it further stresses the “magical” aspect of what the film and TV industry does. And the “magical” aspect could press the public’s mental “unimportant” button.

No offense, Craig, but in tone it sounds like you believe your audience (for this analogy) are no smarter than children.

Please know the following comes from my many years as an advertising & marketing writer.

When you do PR, when you market a message, never underestimate the public’s ability to comprehend.

The public is not stupid…

They don’t like being spoken down to …

They understand the residual issue…

Now you have to make them CARE.

It bears repeating … they must CARE about the writers’ getting their fair share.

As I said in another thread, the WGA needs an effective ad campign to put a real face on the middle-class writers.

Not a clever tongue in cheek thing — real case studies of writers who need those residuals.

I have a concept in mind and will donate my copywriting skills. All I would need were the case studies as input. People here like Karen have already shared their experiences. Of course we would need her permission and image.

I’d also like names of writers who may no longer be in the “working writers” category but whose work is still being released on DVD and rerun on TV. Show how much they need residuals for their families.

It would really be good if there was such a case study of someone who had penned a much-beloved show or film.

Graphically, all it would take is a nice B/W headshot of the people featured in the ads (one person/case study/per ad).

I’m sure there are photographers and graphic designers who could donate some time.

Ads can be on the WGA site but it would be great if the union could raise the cash to run in strategic newspapers (maybe the more affluent members could buy ad space).

If someone would provide the right contact person at WGA, I’ll shoot them an email.

Sign me - aspiring screenwriter and hopefully future WGA member.

Sorry that I’m irritating you so. I support the strike and the strikers. I’m under the impression that this is one of the appropriate places to make that support known.

Thanks for your support.

Josh —

As for residuals, Jesus, people. We’re really discussing whether or not we deserve ‘em? I write. You buy what I write, you pay me. It’s that fucking simple, and that is the MORAL ARGUMENT (Sorry, Ted. I know you hate those) that underlies what we’re fighting for… what we’re ALWAYS fighting for.)

Uh-huh. Here’s something I posted on WriterAction on September 3, 2005, during the presidentaial election, elaborating on what I believed needed to be the primary focus of this Guild in the run-up to the 2007 MBA Negotiations, and always:

What we do is create intellectual property in the form of screenplays and television scripts for corporations in the copyright exploitation industry.

And that is the real power that we have.

The Writers Guild is the only collective bargaining agency in the world that represents intellectual property creators who are recognized as authors, both under international law and U.S. law.

Yes, you read that right: U.S. law.

But not U.S. copyright law — U.S. contract law.

We have sixty years of legal precedent and case law that says the AMPTP Companies — and, now, the global media conglomerates — recognize the credited writer on a motion picture as the author of the story/dramatization used in the motion picture.

Because our residuals are tied to that credit, we have forty years of legal precedent and case law that says the AMPTP Companies (and, now, etc) recognize that writers, as the authors of intellectual properties, are entitled to benefit economically from the Companies’ (corporations) exercise of the copyrights they own in the work we create.

Due to our contract for foreign levies, we now have about five years of legal precedent that recognizes writers as the co-authors of the movie itself, and entitled as authors to economic benefits for use of our work.

That the author of an intellectual property is entitled to benefit economically from the exploitation of the copyright in his work is a principle under U.S. law that is derived from the Constitution, and is recognized as a moral and legal right in virtually every other country on earth.

The Guild leadership in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s recognized that it was the work-made-for-hire provisions of U.S. copyright law that were at once limiting our economic benefits while simultaneously giving us the right to bargain collectively (knowledge that seems completely foreign to far too many current members, by the way: something that we must change).

So what they did was win us contractual terms that replicated rights we would have collectively if there was no work-made-for-hire law. And it’s those rights, and the Guild’s enforcement of those rights, that are the foundation for the Guild to fight — both in negotiations and in the court of law, if necessary — that writers’ residuals are not only a contractual right, but our due under both the doctrine of Economic Right and the doctrine of Moral Right.

There’s only been a handful of people in this Guild that have consistently and persistently talked about screen and television writers’ issues from the point of view of copyright law and the moral and economic rights of authors — and one of them is me, and another is Craig.

• Ted

Is this the same Josh Olson who adapted a COMIC BOOK to a screenplay? And then had a project based on a VIDEO GAME cancelled? (Halo) If so, that explains your hostility to writers

I’m rather intrigued by this post. I’d really like to know, Jack m’boy…

What the fuck?

Within the word ‘analogy’ one may find the word ‘anal’.

I’m just sayin’.

“Not a clever tongue in cheek thing � real case studies of writers who need those residuals.”

It’s too bad the guys who invented Superman are dead now, because when they were alive, they were the perfect examples of how these companies screw over their creative employees.

And I bet Olson would just love it, because then he could compare Mazin to Bob Kane (who sold out Shuster and Siegel in order to make his own money).

Swifty,

you seem crafty.

Answer me this: how could anyone hate cake so much?

It’s crazy, right?

Jack M,

It’s the same Josh Olson who was deservedly nominated for an Oscar, as well.

Which explains YOUR hostility quite clearly.

Having been a fan of this site for some time, I started to get uneasy when the barbs against the Guild carried on right up to the start of the strike.

Since then, every single post, even those claiming to totally back the strike, has contained a little slur against the Guild, just enough to create doubt and give the blog plenty of hits from opposing sides. The big shout for Gould? Included a swipe at Verrone. ‘Not A Word’? Caveats about joining the strike as soon as work is done.

And now the land of the Magic Cake. Quite apart from the analogy, was there any need in your post, Craig, to point up the oh-so awful explanations from lesser mortals?

I came to this site because it was funny, and informed, and original. And there was this little subplot going on, so every time Craig said something slightly wacky, Josh Olson would be wound up into sending a barbed response. How we laughed.

But now, Olson is making all the running. He is making clear, sensible points, asking pertinent questions you are unable to answer. Why, when you voted for this strike, are you constantly putting it down? Why do you continue to use an open forum to criticise people who obviously know you and respect you, when you could be arguing with them in private? If, as you continue to say, you have no personal agenda with ambitions to run the Guild, what drives you to undermine your opponents within the Guild? And, a question I have asked three times so far on this site and have yet to receive a response to: aren’t you weakening the hand of your negotiating team every time you poke a stick at them?

Up to a week ago, I would have mocked the idea that this is about you, and your website, and how big a player you want it to be during the strike. Now I’m not so sure.

The strike is just starting to be reported properly here in the UK, beyond the usual ‘stars on the picket line’ and ‘what shows will we stop getting?’ space fillers. British writers are being approached to do your work. A hell of a lot of them don’t belong to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and a lot of them are struggling, and I bet a lot of them don’t care about your strike for whatever selfish reasons. If any writer in the UK were to ask my advice, I would urge them not to take the work, but if they were able to point out to me all the perceived errors and problems caused by the WGA officers, I would struggle to convince them otherwise.

Once again Craig, I ask you to stop posting about the Guild on an open forum. By all means continue to have your doubts, and continue to use whatever influence you still have. But use it where it works - in private.

Malcolm:

Greater civilizations have fallen over lesser things than the irrational hatred of cake.

Sadly, I can not answer your insightful query: “how could anyone hate cake so much?”

I honestly do not know. Perhaps said cake-hater was deprived of ‘cake’ at a young age. Maybe what they believed or hoped would be their portion of cake, was actually the portion of cake of a younger sibling. Maybe their cake left with daddy. Or maybe there never was any cake at all.

Yes, hating cake is crazy.

And oh so sad.

And lonely.

“Is this the same Josh Olson who adapted a COMIC BOOK to a screenplay?”

In addition to all the other things people have pointed out about this, I’d like to point out that calling a graphic novel a comic book is roughly akin to calling a book a magazine.

And that Olson got an Oscar nomination for said adaptation.

But I’m sure you had a good point in there somewhere.

UK Dave:

Glad that you’re a long-time fan.

Sorry to say “NO” to your polite request that I suddenly shut the fuck up.

Yes, I tend to praise and criticize in the same sentence.

That’s because I’m both happy and unhappy with the way things are going. I feel that way about a lot of things.

Most things.

Other than pizza and orgasms, most things fill me with some sort of ambivalence.

No, I do not believe I’m hurting the union or the strike in any way at all.

I don’t have any problem with people protesting leadership actions. Don’t have a problem with people protesting when they’re in the middle of a war or a strike. Don’t have any problem with public dissent of any kind.

Burn a flag.

Write a pamphlet.

March in a parade.

The free market of ideas will sort it out. If people think I’m wrong, then they think I’m wrong, and that’s that. If they think I’m right…then what’s the argument…we have to stop people from agreeing with me or else?

Come on.

The Olson thing is a red herring. He’s a stupid prank that an actual human named Josh Olson likes to play in here.

The more important issue you’re raising is whether or not dissent ought to be encouraged or stifled.

You’ve made your position clear.

I suspect I’ve made mine clear as well.

The other day, while out on the line with Josh and my striking bubbas and sisters, I overheard a hurtful diatribe.

A piece of cake was talking shit about Olsen’s mother.

Josh just stood there and took the abuse (he’s rather meek and toothless in real life you know).

He just stood there while that mean-spirited piece of cake talked shit.

So one can only imagine how much Mazin’s analogy rocked Josh to his very soul, especially considering his failure to defend his mother against the shit-talking cake that talked shit about him.

So I feel for you, bubba.

You go after Craig’s magic cake analogy! You take it apart on the internet like that shit-talking confection took you apart in real life!

(If you wanna fuck it in the frosting to teach it a lesson, we’ll all gladly look away.)

Sean: The term “graphic novel” is little more than a marketing term used by publishers to entice adults into buy comic books.

People who make comics call them comics: creators, writers, and artists.

The point is that a comic book is very close to being storyboarded. already. Pictures and dialogue. The key difference is the lack of motion of a comic. (And yes, I’ve written both.)

The ultimate point is one of originality. Believe me, it’s a whole lot easier to adapt than to invent.

David: I’m hardly hostile to an Oscar nomination. You shouldn’t make assumptions. I’m glad the screenplay got nominated. It did a lot for the field of comics!

Craig: I agree. Dissent should always be encouraged.

UK Dave: The UK has a terrific history of dissent in their comic books!

All:
I weary of this. Most of it has nothing to do with the strike or the WGA. My posts included.

“The term “graphic novel” is little more than a marketing term used by publishers to entice adults into buy comic books.”

I am perfectly aware of the origins of the term, but, much like “Xerox”, words take on certain meaning beyond their initial usage. “Graphic novels” have come to mean, among both fans and creators, a story with a beginning, middle, and end [as distinct from a “trade paperback collection”], while a “comic book” is something published in magazine form on a month to month basis with a serialized story. You might as well have said that Olson adapted a comic book into a soap opera. They’re two completely different ways of writing.

“People who make comics call them comics: creators, writers, and artists.”

Well, since your statement is “All people in the industry agree with me,” all I have to do is find one who disagrees with you, right? let’s just take it on faith that Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis have all made statements about the distinction, because I don’t feel like wasting my time tracking the quotes down just to prove that you’re as wrong as you obviously are.

“The point is that a comic book is very close to being storyboarded. already. Pictures and dialogue. The key difference is the lack of motion of a comic. (And yes, I’ve written both.)”

“The ultimate point is one of originality. Believe me, it’s a whole lot easier to adapt than to invent.”

I would say that if you genuinely feel that the storytelling involved is exactly the same, and there is no further adapting involved other than just typing the comic into a script format, I’d guess that’s why you’re not particularly successful at either comic book or movie writing.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of a less condescending way to express that (but, then, the guy trying to paint me as childish for making the above distinction can surely handle it).

The two media generally require very, very different means of storytelling — though certain writers such as Frank Miller have styles which are inherently cinematic and, thus, require less adapting. (This should be immediately obvious based on the simple fact that so many great comic books are made into so few remotely good movies.)

The idea that adapting something from one form to another is not writing, or is “less-than” writing, is so completely absurd that we should have a whole seperate talkback devoted to it.

I disagree. Your post does have to do with the strike. It would seem you agree with the AMPTP demand that writers be paid less for adaptations, a strikeable issue for many WGA members.

I think a better analogy is the Seinfeld Master of their Domain contest. An exercise in self-denial that amuses a nation in its foolishness.