Saturday, February 23, 2008
All too quiet on the post-strike front
Hollywood Reporter: "But a significant number of writers, it turns out, were not working on specs during the strike. And agents and studio execs who were expecting a feverish return to work have found that, while meetings are back in gear, deals and scripts have been thin on the ground."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
It does seem strange that we wouldn't suddenly hear of tons of activity among writers. I definitely assumed people would jump back to work, especially with new rules in place, etc. But I do like what the end of this article points out, which is that lesser-known writers may have an opportunity now to put their work out their. A slow period might be a good opportunity for many writers who are in fact bringing in scripts.
I think last week I was reading an article on this blog about the abundance of the post-strike scripts coming in actually. I think this is a quiet before the storm situation. There are many reasons for the writers to want to hold back on their goods until the ground is more stable, and creative minds don't just turn off. Even if the writers were too busy picketing to be typing away in their tiny New York studio apartments, I'm sure their minds were still whirring with creative ideas.
I don't doubt that the studios are skeptical about the stability of the current union. They just lost millions of dollars in revenue and the support of the public. All they really want to do now is to get back on track with the shows they know will make them money, and put aside new projects until they have a net to fall upon in case of failure.
I can understand the studios wanting to get back on track as quickly as possible, but give the poor writers a break. They're gonna walk on eggshells for a little while trying to get back on track. Everyone's been on 'vacation' for awhile, so they might need to warm up again... or, like the article said, they're holding back because they don't want it to look like they worked during the strike.
It's understandable the pace of the working speed is not the same as it was before. I guess it would just take some time to get back to what it used to be. They'll be losing thousands of dollars a day, but writers don't care about it, clearly. I don't think there would be another storm for a while, but certainly all should be on their toe.
I think before the writers can get a huge number of works out there again, the studios need to jump back onto their feet and get back into production mode on their pieces already in production. A few films in the works ("Transformers 2" and "Angels & Demons" among them) are still in the process of recovering from the strike. So it's simply taking everyone a bit of time to recover from the strike, and there is certainly no need for panic yet. Where writing really needed to resume immediately, in the world of television, it has.
writers do need deadlines. and a purpose for writing. many of the writers who were on strike were already working on shows as part of a team. not one writer was responsible for an entire show. it's hard to think that weeks without regular creative meetings in these teems would yield new shows as soon as the strike ended.
Post a Comment