If you're dreaming about becoming a high-priced Hollywood writer, you might want to dream on. The Writers Guild Of America, West — the union that represents the bulk of movie and TV writers — recently released its annual report. It reads like the script of a horror movie — a low-budget one at that.
So let me just cut to the chase: With fewer and fewer movies finding their way to the box office and more reality shows on television, writers are suffering a near 50-percent unemployment rate, and year-to-year earnings are down almost 20 percent — the lowest level for both in five years. How's that for a dream factory?
Living in a company town, the wretched stink of the engine of creation grinding to a halt is everywhere. It manifests itself in coffee shops and Sunset Strip eateries where pitches for scripts have turned into pitches on how to downsize to survive. I know in my travels, studio lots — once full of energy — are now populated by scribes who schlep around their intellectual property Willy Loman-style, hoping for the sale — that one sale — that will put them back on top.
Truly, if things are bad for writers now, they're only going to get worse. Jay Leno and NBC are taking a lot of flak for annexing five hours of real estate previously devoted to some of the best-scripted television in the history of television. And, yeah, cable TV has helped bridge the gap as the new destination for quality fare. But cable shows literally aren't half of what network programs are. The writing staffs tend to be half the size of network shows, they pay half as much and the seasons run half as long. All of that adds up to three times the hurt for writers.
What does this mean for viewers? Not a whole lot ... if you're into The Biggest Loser or movies based on comic books. But if you liked everything from Hill Street Blues to E.R. to Network to The English Patient, expect to see a lot less of the entertainment that's more reliant on the strength of the written word.
A Hollywood script has long been the Holy Grail for writers. Some of the most gifted scribes from literature to stage were lured west with the enticement of celebrity and pixie dust. Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Norman Mailer, David Mamet — masters all, but all still seeking to master one of the most difficult feats of amusement: the delicate balance of all the elements necessary to make filmed entertainment. Way back in 1926, Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz seduced playwright and novelist Ben Hecht to Hollywood with a telegram that read: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots."
There aren't millions to be made anymore. And the competition now is anything that doesn't necessarily have to be well written.
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