SCRIPTS—Script Writers Would Not Be Idled By Labor Action

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With the Writers Guild of America within days of a possible strike, one prominent faction of the Guild will remain busy no matter what. And their fellow Guild members won’t be upset in the least.

In fact, feature film screenwriters are actually expected to keep working on scripts throughout a strike. It’s part of the unacknowledged strategy that Hollywood uses to ramp up quickly after a strike is over.

Feature film writers have no “job” i.e., TV show with airdates, production schedules or pre-existing characters and storylines to go back to. Their “job” is to have a script in hand, and to sell it.

If that sounds like scab work, it’s not. Writers own all their characters and story lines until they make a deal with a producer.

Still, the irony of being “on strike while working” isn’t lost on other Hollywood denizens. Corky Quakenbush is an animator and director, and thinks “it’s really funny how all the writers I know were busy churning out scripts in preparation for the strike, sort of like stockpiling supplies before the hurricane hits but in this case, making it easier for the producers to hold out longer.”

That’s especially true on the television side: It would be violating Guild policy for writers to work on studio or network-owned TV shows during a strike. But by working in advance, they fatten up the “hurricane supplies” of the other side.

Feature film writers, however, are a different kettle of fish. Largely creating their story lines out of whole cloth, they have much more latitude to keep working during a stoppage. Indeed, according to one renowned producer who got out of the game Rob Fried, of “Godzilla” fame, who now oversees What’s Hot Now, a Web-based licensing and merchandising firm he founded “a lot of writers I’ve spoken with look forward to a strike.”

Perhaps not literally, but more in a look-for-the-silver-lining sense: Writers will use the time, Fried said, not only to create new work, but to catch up on projects on which they’ve fallen behind, even if they’re “not technically supposed to write” contracted work.

Another well-known producer of independent films, who asked to remain unnamed, said that while “the Writers Guild plays by the rules more than anybody,” he thinks its possible that during a strike, even books may “secretly” be adapted. Presumably, this wouldn’t automatically run afoul of the Guild since “a lot of books are optioned by people” actors, writers, etc., and there’d be little stopping a “handshake” draft between two parties during an otherwise fallow period.

And while the self-imposed news blackout prevents any official Guild comment on the issue of “free work” being done during a strike, it has been made known that when writers work for themselves, it’s the self-employment, and not the “work” aspect, that allows the Writers Guild to consider this a normal aspect of a shutdown. Indeed, the bidding war that ensued for spec scripts after the ’88 strike ended provided a rising financial tide for many Guild members.

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