Hollywood writers’ strike is at once heartening and depressing

Writers care about good writing, as the signs alone on the Writers Guild of America (WGA) picket lines exhibit daily.

“Goodfellas should have won! Also, pay us!” read one WGA placard outside HBO and Amazon’s New York offices, neatly underlining the credibility of the union’s cause by preceding it with an incontrovertibly correct opinion on the mob film’s best picture loss at the 1991 Oscars to Dances with Wolves.

“Please don’t make me have to move back to Ohio,” was a more plaintive effort that in 10 efficient words was replete with character, tone, conflict and plot.

Similarly, “our therapists keep saying we have to stand up for ourselves, so here we are, sorry” – seen outside Netflix’s building on Sunset Boulevard – implied a backstory worthy of a miniseries.

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Outside Amazon Studios in Culver City, California, “you can’t even write a press release!!!” was one striker’s sick burn of choice.

Other signs alluded to the contrasting financial status of studio bosses and the screenwriters that feed their machine. So, outside Paramount Pictures in the heart of Hollywood, an impoverished writer offered the topical quip “thanks to the studios my bank account looks like it’s on Ozempic” in reference to the diabetes drug co-opted by celebrities as a weight-loss fad, while outside Disney, in nearby Burbank, there was a blunt plea to top executives: “Give up just one yacht.”

Industrial dispute anger couched in niche humour, yet not neutralised by it, is one of my favourite genres, and when it’s expressed through the medium of Sharpie pen, so much the better.

Now in its third week, the WGA’s clash with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over pay and conditions – billed by one picketing member as “guild versus evil” – is expected to drag on in a sequel to the 100-day writers’ strike of 2007-2008. Like most strikes, it is simultaneously heartening and depressing: heartening to see people fight for the right not to be exploited, yet depressing to be reminded of just how vulnerable they are to that exploitation in the first place.

[ Hollywood screenwriters strike: how will it affect what I can watch in Ireland? ]

[ Another writers’ strike? It’s like a surreal Hollywood sequel ]

On this side of the Atlantic, the concept of a writers’ strike sounds almost as outlandish as it did 15 years ago. “Honk if you love writers?” To make this show travel, you would have to do more than just replace “honk” with “beep”.

The casualisation of employment that would be expected here is the sort of gig-economy nightmare that screenwriters in the US are trying to prevent becoming embedded in their system. Thanks to the WGA’s previous strike, they did yield some important concessions at the outset of the digital consumption age. But those “wins” have aged badly over time, leaving writers worse off and working longer hours for less money.

If Hollywood entertainment giants skimp on the writing bit – expecting polished scripts to land on their desks as if by magic – it not only affects screenwriters’ ability to build a career, it deters writers with no private source of income from entering the industry. Paying subscribers, too, will be short-changed if they are lured to streaming services by the flashy marketing of new titles, only to find that they have been rushed out.

Alas, the WGA’s latest strike comes at a time when Netflix and Netflix-emulating rivals are managing a legacy of high spending by desperately reining in costs wherever they think they can, cutting their cloth for an era of more sluggish subscriber growth. Why spend money on anyone as lowly as writers?

While writers guilds outside the US, including the Writers Guild of Ireland, have advised its members against working on American-based projects – which would constitute crossing a picket line – the deeper internationalisation of the industry since the 2007-2008 strike means US streamers have readier access than ever to a steady, ahem, stream of content

The intervention of high-profile, influence-wielding people is, therefore, the most powerful weapon the WGA has at its disposal. Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers behind Netflix supernatural juggernaut Stranger Things, are two such people – they have announced a delay to the production of the show’s fifth season, for which the initial scripts had apparently been written, rather than continue without a writer on set.

“Writing does not stop when filming begins. While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work,” they explained in a statement in which the “your move, Netflix” was silent.

George RR Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels upon which HBO’s Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are based, got into the nitty-gritty, calling studios’ love of “mini-rooms” that effectively stop writers from gaining production experience a short-sighted “abomination”.

And at Sunday night’s television Baftas, Sharon Horgan used an award acceptance speech to declare solidarity with “our WGA brothers and sisters”, confirming afterwards that her US projects were “just like in a pile now”.

The next run of Horgan’s Ireland-set Bafta-winning Apple TV Plus series Bad Sisters, by virtue of not being subject to the WGA’s jurisdiction, is not affected by the strike, however, nor is, for example, the next series of the BBC’s Doctor Who, a UK-US co-production destined to air outside the UK and Ireland on Disney Plus.

While writers guilds outside the US, including the Writers Guild of Ireland, have advised its members against working on American-based projects – which would constitute crossing a picket line – the deeper internationalisation of the industry since the 2007-2008 strike means US streamers have readier access than ever to a steady, ahem, stream of content.

This might help alleviate the embarrassment of stale home pages caused by stalled productions at home. Better this unexpected spotlight, in any case, than the phenomenon of studios and streamers pushing ahead with productions using “locked scripts” – early drafts not subjected to vital revisions and fine-tuning – on the arrogant assumption that poor quality control will have no impact on profits.

You know, it’s almost as if these once profligate content companies don’t know what they’re doing. It’s almost as if professional writers don’t get the respect that they deserve. Or, as another placard put it, “don’t p*** on my leg and tell me ‘it’s streaming’.”