Just a few things:
Thing #1The producers and companies represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) could easily give the Writers Guild of America (WGA) everything they are asking for, and still walk away with an obscene amount of money. So their reluctance to negotiate has nothing to do with money and everything to do with ego: "They want to strike? Let 'em. No union's going to tell
us how to spend our money."
Thing #2Everyone is calling this a Writers Strike. I see it as a Studio Heads and Media Moguls Strike. By refusing to negotiate further, by refusing to compromise and reach an agreement that would satisfy the WGA leadership, the studio heads and media moguls are
condoning the work stoppage that is crippling the entertainment industry. For the pennies that the writers are asking for, the studio heads and media moguls are willing to fire hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Those who have the power also bear the responsibility, and in this case, it's the studio heads and the media moguls, not the writers, who are responsible for the damage being done to the industry.
Thing #3I think studio heads and media moguls still don't really understand what writers do. I think they still think writers just write the dialogue. Writers do so much more than that. Writers craft the stories--often out of thin air. Writers orchestrate the emotional highs and lows that keep viewers tuned in and drive audiences into the multiplex. Writers even sometimes "ideate" (to use an aptly corporate term) the amazing visuals that directors and actors and craftspeople realize. That amazing cut from the burning match to the desert sunrise in
Lawrence of Arabia was not an invention concocted by the director, David Lean, but by the screenwriter, Robert Bolt. If special effects and production values were the only things that mattered in a film,
Catwoman and
Sky Captain would have been hits instead of flops. If stars were the ones that guarantee box office success, why didn't everyone flock to see Brad Pitt in
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford? And how do you explain the success of a
Knocked Up (no major stars except for Katherine Heigl) or a
Superbad (no major stars, period)?
In
most cases, the success or failure of a film is tied to the success or failure of its screenplay. When an audience responds to a film--from the bawdiest Adam Sandler comedy to the most esoteric Paul Thomas Anderson drama--it's almost always the screenplay that they're responding to. But most people don't realize that because all they know is what they see (actors, special effects, cinematography) and hear (dialogue, music, sound effects).
There's a reason why actors are seen as "fleshing out" the characters that a writer has written. A film without a screenplay is like a human being without a skeleton.
And that's the point that seems to be overlooked in all this strike business:
Thing #4Without writers, entertainment is a wisp, a mere shadow of what it could and should be. So why not just pay the damn writers? What smart businessman wouldn't want to invest in the people who make entertainment entertaining and hugely profitable? It's pennies on the dollar!
Pennies...
