Ray Richmond: On the picket line with the striking writers – Day 3
On a drizzly Thursday morning, the WGA strike picketers were out in force – several hundred strong – at Gates 2, 3 and 4 of the Warner Brothers Studios lot in Burbank. They were fortified by tubs of coffee, boxes of doughnuts and muffins, cases of water and Gatorade and enough bags of potato chips to sustain a small army. People showed up to hand out tacos, because heck, anytime is a good time for a taco. These writers may not be well-paid, but they’d at least be well-fed and hydrated.
The water falling from the sky didn’t phase any of them, nor did the prospect of what’s being predicted will be a protracted walkout. As this was merely Day 3, the mood was upbeat and energetic, the signs clever and on point. They strode with purpose and chanted, “You want pages? Give us better wages!”.
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Some of my favorite pickets:
“MY WEDDING IS IN 2 WEEKS AND I AM HERE!”
“NO MORE PENNIES FOR OUR THOUGHTS”
“MY BAD DIALOGUE PAID FOR YOUR PALM SPRINGS HOUSE!”
“THIS IS THE ONLY THING I’M WRITING FOR FREE”
“YOU KNOW WHAT? I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO WRITE THE GREAT JOKE I HAD FOR THIS SIGN”
“THE ONLY GOOD AI STARRED HALEY JOEL OSMENT“
“AI NEVER WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL AI HAS NEVER BEEN IN LOVE”
“HONK IF YOU LOVE SCRIPTED TV”
“YOU DON’T DESERVE OUR WTITTY WORDS”
“WE HAVE NOTES”
Feisty and determined, those walking the line on Thursday shared a bond borne of mutual angst. As a group, the writers are genuinely, legitimately concerned that their livelihood could go away, and not merely because the new reality has forced them into more of a freelance/gig economy model than a fulltime salaried one; it’s also because the looming threat of AI taking away their jobs has become an increasingly authentic fear. It’s no longer just some futuristic sci-fi alarmist fantasy but something tactile and real.
Moreover, it isn’t just the writers who are concerned about AI but the performers, too.
The veteran actress Frances Fisher was there in Burbank on Thursday morning as a SAG-AFTRA member “standing in solidarity with the WGA.” Fisher said she had great concerns about Artificial Intelligence programs like ChatGPT because “there needs to be regulations on it. It’s already being done, and our writing, our voice, our likeness, is sacrosanct. (The studios) should not be banking our words and images and movements while we’re not getting paid.” She sees AI as “a replacement for live human beings” and potentially a way for the studios to “make money off of our backs.”
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William Lucas Walker, a television writer-producer who was a staffer on “Roseanne,” “Frasier,” “Cybill” and “Will & Grace” who won an Emmy as a “Frasier” producer in 1997, noted that during negotiations the producers “wouldn’t even acknowledge or discuss AI.” He pines for the old network TV writer model that found fully staffed writers rooms for shows that would create 22 to 24 episodes per season. It’s what enabled him in the early 1990s to earn a good enough living to purchase a house within three years of his becoming a fulltime writer, he said.
“When I started, the goal was to become a writer-producer,” Walker said. “You’d go down to the stage and sit with editors and sound people and learn the business. That was your apprenticeship. But that opportunity is gone now. The young writers coming onboard shows don’t get to do that. Streamers want to have the whole series written before dumping it on the air en masse, and the writers – who are generally paid guild minimums – are unemployed by the time the show gets on. One staffer on a show told me he has to moonlight as an Uber driver at night because that’s the only way he can make ends meet. That’s what this strike negotiation is all about.”
It’s also about what screenwriter Shelby Farrell and her writer-director husband Juan Avella are fighting for. Farrell showed up on the picket line Thursday eight months pregnant and carrying a “MOMS ON STRIKE!” sign while pushing her toddler daughter, two-year-old Victoria, in a stroller.
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“A lot of what we middle-class writers are fighting for is making enough income to support our families and live normal lives,” Farrell said. “The studios want us to be gig workers who go day-to-day, and that’s not why we became screenwriters. Everyone on this line has already fought for an impossible dream in becoming a writer, period. It’s a really difficult thing to do. The other side wants to take from us the ability to be writers and also raise families. We got our health insurance to have these babies from the WGA. I got maternity leave from the WGA. We have stable lives because of the WGA.”
Agreeing wholeheartedly with that assessment is a SAG-AFTRA member who goes by professional name of Emelle, who said she was on the picket line “because I can’t work if I don’t have a script. We need the writers to get the contract they deserve, to get the pay they deserve, because that will impact our own SAG-AFTRA negotiations when we get to the table next month…Everybody wins if we walk the picket line with our union brothers and sisters.”
Emelle too is apprehensive about AI. “The problem with AI is that the words aren’t uttered with genuine pronunciation and energy and emotion,” she believes, “because AI doesn’t understand human emotion. I have to believe the consumer will be able to tell the difference and will reject the fake. As a consumer, I want to see real people doing real things. And we’re not talking about CGI. CGI is an adjunct. AI is a replacement. That’s why we’re here sounding the alarm about it.”
How long will the strike last? No one knows. But there was optimism on Thursday that the dispute would ultimately be settled amicably. Of course, we’re only 72 hours into this thing. We’ll see how everyone’s confidence and resolve are looking after 72 days.
One writer walking the line who asked not to be identified told me, “When it’s your ability to keep making a living that’s at stake, you don’t measure the fight in hours or days or weeks or even months. You fight for however long it takes because you honestly have no other choice. That’s where we’re all coming from.”
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