Thursday, November 01, 2007

Let's Hope the Writers Get a Good Contract

Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin

Let's Hope the Writers Get a Good Contract

Posted October 30, 2007 | 07:59 PM (EST)



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I remember the last WGA strike. It was sad. I had been in LA for a couple of years, just getting my feet wet in the movie business after working in TV for five years. The trickle down was incredible. Restaurants, limousine companies, real estate brokers, clothing retailers, travel agencies. The list went on and on. Not to mention all of the direct impact on actors, directors, crews, office staff and accounting, the studios and networks themselves, talent agencies and managers, publicists and business managers. It was a disaster and it was painful to witness.

However, as an actor who has worked in film and television since 1980, I have always been pretty clear about the fact that we are nowhere without the writers in our industry. And that goes beyond the scary concept of a world of unscripted reality TV. Television and film writers are responsible for some of the greatest literature in the history of our society. Go to one of my favorite websites, the Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb). You can pull up CITIZEN KANE, ALL ABOUT EVE and SUNSET BOULEVARD. You can read, online, hundreds of the greatest movie screenplays of all time. Members of the WGA wrote those scripts.

The studios and networks claim that their profits are eroding and blame the cost of stars' salaries and expensive marketing campaigns. One more thing the studios and networks ought to consider is how overstaffed they are themselves. You've never seen a business where more people are required to do the same job until you have worked at a TV network or film studio. Actors don't put a gun to the studio executive's head. They negotiate a price and the studio agrees, or disagrees, to pay it. Sometimes, as an actor, the price you pay is a pretty big number that you arrive at before you even open your mouth.

The not-so-secret truth is that everyone in show business, of those who live "above-the-line," are overpaid. The only ones above-the-line who usually are not are the writers. Let's hope there is no strike and let's hope the writers get a good contract.

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