I'm on strike!

As of 12:01 AM Monday, the Writers Guild of America is on strike. I'm a member, so technically I'm on strike too. Thankfully, I spend most of my time writing novels instead of screenplays these days, so the strike won't effect me all that much. But it does mean that the screen adaptation I just finished for my first novel, Cycler, has to sit around unpurchased until this ugly matter clears itself up.Though I'm not thrilled about the "mandatory" twenty hours of picketing I'm supposed to be doing every week, I do endorse this strike. As our opponents in this negotiation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) never tire of saying, the entertainment business is changing. Revenues increasingly come from so-called "ancillary markets," i.e., video sales and rentals, iTunes, and other forms of digital download. The Writers Guild, along with the Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild gave the producers a break on video residuals back in ye olde eighties so that these new, untested markets would have a chance to flourish without being overburdened by residuals. Well, flourish they have. And how!So it's time to factor the talent back into the profit equasion, right?Wrong. The producers basically want the right to take my script, produce a movie out of it, then repackage it in any form they choose (as a video, dvd, digital download, etc.) without compensating me for it.That's why we're on strike. Get ready for lots of Reality TV. And say good-bye to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. As much as some producers would like it to be the case, these things don't write themselves.And if you want to know why writers (not directors) are the true "auteurs" of film, check out the great Alfred Hitchcock's hideously awful film, Torn Curtain. I watched this clunker last night just as the strike commenced and it was a perfectly-timed reminder that only great scripts become great movies. Even the considerable talents of a master like Hitchcock couldn't save this lemon. Hitchcock's greatness, like the greatness of so many directors, stems primarily from his ability to usually pick a killer script. Don't believe me?Imagine a shower, a naked woman, and knife.Are you seeing it? A director interpreted it and an actress brought it to life.But a writer saw it first.