{"id":574026,"date":"2023-05-11T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/strike-diary-week-1-the-old-money-and-the-no-money\/"},"modified":"2023-05-11T16:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T13:30:00","slug":"strike-diary-week-1-the-old-money-and-the-no-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/strike-diary-week-1-the-old-money-and-the-no-money\/","title":{"rendered":"#Strike Diary, Week #1: \u201cThe Old Money and the No Money\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n This is the first entry in a series<\/a> featuring frank accounts of the strike from Hollywood writers at different levels in their careers; the diarists have been granted anonymity to encourage candor.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n Monday night, May 1, I attended a party with my colleagues, awaiting the news<\/a> of the strike. Everyone mixed and drank and wondered<\/em>. When the news broke, something interesting happ<\/a>ened. The Old Money and the No Money \u2014 two factions who definitely sat at different tables during the dinner portion of the night were suddenly bonded by their mutual disappointment. They hoped \u201cit wouldn\u2019t go on too long,\u201d which makes sense. The NMs need to keep working, need that money coming in. And the OMs have deals that need to close and productions they are in charge of: \u201cCan we give notes?\u201d \u201cCan we meet and just \u2018talk\u2019 but not \u2018write\u2019?\u201d An over-served staff writer went up to our boss, standing feet from one of this power-writer\u2019s Emmys, and asked that she please not be force-majeured. \u201cI\u2019ll be the one who\u2019s force-majeured,\u201d our showrunner said.<\/p>\n

\n I\u2019m one of those people in between the OMs and NMs. And I was relieved by the news of the strike. I know how desperately we need changes. TV writing is no longer a career, it\u2019s a gig. I\u2019m an upper-level writer in my early 40s who came up right after the last strike. I\u2019ve had the experience of working on network shows from 2008-2012 with 20-something episode orders and then going into the cable world where 12 episodes was the max. I\u2019ve worked two jobs most seasons, and in 2018 and 2021, I worked three. All while developing for free, of course. And I know I\u2019m one of the lucky ones. But I\u2019m also exhausted. My brain is permanently, for better or worse, in half-hour dramedy mode. Now, when I watch football, I don\u2019t need to know anything about the teams playing to know that the one winning at halftime will start to falter in the third quarter, right before pulling out a victory in the end. I\u2019m both worried about AI and worried I\u2019ve become AI.<\/p>\n

\n Tuesday, I hit the picket line at Paramount. I ran into some of my favorite colleagues from past shows. I got a T-shirt, and I felt energized. I saw my favorite boss, the one who told me to read Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel. Then, I ran into a writer I once worked with who humiliated me in front of the staff by pointing out I was eating<\/em> a \u201cbaking apple\u201d like he was Evan-fucking-Kleiman. He\u2019s someone I considered OM. He told me he was looking to do something different. A new career. He seemed disillusioned.<\/p>\n

\n The next day, I went to the WGA meeting at the Shrine. A short distance from my house, and yet I was still 30 minutes late because of the long line to get in. It was a big turnout. My friends and I joked about the writerly makeup of the crowd. \u201c4000 Non-Blondes packed the Shrine on Wednesday.\u201d We pretended to call and ask each other for advice on what to wear \u2014 the gray hoodie or the charcoal hoodie? Shacket or no shacket? Booties or Dunks? My row from left to right was all former writers\u2019 assistants who were now WGA members, including myself, and next to me was someone I assisted on my first scripted TV show \u2014\u00a0a well-known multi-Guild member who has had experience with strikes.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n He said people don\u2019t know what they\u2019ve already lost. I said I think I\u2019m one of those people. My first staff job was in 2008. He nodded. In the lobby as I was leaving, I ran into the writer who taught me about spec scripts when I was a PA \u2014 we agreed to picket Disney together.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n I left that meeting with two large Wolfgang Puck trays of food, feeling good about all the folks I\u2019d run into, wondering why our guild doesn\u2019t host a big sparkly event every year where we can see our fellow writers and catch up. Are they in cahoots with our reps to keep us from networking, or are we just not party people?\u00a0When I got home from the meeting, my wife asked how it went. She\u2019s a do-gooder, employed in a do-gooder job, and wants to know details about the pattern of demands and thinks I should be able to recall verbatim what each speaker said. I told her everyone thought the Teamster captain was hot, she wondered why and immedia<\/a>tely started googling. She pointed out inconsistencies in some of her statements while I made tea and suggested we cancel our Netflix subscription.<\/p>\n

\n The next day at Radford it was calm. I walked with a writer who was on her fifth strike. I ran into a former Friends<\/em> writer I idolized, who once let me pick through some furniture she was getting rid of to help furnish my apartment. And I saw the guy from my first job whose typical joke-generating posture was pulling his shirt up and resting his hairy gut on the writers room table. Once again, reminding me I\u2019m luckier than some, not as lucky as others.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n