Strike! Strike! Strike!

Last night, the Writers Guild of America went on strike.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a strike. Last time, in 2007-08, I was a (struggling) screenwriter. My wife was pregnant, and we were buying a new home and hadn’t sold the old one yet. I really, really, needed a job.

Then the strike hit, and I couldn’t even fail to sell a screenplay. I was an associate member of the Guild — which means I didn’t have enough credits for full membership, and I couldn’t earn any more. I lost our health insurance, and I lost my membership.

I supported the WGA strike then, and I support the strike now.

Because I know there would be no health insurance for screenwriters without the WGA. There would be no guaranteed payment for rewrites. There would be no minimum rate for TV or movies. The WGA made all of that happen.

Back in the early days of the industry, the writers and the studios made a deal: the writers would surrender copyright to their works to the studios, and the studios, in return, would guarantee payments. It was the only way movies (and later TV shows) could work. The studios needed to own the property, or they wouldn’t risk all the money to produce and distribute it. And the writers needed to be paid fairly for the ideas and lines that would eventually generate billions of dollars for the studios.

Obviously, it would have made my life a lot easier back then if the strike had never happened. One of my agents at the time was so bored he would call me just to chat. I stayed up nights staring at the ceiling, my pregnant wife sleeping beside me, due date getting closer every day, wondering how we were going to pay for the hospital, for the doctor’s visits, for school, for college, for anything.

And, to be honest, it would make my life easier now if there was no strike. I am still throwing stuff at Hollywood and this puts all that on hold, too.

It’s worse for my friends. I know people who are hurt by this. They’ve been working hard. They had shows ready to go, scripts in the can. They had great ideas about to turn into reality. They deserve their big break.

And now they’re in the same place I was, waiting, at the mercy of events they can’t control. I remember that feeling, and it is fucking awful. The writing life is uncertain at the best of times. During a strike, it’s like floating untethered in space, a million miles away from anything resembling solid ground.

But it’s not the strike that’s the problem. It’s the lack of a deal.

It does me no good as a professional writer to pitch the studios if I do not get paid. If I cannot get health insurance for my efforts. If I have to do endless rewrites for free.

Every writer should be paid for this work.1

Right now, of course there are a few loudmouths who say stuff like, “Why should writers get paid to sit around and type? I could do that.”

First of all, no, you couldn’t. I’ve seen your stuff on Twitter. It’s not funny.

Second, everything you love about movies and TV starts with a writer. All those great lines from your favorite movies? Someone wrote that. That killer moment at the end when Thanos is finally defeated, or Hans Gruber pretends to be an office drone to sucker John McClane, or Julia Roberts is just a girl, standing in front of a boy, telling him she loves him?2

Someone wrote that. It didn’t just happen. Everything you love in TV and movies, on streaming and cable and in the theaters, started with a writer staring at their screen until their foreheads bled with the effort. Every meme or GIF you post from The Office or Stranger Things or Ted Lasso or The Simpsons started with a writer.3

During the last strike, I got lucky. I took one of my ideas for a screenplay and turned it into a novel, and it sold, launching me into a new phase of my career.

We didn’t lose our house. We got health insurance.4 Our baby is 15 years old now, and she has a sibling. We’re fine.

As I said, I still fling my ideas at the industry. I’ve pitched movies and TV shows to every studio and streamer in town at one time or another. If any of them sell, I will finally get my WGA membership back, and my health plan, too.

That’s because of the people striking today, and the people who held tough back in 2007.

I support them. I am grateful.

They’re going to win again, like they did last time.

Because it all starts with the story. It all starts with the writer.