Aspiring screenwriter and reader-of-the-blog Terry came out to walk the picket line this morning. A recent Notre Dame grad, he’s doing SAT¹ tutoring as a day job. My friend Amy does the same thing in New York, and it strikes me as a nearly ideal way for a writer to put ramen in the cupboard. It’s decent enough that you won’t hate doing it, but not so rewarding that you’ll forget to write.

Beyond Terry’s visit, it was a completely unremarkable three hours. Angry Cadillac Woman scraped the curb as she raced through, but there was no one remotely in her vicinity. My new theory is that she’s actually just angry at the asphalt, and determined to do it damage through vehicular abuse.

WGA Board Member David Goodman stopped by to visit. No real news — there’s a press blackout. But it was announced yesterday that the WGA will not be picketing the Grammys, which is helpful for me, because I’m actually going this year.² The last time was fun.

Other topics of conversation: Lucy Liu, India, the Smart car, casting, pilot cutbacks, how nice Notre Dame’s campus is, Malawi, and the “old people school bus” which comes at 8:10 every day.

Tomorrow, same time, same place.

1. For international readers, the SAT is one of two standardized tests required to get into nearly any U.S. university. There’s a whole industry devoted to getting kids ready to take the test, which of course defeats the reason for the test in the first place. ↩
2. Longtime blog readers may remember that I became a Grammy member after getting nominated in 2005 for Best Song in the TV/Movie/Visual Media category. ↩

This morning was a day of firsts on the picket line. For starters, it was my first day of rain picketing. A clear plastic garbage bag protects the sign, so beyond needing to occasionally wipe off my glasses, it wasn’t a big difference. It was warmer than most mornings, so I’ll gladly take some rain.

Today was the first time all the WGA pickets were consolidated at Paramount, so it was weird to see four times as many picketers at six in the morning. While we started out at our normal gates, pretty soon we gathered in big groups to walk around the entire lot.

Paramount is seven blocks wide and four blocks deep, but it backs up against the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, so there’s no way to circle it without including the cemetery, a few strip malls, and the WIC center. So for any confused observers (there were a few), the WGA is not anti-corpse, anti-doughnut, or anti-women-infants-and-children.

Google Maps shows one lap equalling 1.7 miles. I’m surprised; it doesn’t feel that long. As I noted on Day 1 of the strike, the sidewalks on the west side of Paramount are ridiculously unusable: 2 feet wide with a light pole in the middle.

So if you’re tempted to head out for one of the later picketing shifts today, by all means go. It’s a very nice change to be able to walk forward without interruption.

Teaching Thursdays

Some writers from WB Gate 2 are starting an off-the-cuff program called Teaching Thursdays. Priya Hamilton-Wilkes wrote in:

A few of us came up with an idea of “Teaching Thursdays,” where writers of various TV and feature genres would join us on Thursdays, making themselves available to discuss story, structure and everything in between to aspiring writers. Medical drama day will be Thursday, January 24th, from 9-12 at Gate 2 at Warner Bros.

It’s a great idea. One of the frustrating things about picketing is that so often, you feel like you’re not doing anything constructive. That’s why I’ve been happy to have so many readers come out to Paramount. I suspect the WB Gate 2 crew will get at least as much out of it as the aspiring writers who come out to learn.

The elephant in the room

At 6:09 this morning, I was interviewed by a KTLA news crew about my opinions on the DGA deal and what it meant for the informal WGA talks which are now beginning. (The reporter didn’t pick me specifically. The group I was walking with shoved me in front.)

So while I’ve refrained from weighing in officially on the blog for fear of undercutting the off-stage discussions, I can at least repeat what I told the reporter.

I’ve been “cautiously optimistic” too many times during the strike, so I officially refuse to link emotion and prediction. I won’t predict, period.

That said, everyone on every side recognizes why this would be a very good time to get the strike resolved. There are important issues which are unique to writers, ones that don’t really have any equivalent in the DGA deal, so those are going to take careful action to address.

While I won’t predict whether a deal will be reached soon, do I think a deal can be reached? Absolutely.

Tomorrow will be back to normal, with picketing at the Van Ness gate at Paramount starting at 5:45 a.m.

Tomorrow is a U.S. holiday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day), so there’s no picketing. Tuesday is a big event at Paramount. Details forthcoming.

Last night I saw Cloverfield at the Chinese. And loved it. Since the first trailer, I’ve been plugging my ears and shouting “la la la la” whenever someone tried to tell me something about the movie, and I’m glad I did. A blank slate is a movie-goer’s best friend.

I have the opposite situation for two of the trailers that played before Cloverfield: Iron Man and The Eye. I did two week’s work on each — not nearly enough to merit credit, but enough that I know every single plot point. If there’d only been a Hancock trailer, it would have been a trifecta.

Because you’ll ask: I haven’t seen any of the three. The Eye changed studios, directors and stars soon after I worked on it. (Not my fault, I swear.) I took the job because I really wanted to write something scary. Even with all the genres I’ve worked in, I had never done a horror movie.

I feel much more kinship towards Hancock and Iron Man, along with their writers, directors and producers. Both had strong scripts before I got involved, and I enjoyed helping out where I could.

The LA Times has a great article about my friend and former assistant Rawson Thurber, whose adaptation of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh debuts at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I’ve seen the movie five times, and am ridiculously proud of Mr. Thurber.

Trivia: If you’re watching The Nines, that’s Rawson’s house which gets burned down at the start of the movie. And if you’re watching The Nines on DVD (ahem), the short film God was shot at my apartment off of Melrose, which Rawson later took over.

I probably need to start paying my location scouts more.

I had to cancel my Arizona trip, so I’ll be doing van loading tonight, from 5-8 p.m. (Note that you have to be WGA to sign up, since it’s at the headquarters.)

There’s been a lot of feedback and reaction on this site and others about my c’est la vie attitude towards The Nines showing up on BitTorrent. Some felt I was tacitly endorsing piracy (no), while others wondered if I’d feel the same if I had financed the movie, rather than writing and directing it. So I thought I’d address and clarify some of these issues.

I’m not bouncy with joy over my movie getting torrented, but I think it’s a stretch to equate unlawful downloading with traditional theft. As many commenters have pointed out, The Nines isn’t available in any legal form in many countries around the world, nor will it be in any foreseeable time frame. So I have a hard time arguing that a reader in Germany should pay for the movie when there’s no way he could.¹

But I’d draw a distinction between an individual downloading an otherwise inaccessible movie and the business of piracy.

I get pissed off when I see blackmarket DVDs sold on the sidewalks of Manhattan, because those are literally discs we’re not selling. It’s organized crime. Even the big torrent sites are essentially profiting off others’ work, by selling ads. So yes, I’m mindful that even as I excuse the individual downloader, the system which allows the individual downloader is far less noble.

The pro-torrent argument, particularly for indie films which get limited distribution (like The Nines), is that a torrent allows a lot of people to see the movie who otherwise couldn’t. And yes, a filmmaker wants his work seen.

But he also wants to be paid for his efforts. No matter where you work — an office, a factory, a retail store — you do your job with the expectation of getting paid. If your employer decided he didn’t want to pay you, you’d be upset. If the employer said, “Well, the customers decided to take the products without paying for them,” you’d rightly tell him to get off his fat ass and hire a security guard.

That’s why I have no problem with Sony and the MPAA going after bootleggers and other merchants of ill-gotten films. It’s not just the studios’ right to see that the law is enforced; it’s their job.

But I’d steer the legal machinery towards stopping the true black market — counterfeit discs and camcorder specials — and spend more time coming up with legitimate, convenient alternatives to the torrents, so that’s it’s not any more difficult to find and download a movie legally.² Apple’s new rental deal with the studios sounds promising. That and a dozen other efforts could make the market competitive, which will be better for everyone.

On the money

The Nines was independently financed. And while the money came from various sources, it all streamed through me. I signed every check. I own the copyright through Confederated Products LLC, which in turn licenses the movie to distributors like Sony, Newmarket and Optimum.

So when I refer to The Nines as being “my movie,” I’m not just claiming artistic ownership as writer/director. It really is mine. So unlawful downloading has a much more direct effect on me for The Nines than it would for the other movies I’ve written, like Go or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

One of the things I hope to do with The Nines — sometime after the writers’ strike, when I can call Sony again — is work with them to release a low-res version of all the source material for The Nines, so budding filmmakers can try their hand at cutting (and re-cutting) a real feature. So I’m watching this first wave of torrents carefully, hoping the people who are downloading The Nines are doing it because they love movies, and not because they want to screw over some mythical The Man. Because to a very large degree, I am The Man in this case.

1. Several commenters have suggested the “tip jar” model, where motivated viewers could contribute to the filmmaker. I don’t know of any successful examples of this form of micro-patronage, but I’d happily be proven wrong. ↩
2. And legally worldwide. Given the dominance of American media, it’s especially frustrating that cinephiles in Australia and other markets have to queue at the back of the line for movies they’ve seen promoted 12 months earlier. ↩

I was out sick this morning (on the mend, thank you), and will be headed to a conference in Arizona tomorrow. So I’ll have no news from the picket line for the rest of the week. I predict it will be dark and cold, with some good conversation that I’ll sadly miss.

The general consensus is that there will be some kind of DGA deal announced soon. Could it solve the strike? Maybe, if the terms included make meaningful strides in internet residuals. It’s hard for the studios to claim they have no idea how they’ll make money off the internet when all six majors signed on to Apple’s new rental service.

I woke up with a cold, so I won’t be at Paramount this morning.

Before the new year, this site was becoming largely a daily recap of the picket line — the strike was making this blog bloggier. With that in mind, I decided this week to bundle my strike and picket news in one end-of-week super-post.

This was a mistake, for several reasons.

For starters, I underestimated the degree to which my daily recountings helped vent and refocus my frustrations with the strike. Yes, I generally talk about the good things that happen — the interesting conversations, the writers I never would have met if it weren’t for this strange situation. But these blessings are bright points of light against a backdrop of gloomy uncertainty: no one knows how much longer this strike is going to go on.

No one. Not the writers, not the studios, not any pundit. It’s like we’re all in a footrace, but no one knows if it’s a marathon, or one of those insane super-marathons. We can count the markers along the side of the road — days on the picket line, millions of dollars lost — but none of us know how close that puts us towards the finish line.

Do we reach a deal before the Oscars? Before SAG goes out? If we knew how long the race was, we could pace ourselves. But since we don’t, since we can’t, all we can do is focus on the road under our feet. And that’s what the daily recaps were for me. A chance to look at what was happening in the moment.

Another reason for the daily recaps is that screenwriters — and for a change, I’m using this term strictly for feature writers — don’t have the sense of structure and community that television writers do. TV staffs work together. They largely picket together. They can point to showrunners as opinion leaders.

Not so for feature writers. We work alone, or in pairs. The most prominent screenwriters have fraction of the clout or connections of the TV showrunners. Yet as one of the more publicly visible feature writers, I get some half-joking variation of the following every day:

Hey John, can you get this strike wrapped up?

And dude, I wish. For family reasons, I didn’t join the negotiating committee. And I’m not privy to any secret insider information about What’s Really Going On. My pledge to myself was that I would do every hour of service asked, and lead by example if not by position.

A big portion of this blog’s readership is WGA feature writers, and there’s an obvious if unstated if-I-can-do-it, you-can-do-it aspect to my daily recaps. So, back to those next week.

In the meantime, here’s briefly the week that was.

MONDAY

It rained all weekend, and was supposed to rain during the early shift, so I pulled out the rain pants and braced myself for hypothermia. Fortunately the rain tapered off. Yet the shift was still cold, dreary and endless. Barbara Turner asked the time, then glared at me with unsettling darkness when I told her it was only 7.

TUESDAY

Barbara brought doughnuts. So while it was even colder — wearing gloves in Los Angeles feels like a betrayal of geography — the extra sugar was a huge help. More of the regulars were back from Christmas vacation, along with several non-WGA blog-readers.

Also back was Angry Cadillac Woman, who has barreled through the Van Ness gate nearly every day without showing any regard for the fact that human beings are walking there. On this day, she shouted “Get out my way!” as she nearly ran me over. Angry Cadillac Woman is in her late 50’s, with dark hair and a handicapped placard on her rear-view mirror. Her license plate number was duly noted on the incident report I filed. That, combined with the Paramount video surveillance, would hopefully get her disciplined or fired if it happens again.

WEDNESDAY

I was the first person at the gate. Walking in circles alone at 5:45 in the morning is odd. You’re not self-conscious, really, because there’s no one to watch you other than the Paramount guard. But it’s always a relief when the rest of the crew shows up.

Angry Cadillac Woman didn’t come close to hitting anyone while zooming into the Van Ness gate, but it was mostly just lucky timing.

THURSDAY

Thursday was great. It was the day it finally got back to normal, with many more people at our gate. Barbara brought more doughnuts. My assistant, Matt, brought coffee and bagels. David N. Weiss, WGA VP, spoke to us at length. By the time 9 a.m. rolled around, we had multiple picketers to relieve us.

That night, we had a screenwriters house meeting to talk about the past, present and possible end-points of the strike. It was a long and refreshingly candid session. I’d strongly recommend members attend them, because it’s a chance to have a conversation with leadership, rather than a presentation by leadership. I left the meeting no more or less optimistic, but I was gratified to see one of the things we asked for come about: concentrated picketing.

Picketing on Monday will be at Warners. Not Fox, not Sony, not Paramount, not Universal, not CBS. By bringing everyone to one place, we can focus attention on a single issue — in this case, WB’s plans to axe employees rather than return to the bargaining table.

I’ll be hitting the 5-8 a.m. shift, and look forward to seeing not just my normal crew, but lots of other friends and colleagues who’ve been scattered around town. I hope it’s successful, because it’s something I’d love to see continue.

And whatever happens, I’ll give a recap.