I brought my videocamera with me to Malawi, only to discover upon unpacking it that the main sensor was shot: it could record sound, but not video. In retrospect, this was a fortuitous failure.

Looking at things through a lens–or on a tiny flip-out monitor–creates a layer of distance, of safety. On a subconscious level, it feels like you’re watching TV. I would have watched, but not seen.

And given my obsessive need for coverage, I probably would have shot so much footage that I could never have begun editing it down.

So, lacking a proper videocamera, I just shot with my digital still camera. The clips had to be very short; I only had a 1GB card, and no way to off-load it. But I think it worked out for the best. What I ended up with are more like video snapshots. They don’t tell a story. They simply capture a moment.

I’ve posted a few more up in my YouTube channel. Here’s a sampler.

Q: What side of the road do they drive on in Malawi?
A: The center.

There’s only one paved road in Mulanje, which has to be shared by cars, bikes and pedestrians. The dirt roads are strictly one car wide. They recently plowed the road towards Kumwamba Centre, so there’s hope it may be paved before too long. You can see the in-progress road on this second version of the drive to the church on Sunday, featuring the song that’s been stuck in my head for 10 days.

John BowmanNow that the Kabuki Theater of negotiations is officially underway, I thought I’d reprint John Bowman’s opening remarks made on behalf of the WGA Negotiating Committee.

I really love this speech.

I love it because it’s the perfect tone. Calm, reasonable, business-oriented, without a trace of Norma Rae nonsense, no whiff of the words to “Joe Hill,” and no detectable mouth foam.

All in all, a huge step forward for us.

Naturally, Bowman had to put in plugs for a better home video residual rate and jurisdiction over animation and reality, but everyone knows those are essentially DOA. This fight is about downloads, and he’s positioned us strongly. With generous references to authorship and intellectual property rights, Bowman sure sounds like an Artful Writer to me.

I like what I’m hearing from my union right now, and it’s been a while since I could say that.

Here are John’s remarks.

First of all, I want to congratulate our corporate partners at CBS, Time Warner, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, and NBC-Universal on what appears to be another great year for entertainment revenues and profits. Box office is up, and broadcasters are getting ad rate increases across the board, driven largely by digital content created by many of the people in this room. We are all of us very fortunate to be working in an industry that is thriving. It is thriving not only because of the content created by members of the DGA, SAG, AFTRA, and the WGA, but also because the CEOs of these companies are proving to be extremely adept at finding ways to monetize the Internet and other new technologies.

There is a real disconnect, however, between what the companies are reporting to Wall Street and what they’re saying to the talent community. Investors are hearing about the changing landscape in entertainment and exciting new markets to exploit. In contrast, the AMPTP communicates nothing but problems to the Writers Guild. Problems like-and this was mentioned by AMPTP at a recent press conference-ad skipping, even though NBC Universal had just announced a one billion dollar DVR deal. And while WGA member revenues have not kept pace with industry growth-we are a line item that is definitely under control-the companies balk at giving us a fair and reasonable share of the industry’s success.

I don’t think anyone in this room is arguing about the right of writers, actors, and directors to residuals. As collective authors of a work, we are entitled to a portion of the revenue generated by that work. But you have publicly stated that you no longer want to pay us residuals on shows that are not in profit. Here’s why that is untenable:

Writers are a cost of doing business. They have no say in production, marketing, on advertising and publicity, directors, casting, the decision to spend tens of millions of dollars advertising, etc. They can’t be expected to be paid from profits when they have no say in the costs which affect those profits. Profits are under the control of CEOs and their executive staffs.

Intellectual property has rights, just as physical property does. Management has no problem paying the person who made the DVD box before a film turns a profit; they shouldn’t have any problem paying the artists who created the intellectual experience that came in that box either. To claim that intellectual property has lesser rights than physical property is a dangerous argument for anyone in our business to make. You are making the same argument to us that digital pirates make to you.

According to Hollywood accounting, The Simpsons is not in profits. How can we trust that kind of bookkeeping? What other business but ours has the accounting term, “monkey points?”

Residuals from shows not in “profit help” support a writing middle class, and keep writers in the business until they finally create that one great thing. Do away with residuals, and you do away with late-blooming careers like Marc Cherry and David Chase - they couldn’t afford to stay in the business. Your proposal transfers money from developing, promising writers, actors, and directors who need them the most to established pros who need them the least. It’s bad for the business.

Ultimately, your complaint is not about unprofitable shows, it’s about the portfolio nature of the entertainment business. Risk is spread out among many shows, some of which are unprofitable. This economic fact will never be changed, even if writers work for free, as you propose they do on the Internet.

Now let’s turn to your proposal that we do a three year study before bargaining about the Internet. Your reasoning is exactly the same as it was in 1985. Models haven’t emerged, the environment is uncertain, we’ll take care of you later. Well, we know what happened then. Home video and DVD sales soared, and nobody got taken care of later. But this isn’t 1985, when TV writers didn’t envision that their shows would someday end up on DVDs, and they’d get stuck with a .3% return. This time, TV writers can see how important the Internet is - our shows are already there. And, unfortunately for your argument, positive economic events are daily giving the lie to your doomsday scenario.

But if you insist on a study - I used to do studies for a living - I’ll give you one now. The Internet is a distribution channel with no major fixed costs, no media costs, no shipping or handling costs, and margins that are the envy of even the cigarette industry. Though you lose your monopoly on distribution, you have a strategic advantage that nobody else has: strong relations to the talent community. Above all else, nurture this relationship. If you don’t-if, for instance, you insist that members of that community not get paid for three years, or get paid, at most, a .3% residual rate, what possible incentive would they have to work for you? What incentive do they have to help you fight video piracy, when they’re only getting .3%? If you don’t pay them someone else will-Yahoo, Youtube, who knows? It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen, and very quickly indeed, if you bargain so unreasonably that you force talent to go elsewhere for a fair deal. Of course this study is flawed, but then all studies are - you can make them come out any way you want to.

I can imagine an NBC-Universal Wall Street press conference, 18 months from now. Revenues are down, profits are down, due to a work stoppage which you, the AMPTP, collectively, forced. Shareholders are restive. They ask the company this: “Your industry paid 84 million to fire Tom Freston, 300 million to invest in “Last FM.” Yet at a time when it was absolutely crucial that we establish a presence on the Internet, you chose to alienate content providers, the best strategic advantage you had. And you made this catastrophic decision over how much money?

Today you’ll receive our proposals. They are designed to help writers keep up with the overall growth of revenues in our business. Our operating principle is simple: if you get paid for the reuse of our material, we get paid. So let’s now back away from the edge, get real, and get to work. Studies and profit-based residuals are not serious proposals. They have no legitimate basis in the economics of this industry. They are non-starters for this committee and membership. Our response to such proposals will be a polite “no thank you.” But there are serious issues to discuss, issues that come directly out of our real relationship. Those issues are:

How we will share new media income

How we will produce material together for new media

How we will deal with the non-union shell companies that you’ve created to avoid paying the talent, especially on reality and animation

How talent will get a fair share of home video money

How we will work together on issues like piracy

How we will work together to make sure that new technologies are a boon for all of us

These are real issues. Writers and the talent community deserve to keep up and we have not been. All of our proposals will be focused on that central fact. Writers have to keep up with the industry growth that we help create. It is simple and fair. We look forward to your response, and thank you.

Just a quick update. In the wake of my essay on WriterAction, one of the admins, Brian Horiuchi, has resigned as an admin. If he wants to comment here as to why, I’d welcome that.

Sadly, Brian was one of the few (and perhaps the only?) admin who really got it over there, and I think he’s left for that very reason. He was outgunned.

Looks like things are gonna get worse there before they get better.

Also, I’ve been told that I’m pretty much considered Satan by the remaining admins. Naturally, I find this comforting.

Rachel was wrong…John August has some terrific video and a link to photos from his recent trip to Malawi.

He mentions malaria on his blog. Malaria, a disease that had been impressively curtailed decades ago, has returned with a vengeance, killing millions of children.

And why has it returned?

My opinion? DDT.

Specifically, the horrendously stupid ban on DDT.

I know, I know. We’ve all been taught that DDT is the devil’s chemical, spreading death wherever it goes. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

To read how DDT came to be unfairly villified…and the disastrous result of that politicization…check out this excellent essay in the New York Times.

You can read more about why American and international aid organization should support the use of DDT at http://www.fightingmalaria.org/

I have all my photos from my visit to Mulanje, Malawi up on Flickr for the world to see. You can check them out here.

You may want to use the “View as slideshow” link. If you do, you’ll notice a floating lower-case “i” over the center of the main photo. (You may need to mouse over it to make it appear.) Click it, and you can see all of the captions.

Malawi is a land-locked country in southern Africa. A former British colony, it is now one of the poorest nations on Earth. It’s been especially hard-hit by HIV/AIDS, losing a huge portion of its 20 to 40-year olds. Young parents, especially. It’s now a nation of children and old people.

FOMO (Friends of Mulanje Orphans) runs 10 centers, providing services to 4,000 orphans. Ryan and I visited to help repair and repaint the Gulumba Centre, and to meet the kids who are doing remarkably well in remarkably difficult circumstances.

We also visited medical clinics, in the hopes of establishing a presence for U.S. Doctors for Africa. Treatable diseases like malaria are a huge threat, and the lack of medicine and infrastructure is crippling.

For all its challenges, Malawi is incredibly beautiful, as are its people. It’s like an island nation without an ocean.

So what now? I’m still figuring that out.

Obviously, FOMO will continue to need financial support, and I can help with that.¹ But to a larger degree, Malawi really needs to be put on the map of human awareness. There’s no hot story happening in Malawi: no civil war, no genocide, no pretty blonde tourist going missing. The country is isolated and easy to overlook. And its citizens are so invariably polite, it’s hard to imagine them demanding their fair share of the world’s attention.

But I think there are unique opportunities in Malawi. It’s stable and English-speaking. It’s infrastructure is lacking — its roads in particular are a mess — but the lack of embedded choices can be a blessing. If there’s any place perfect for leapfrogging to the Next Better Idea, it’s Malawi.²

The main reason I wanted to blog about the trip is that I’ve always been kind of uncomfortable-slash-terrified about the developing world and global poverty. And I suspect most readers are, too. It’s overwhelmingly macro.

But when you look at it in the micro scale, it’s not nearly so intimidating. I didn’t leave with any big answers, but I now know a bit about keeping kids fed. And how to install a corrugated metal roof. (You nail through the peaks, not the valleys, with capped nails.) I spent most of my time painting walls, and watching. Learning.

Obviously, not everyone is in a place financially to book a ticket to the other side of the world and just help out. (That’s what Ryan and I basically did.) But a lot of my readers are young — in college, or just after that — which is a perfect time to head out and explore the world. If any part of you is thinking about doing that, trust your instincts.³

1. As can you, obviously. It’s a registered U.K. charity. ↩
2. The land-line phones (and with it, the internet) in the entire Mulanje region went out for three days, yet I got four bars on my cell phone almost everywhere. Wireless internet in the U.S. is handy. Wireless internet in Malawi seems essential. ↩
3. Beyond university-affiliated programs, a quick Google search will reveal dozens of programs that specialize in a new kind of “voluntourism.” We considered programs in five African countries and South America before picking FOMO. ↩

I was walking my dog this morning when I noticed an orange van with strange equipment on its roof: an array of cameras pointing in all directions. As it passed, I read “TeleAtlas: We’re mapping your world!” on the side.

The company is partners with Google, so I have a hunch I may be showing up on Street View before too long. (Los Angeles doesn’t have Street View yet, but they’re no doubt working on it.)

I’m back from Africa — physically, at least.

Mentally, I’m still floating somewhere over Dakar. The potent combination of jetlag and unprocessed emotion is making it very difficult to commit to that last leap over the Atlantic. I was only gone two weeks, but it felt like months. Like an alternate timeline, with extra days slipped between seconds.

Like Narnia, but with smoke, orphans, and red dirt.

It’s not that time dragged. Every minute was full, from the dark blue hour before sunrise when the overachieving rooster would start his business, to the hour after dinner, when a casual conversation with the program founder would reveal an unexpected, mind-blowing twist. For the first time in 15 years, I wore a watch, only to look at it in amazement as I went to bed at 7:30, exhausted.

At least twice each day, as Ryan and I were painting a mud brick wall Bermuda blue, we would look to each other and say, “Hey, do you remember when…”

Inevitably, we were referring to something that had happened just the day before.

Like all great trips, so much had happened so fast that it became difficult to keep events straight. More than that, the Now was so overwhelming, so emotionally dangerous, that there wasn’t an opportunity to process. I’ve never kept a journal, but for the first time I found myself making bullet points of the day’s events, just to clear them off my mental blotter. Like a to-do list in reverse.

I’m working to get photos up on Flickr, but in the meantime, I’ll offer one short video clip. No single example is going to sum up the whole experience, but this gives some sense of why I’m still somewhat stuck in Malawi.

Today, the negotiations began between the WGA and the AMPTP.

Well, at least the formality of negotiations began.

Leading up to this day, I’ve seen quite a bit of spin and positioning. As always, I’m here to try and untangle the truth from all of the hype. I’m keenly aware that there are some in union leadership who honestly wish I’d just shut up, because a membership that only gets their news from Pravda is a Happier membership, but we’re all too smart to be snowed.

And, frankly, I think leadership will probably like this particular article anyway.

Before I start with all that, I want to review some statistics that were released by the Guild in their annual report.

First, Guild members earned 905.8 million dollars in 2006 (under Guild contracts, of course). That’s down 1.5% from 2005, but still up quite a bit from 2004, when we earned 869.2 million. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to reconcile this major increase with our reported loss of jurisdiction. If we’re working fewer jobs but earning more money…could it be that fewer writers are just getting paid more?

It’s certainly possible.

Overall, however, the amount of working writers in the WGAw hasn’t really changed (even if the ones working have). Year after year, with minor fluctuations, about 4,400 WGAw members actually get hired to write. The total amount of “current active” members in the union? 8,084, which is down from 9,216 in 2000.

One thing to note about that: when it comes time to vote for contracts or vote for strikes, nearly half of the eligible voters will not have written under a Guild contract for at least a year. That’s not exactly an ideal political situation to be in if you are a working writer.

Television writing earnings held steady, although that number is practically worthless as an aggregate, since so many TV writers earn large portions of their dough as producers (which isn’t reportable to the Guild). Film writer earnings dropped slightly, but not in any major way.

The foreign levies situation still seems a mire. The program is still holding over $20 million. I’d like to see that number get knocked down into the single digits by ‘08.

And what about residuals? After all, that’s the big issue this year.

Well, WGA writers earned more in residuals this year than in any year prior: $264 million. Television residuals were way up, mostly because the boom in DVD releases of old shows is still echoing.

However, film residuals from home video were down, reflecting the softening of the DVD market.

Wait, I’m sorry…the Guild publication has a different explanation for that…

…this area declined…reflecting the prominence of non-Guild animated features, each of which woud generate a million-dollar residual, and also reflecting the exhaustion of the release of the film libraries into the DVD market, which has been ongoing for about seven years.

That is just dumb. Do we really need to editorialize about non-union work when it’s obviously not the cause of the dip? Non-union theatrical animation has been booming since I was in college. It is not at all a significant cause in the dip for feature residuals. It’s entirely about the DVD market going soft.

I just find bad arguments to be annoying.

Anyway, enough with the statistics. There were two major developments preceeding this week’s start of negotiations.

First, the companies announced that far from being interested in giving us a good residuals formula on downloads, they were now interested in getting rid of residuals altogether and shifting to a profit-participation model.

Awww, that’s cute.

Ummmmmmmmm, no.

Residuals aren’t some rootless payment we argued for because it sounded sexy. Residuals are our financial substitute for royalties. We agree to work for hire, they agree to pay us residuals as if our authorship were meaningful (which it is).

Like royalties, residuals don’t exist to reward us for the companies’ profits. They don’t exist to make us partners with the employees. They exist to compensate us for the reuse of our works of authorship. Plain and simple.

It doesn’t matter how much money a movie makes. Every time you reuse it by selling a DVD or airing it on television or putting it on the internet, you must compensate the author for that privilege.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big fan of sharing in profit. But not to the exclusion of what is a basic right of authorship.

Happily, I don’t think the AMPTP is ever going to do this. I think some members would like to do it, but the cooler heads there are well aware that if they attempt to eliminate residuals, the WGA and SAG will strike until their dying breaths. Even worse, guys like me would be happily marching next to guys like Patric Verrone.

Eliminating residuals is simply not an option. It’s a poison pill.

That’s probably why they shouldn’t have announced it the way they did. In my opinion, it made them look a little bit desperate. An insinuation might have been more chilling. A news conference?

Not their best move to date.

Meanwhile, the WGA has suddenly figured out how to play the game. Even though our latest contract bulletin features an article by “Chief Negotiator David Young” (particularly amusing, given how much current leadership hated the fact that John McLean called himself “Chief Negotiator”…meet the new boss….), the star of the WGA for the past two weeks has been not David…not Patric, but…

John Bowman, chairman of the Negotiating Committee.

And what’s so hot about that?

Well, kudos to Patric and David for finding enough to humility to realize that they’ve blown a ton of credibility with the town. On the other hand, Bowman has some legitimacy. He created a hit sitcom, and he was a showrunner, which means he’s had real experience dealing with management in a partnership.

He’s got an MBA from Harvard, so he can speak Corporate.

Most importantly, he’s a fairly moderate guy. I’ve known John for about three years now. He’s calm, level-headed, and completely disinterested in an ideology-driven agenda. He was a great choice to head the NegComm, and I think he’s an excellent complement to Patric’s olde tyme religious fervor.

Therefore, it’s WGA 1, AMPTP 0 as we head into the first week.

Still, this is pretty much all about biding time. We’re not going to make a deal in the next few months. And we will work past our deadline.

The game is still the same. Will the DGA sit back and see if a WGA/SAG alliance can get a good deal? Or will they decide that brings too much of a strike risk, and slip in between to end all the strife?

I hate to say it, but this fight probably won’t get interesting until next April.

I’ll keep updating as it goes…

How would you go about writing two scenes in a script that run at the same time in split screen, but don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other? Basically like a scene from the movie Timecode.

–John

That’s a real challenge to do in standard screenplay format. While someone watching a movie can follow the action happening in multiple sections of the screen at once, the reader simply can’t. Reading is a left-to-right, top-to-bottom process. So you’re going to have to figure out another way to communicate the same idea.

Your approach depends on how crucial the split-screen timing becomes. For instance, in an earlier draft of the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS, there was a chase sequence between Alex (Lucy Liu) and the Thin Man (Crispin Glover), in which they were both trying to get to the roof of the building in order to reach the satellite dish that Eric Knox was using. The chase started with the two characters on opposite sides of an iron fence, which formed the dividing line down the middle of the screen. We then followed each character on separate, sometimes overlapping paths, as they fought their way to the roof. Finally, Alex kicked the Thin Man “through” the center dividing line.

In this example, the exact timing of who-is-where-when was important, so I chose to write the action as two parallel columns on a horizontal page. It was a pain in the ass to format, because Final Draft couldn’t handle it, so each time I printed out the script I had to make sure to leave blank “filler” pages in which to insert the properly-formatted side-by-side pages. Still, it was a fun challenge.

Ultimately, the split-screen stuff was dropped and the sequence became about Alex and the Thin Man kicking the crap out of each other.

For TIMECODE, Mike Figgis apparently didn’t work off a traditional screenplay at all. The entire movie was rehearsed and reshot more than a dozen times. To figure out who-is-where-when, Figgis used musical score sheets.

For your script, since the two sides don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, I would recommend writing the scenes out straight. If it’s important to indicate to the reader that certain scenes are playing side-by-side, just put a note in parentheses in the first line of a scene’s description. It’s not a perfect solution, but in most cases that’s as straightfoward as you’re going to get.

(This article originally ran September 29, 2003.)

(Note: This article comes from February 2002. I’m including it as part of my summer reruns, and crossing my fingers it doesn’t become timely.)

Finding inspiration and motivation to write is hard enough on an average day, but ever since the September 11th attacks and the chaos which has followed, I feel especially useless. As I am not a professional writer, there are no demands or deadlines forcing me to stretch those muscles with any regularity. The state of the world we live in makes me sad, angry, and afraid. While those emotions may drive others to create an expression of their feelings, I simply say to myself, "Why should I bother? Movies don’t really matter." How have you been dealing with the recent events and if you don’t mind, should I bother? Thank you for taking the time.

–Russ

Screenwriting is a pretty trivial profession even on the most sun-dappled days. In the context of human tragedy and international strife, it’s even harder to justify the ninth revision of your hockey-playing chimpanzee comedy. (For the record, there is already a hockey-playing chimpanzee comedy.) Much like every single person in North America, I went through the same stages of bewilderment, frustration, grief and fear after the September attacks. But after about a week, I got back on the saddle and started writing again.

Why? I think the answer is that I had to do something, and I’m better at writing than anything else I’ve found. I’m a pretty good cook, and know my way around a Macintosh in terms of graphic design, but pretty much the only hope I have of keeping a roof over my head is to continue to write. I don’t always enjoy it, and sometimes it makes me miserable. But in the sense that anyone truly has a calling, this is probably mine.

Now, since I’m a screenwriter and not a psychologist or counsellor, I’m completely unqualified to judge whether the sadness, anger and fear you’re feeling five months after the attacks is healthy. Obviously, it’s unproductive in the most literal sense, since you wish to be writing but find you can’t. So my advice to you would be my advice to any friend in your situation: find somebody who can help you out.

For what it’s worth, my friends and family who’ve sought help invariably say they wasted months making up their minds to see someone. Once they finally did, things improved much faster than they expected, and the world seemed much less onerous.

As far as should you bother writing, I’d argue it’s absolutely worth the trouble. Because while it’s true that some things did change on September 11th, 99.9% of things are exactly the same as they were on September 10th. What did change is your perception of them, and that’s a much easier problem to address.