Billion-Dollar Kiss

by Jeffrey Stepakoff

  Being a screenwriter in early Hollywood was, by most accounts, great fun. The Screen Writers Guild, formed in 1921, was in reality more of a social club than a labor organization. Meeting in an old house on Sunset, parties were thrown, plays were performed, and it’s safe to say that alcohol was in abundance. The early SWG was not too different from a collegiate alumni association like Carnegie Mellon’s West Coast Drama Clan, which I joined in 1988 when I came to L.A.

  But by the 1930s, while Hollywood seemed safe from the hardship that troubled most American industries, this was, in fact, not the case. Rather than trim their own massive salaries or the cost of tickets, studio bosses forced huge wage cuts on labor, including writers. Writing for the studios was hard and often thankless work. Hours were long. There were no royalties or residuals. Credits were assigned not on the contribution of the writer, but as the studios saw fit. Writers were often lent back and forth between studios, like costumes or lighting equipment. And the studios were very committed to keeping things this way, even if that meant threats, bribery, or doing business with mob-connected labor leaders.

  Hollywood writers soon realized they needed more than a club. In 1933, ten writers met at the Roosevelt Hotel to reorganize the Screen Writers Guild into a “guild with teeth.” It soon began to work, and studio management was not pleased. Many writers at this time had affiliations with radical theater groups back in New York that supported or simply explored communist ideals. And most writers, even the most successful and those from wealthy families, saw themselves as workers and identified with the struggle of organized labor. However, by 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating the Hollywood labor unions, it was one thing to be a worker, and quite another to be a Communist. Red-baiting, an accusation of Communist sympathy, became a weapon that studio management could use to keep organized labor in check. Many writers who were threats to the studio system were subpoenaed, dragged before the HUAC and asked (among other things): “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Screen Writers Guild?”

  Some, like writer Budd Schulberg (What Makes Sammy Run) and director Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront), “named names” and implicated their left-leaning colleagues as Communist sympathizers. Others, like the “Hollywood Ten,” a group of ten artists—nine of whom were writers—refused, were cited for contempt, and served prison time. Hundreds of writers, like Ring Lardner, Howard Koch, Dorothy Parker, Lester Cole, John Howard Lawson, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Laurents, and Lillian Hellman were “blacklisted” by the studios, which refused to employ them. In 1952, the Screenwriters Guild allowed the studios to remove writers’ names from movies they had written. Some writers were able to work under pseudonyms or “fronts” (using friends who took credit for their work) like Dalton Trumbo, who wrote Roman Holiday but whose friend Ian McLellan Hunter took credit for it as well as won Trumbo’s Academy Award for it. But others had their careers and their lives irreparably destroyed.

  It was during this tumultuous time that television exploded in popularity. Much of early TV, which was produced in New York, was basically just filmed theater. Variety programs, like Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater, and Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows resurrected vaudeville. Anthologies like Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theatre, and the Philco and Goodyear Television Playhouses literally presented plays, many of which writers dug out after the works didn’t sell on Broadway. Though some writers during this period—such as Rod Serling, Reginald Rose, and Gore Vidal—are still highly regarded dramatists, early television writers received even less respect, artistic and financial, than their brethren who were writing for motion pictures. John Brady reports in his book, The Craft of the Screenwriter, that Paddy Chayefsky received nine hundred dollars when his teleplay Marty aired in 1953, but fifteen times that amount—plus a percentage of the profits—when it was made into a movie. For an entire TV season of work, writing nine one-hour shows, Chayefsky was paid just seventeen thousand dollars. Television may have been “golden” during this age, but it certainly wasn’t a gold mine for those writing it.

  Hollywood’s hope that television was just a fleeting high-brow fascination was not to be the case. As the price of TV sets dropped and popular programming became more sophisticated, TV caught on in a big way. In 1950, there were more than 10 million TV sets in this country. When Hollywood finally realized that the damn thing wasn’t going to go away, the West Coast studios decided they had no choice but to join the party. It wasn’t long before Hollywood took over the party.

  Unlike live TV in New York, early television in Hollywood had more in common with B movies than with theater. Early filmed television shows were formulaic. Westerns and cop shows became staples of the new medium. Shoot-outs and chases became expected conventions. Scripts were often written simply to take advantage of existing movie sets on backlots. Nonetheless, people watched. By 1955, two thirds of the country owned a television.

  When Desi Arnaz put three film cameras in front of his wife’s live stage comedy, I Love Lucy, and essentially invented the sitcom, it wasn’t just audiences that were now captivated. The Hollywood studios quickly realized that the real beauty of filmed entertainment was that it could be rebroadcast, ad in-finitum. And every time a show was rerun, the studios incurred no additional expenses but received additional revenue. The writers of those shows, however, did not. This was the basis for the writers strike of 1953, which resulted in a contract that paid TV writers their first residuals. A year later, several groups, including the Screen Writers Guild, representing writers on both coasts, merged to form the Writers Guild of America.

  The WGA led the next work stoppage in 1960, which was much longer and turbulent than previous strikes, mainly because the studios were able to keep making TV shows. Warner Brothers alone had more than a hundred television scripts written. This was doable without union writers because most of the scripts were simply recycled from other shows. Producers just changed the character names on a script that had already been shot on one western and used it for a shooting script on another, and the same went for cop shows and lawyer shows. No one really noticed. That was the quality of the vast majority of television being made at that time. But this would change.

  The late sixties saw the rise of higher-quality programming, which was due primarily to the rising involvement of the writer in not just writing the show, but producing it. Many TV writers were now writer-producers, or “hyphenates.” Although this greatly improved the quality of TV, it created some unique problems for the guild. During the strike of 1973, while the majority of the membership supported the guild, accomplished writer-producers like Norman Lear, Richard Levinson, Charles Fries, William Sackheim, Leonard Stern, and Aaron Spelling felt like traitors. They supported the guild, but they were also producing for the same companies the guild was striking. Over the next decade, this conflict of interest quietly grew.

  By the mid-eighties, a strong and increasingly vocal faction within the WGA began to emerge, much of which was composed of regularly working writers, many of whom were hyphenates. According to Variety, in 1985, of WGA-West members with credits in the previous ten years 80 percent earned less than $5,000 a year writing. By 1988, about 10 percent of the guild’s members were paying 50 percent of its $5.3 million in annual dues. From the mid-eighties until today, the yearly working membership of the WGA has remained at about 50 percent. And of that group of working writers, a very small minority works steadily most of the year, as opposed to freelancing a job or two. And of that group of steadily employed writers, an even smaller group continues to work regularly, year after year. Some are hot screenwriters. Most are television writers who work on staffs. A strike has different effects on a writer who sells a project or two every few years and a television writer-producer who is suspended from a long-term multimillion-dollar contract. This discord within the guild was one of the main reasons another strike in 1985 barely lasted two weeks and was generally disastrous for writers
.

  In 1988 management expected the same thing. They were wrong. Although the guild’s divisiveness was there from the start of the dispute with the studios, this time the WGA leadership dug in its heels.

  The primary demands from the WGA were for greater residuals from one-hour dramas and from the burgeoning foreign television markets. Unlike most walkouts in America, which take place for better working conditions, health benefits, pensions, and higher pay, writers strikes have almost always been centered on residuals. Of course those other issues are on the table as well, but the real hot button for writers is not so much initial compensation as it is participation in the ongoing revenue stream of what they create. And this is much more than a simple matter of dollars. It’s also a philosophical issue. How much should a creator share in the future of what he or she creates? How much should be the sole property of the corporation that employs the creator? These are questions with which most industries never have to deal.

  You see, residuals are really a form of ownership, like a dividend a company pays owners of its stock. Getting residuals means that after a writer is paid his or her initial compensation for writing a script, he or she is paid again every time that TV episode is used again—whether rerun in prime time, on cable, on a local station in Thailand, as part of in-flight entertainment, as part of a “clip show” broadcast, on DVD, shown in the produce section at Kroger, on screens at gas-station pumps, or downloaded onto a computer, cell phone, or iPod. Anytime, anywhere, in any form a writer’s work is rerun, reused, or repurposed, that writer receives a green envelope from the WGA in the mail a few weeks later. Depending on how a script was used, checks can be anywhere from a few cents to more than $25,000. You never know. You can imagine the thrill every time one of those green envelopes arrives in the mail.

  Emboldened by victories in previous strikes and the conflict they once again sensed within the guild, the studios budged very little during the initial negotiations. With critical stakes on the line—residuals and the future of the guild itself—the writers also remained obstinate. Consequently, the strike dragged on, escalating into something bigger than either side ever imagined. And gone were the days when the production companies were mom-and-pop shops run by avuncular studio heads who would help everyone sort out their differences. By the middle of June 1988, the strike had become the longest labor stoppage in Hollywood history. The L.A. economy had lost hundreds of millions of dollars. The entire state of California was bleeding as the $6.5 billion entertainment industry had ground to a halt. And most alarming, viewers started to find other things to do. For the first time since the invention of the medium, viewing habits were broken.

  At the end of June, with bargaining hopelessly deadlocked, the studios decided it was time to take drastic measures. Well aware of those hundred reworked scripts during the 1960 strike, the studios felt pretty confident that they could replicate that effort. But to fully appreciate the mind-set of management, you have to remember the prevailing attitude toward organized labor in the eighties. Reagan’s firing of 12,700 air traffic controllers, followed by the collapse and disintegration of their union, was still fresh in the minds of most people. Reagan was easily able to find and hire replacement workers, and within a few months thousands of new controllers were trained and working.

  In the fall of 1987, just a few months before the WGA walkout, the National Football League players went out on strike. In response, the twenty-eight team owners hired replacement players. Regular games were played and televised. Attendance and ratings suffered only slightly. The public supported management over the football players who were widely seen as overpaid prima donnas. The football strike lasted just twenty-four days and was a complete catastrophe for the players union.

  By the summer of 1988, the Hollywood studio heads took a look around and decided, “Screw the WGA! Who needs union writers? Let’s go find some people who want to work!” The studios and production companies scoured the planet for material and people who could write material. Sitcom scripts from England and Canada were considered. The studios looked into hiring foreign writers. People like me were offered their first jobs.

  On June 24, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (the studios) announced that production would be starting up and new shows would be made for the fall season. Most people speculated that scabs would be used. A few days later, on June 29, NBC’s head of entertainment, Brandon Tartikoff, publicly proclaimed that “come hell or high water,” there would be original programming on his network. Tartikoff promised a “Bastille Day” announcement on July 14 that would lay out his new fall schedule in detail.

  The entire town wondered if the studios could actually do this. Could they really make TV without union writers? Many figured, no way, this just wasn’t possible. But others thought, why not? After all, how hard could it possibly be to find willing and able labor to write television?

  The industry held its breath. And so did I.

  In 1988 Oliver North was indicted for conspiracy, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, and Wayne Gretzky was traded to the L.A. Kings, but I didn’t notice. None of my friends noticed. When you write, or aspire to write, TV, “current events” means what’s going on in the TV business.

  For most of the country, the Writers Strike of 1988 was a news footnote at best. But if you lived in L.A. that summer, you followed the strike the way people in Washington probably followed Watergate in 1972. I spent much of my time at work listening to news reports on the radio, swapping rumors on the phone, and meeting friends to share gossip.

  In all “industry towns” there is a certain myopia that applies to that city’s dominant business. In Milwaukee I’m sure brewmasters talk beer, and in Silicon Valley programmers surely yak about chip speed. But I soon learned that in Hollywood, one way or another all talk is shop talk. Indeed, every single aspect of the business, from who’s hiring who, to who’s writing what—and, in the summer of 1988, what was going on with the strike—are all discussed not only with great focus, but with a reverence that surpasses the attention given to cancer research. I would have heated conversations that lasted well into the night about topics like Aaron Spelling’s fourth acts and the genius of David Chase’s “espadrille” scene in that Almost Grown pilot. It is impossible to work, or aspire to work, in television without getting entirely wrapped up in this world. It becomes your entire world, so much so that everything outside of L.A. seems, at best, quaint. And in reality, irrelevant.

  In a human-interest piece I saw on the local news that summer, a reporter walking along Melrose Boulevard asked people the same simple question: “How’s your script coming along?” He asked all kinds of Los Angelenos from all kinds of socioeconomic groups, and something like 80 percent of them answered with a sincere account of the status of their spec TV and film scripts: “Great! Almost done. Should be able to quit my job at the law firm any day now.”

  Here’s another example. For the July 4th weekend, I went to the beach with some friends, and all of us pulled out television scripts to read. Not books. More than a dozen young people, all reading TV scripts.

  Writer Friend: How’s that Roseanne?

  Me: Interesting. (Meaning I don’t know what to make of it.) It’s like the anti-Cosby. How’s the Hooperman?

  Writer Friend: Brilliant, fucking brilliant. Top of act, he’s got the protagonist sticking his head in a toilet tank to rinse the shampoo out of his hair when the plumbing breaks. Talk about laying pipe, talk about establishing character—and he’s done it all in the teaser, for Christ’s sake!

  Me (in an earnest hushed voice): Bochco is the master. Did you hear he was working on a pilot before the strike about a genius kid doctor?

  Writer Friend: Someone should write a show about us, you know, people our age.

  Another Writer Friend (looking up from a Family Matters script): My friend was an assistant on Growing Pains and she says that Neal Marlens says that nothing interesting ever happens in your twenties. That’s why there
are family shows about kids and shows like thirtysomething, but nothing in between. No stories to tell about twenty-year-olds that anybody cares about.

  Me & Writer Friend (accepting this as gospel and going back to our script reading): Oh, huh, I guess that’s right.

  Unable to make a decision about whether or not to scab, I finally decided to ask someone for advice, someone who was not wrapped up in this world: my father. I’ll be honest. To say that my dad was, well, less than supportive about my interest in writing would be putting it mildly. Having spent his lifetime in sales management for a furniture manufacturer, my father knew as much about a writing profession as Willy Loman. I think it would be accurate to say that he was nothing short of heartbroken when I left Ogilvy & Mather, which wanted to pay for me to get an MBA, so that I could go into serious debt getting an MFA. I’ll be even more honest. I could have asked a lot of people for this advice. I believe I chose my father because I figured he’d talk me into taking the money. He didn’t.

  “Look, if they want you now, they’ll want you when this thing is over,” is what he told me.

  This was the first time my father expressed actual belief in my ability to write. I followed his advice, called the Universal father expressed actual belief in my ability to write. I followed his advice, called the Universal exec, and passed.