This should be titled, "Mediation Won't Work...So Let's Try Fear"...
Members of the Western arm of the WGA whose unproduced scripts were shopped or bought by a Studio now have until tomorrow [Friday] to give those scripts to the Union for their 'Script Validation' program. This is an attempt to keep track of possible rogue writers, and trace any work that might break the strike.
As one might expect, the AMPTP is handling the matter with all the restrained dignity of a grenade with the pin missing...In short, they're having a super-annuated cow!
Their response was a positive blizzard of "Cease and Desist" orders, trying to get the scripts into their [ahem!] 'safe keeping.' The WGA ignored their demands so the AMPTP sent doom-laden letters direct to the WGA's members, threatening everything short of eternal damnation if scripts written under contract were not immediately surrendered to them. The Guild promptly filed a complaint about this intimidation with the Labor Relations Board, and it was stopped. But what will take its place is a very good question.
The WGA can't 'force' the Writers to obey, but so far hundreds of scripts have already been delivered to their offices. The results of such mass defiance have yet to appear but you can bet the AMPTP are already employing every available grain of guile and cunning to sink the strike so no-one but them gets a decent, living wage. Studio executives are obscenely rewarded for an amount of work you couldn't find with a microscope. But they want you to believe the Writers are greedy.
In 2006, an average Writer earned $200-300k. Leslie Moonves [the boss of CBS] earned $28-million. You do the math!
Members of the Western arm of the WGA whose unproduced scripts were shopped or bought by a Studio now have until tomorrow [Friday] to give those scripts to the Union for their 'Script Validation' program. This is an attempt to keep track of possible rogue writers, and trace any work that might break the strike.
As one might expect, the AMPTP is handling the matter with all the restrained dignity of a grenade with the pin missing...In short, they're having a super-annuated cow!
Their response was a positive blizzard of "Cease and Desist" orders, trying to get the scripts into their [ahem!]
The WGA can't 'force' the Writers to obey, but so far hundreds of scripts have already been delivered to their offices. The results of such mass defiance have yet to appear but you can bet the AMPTP are already employing every available grain of guile and cunning to sink the strike so no-one but them gets a decent, living wage. Studio executives are obscenely rewarded for an amount of work you couldn't find with a microscope. But they want you to believe the Writers are greedy.
In 2006, an average Writer earned $200-300k. Leslie Moonves [the boss of CBS] earned $28-million. You do the math!
