Business Insight Zone

For the most part I’ve been paying little attention to the labor strike of the Screen Writers’ Guild. You’d think that, as a writer and a student of business, I would give it more attention, but then again I watch very little television, so the strike barely affects me on a personal basis. As far as I know, it won’t affect the things I do watch, e.g. the odd NFL game. And anyway, it doesn’t affect any of the already-released movies on our Netflix queue.

Some pundits from within the media business are calling the strike silly — for example Michael Eisner, who spent umpteen years as the CEO of Walt Disney and would, therefore, seem to have an informed view of the subject . . . at least from management’s perspective.

The writer’s perspective is ably represented in this blog post from Joss Whedon,* the eminence behind the t.v. show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie Serenity, and other cult-favorite shows. Here’s Whedon:

The easiest tactic is for people to paint writers as namby pamby arty scarfy posers, because it’s what most people think even when we’re not striking. Writing is largely not considered work. Art in general is not considered work. Work is a thing you physically labor at, or at the very least, hate. Art is fun. (And Hollywood writers are overpaid, scarf-wearing dainties.) It’s an easy argument to make. And a hard one to dispute . . . .

[But writing is] always hard. Not just dealing with obtuse, intrusive studio execs, temperamental stars and family-prohibiting hours. Those are producer issues as much as anything else. Not just trying to get your first script sold, or seen, or finished, when nobody around believes you can/will/should . . . the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?”

Whedon doesn’t talk about the substance of the writers’ griefs (financial considerations for online derivatives and so on), but he does offer an interesting view from the screenwriter’s perspective. Worth a look if you’re interested in the strike and its outcome.

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* Note that Whedon is posting on a fan blog — Whedonesque — dedicated to his work.