Star Trek alumni support the WGA

“Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few . . . or the one.”

– Spock.

When I was a little kid, I loved this show you may have heard of called Star Trek. When I was a teenager, I worked on a show called Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was like Star Trek, but with jumpsuits and snazzier special effects.

They were both popular programs, inspiring and bringing joy to generations of viewers, while putting loads of cash into the pockets of Paramount and its shareholders.

Today, the WGA is having a Star Trek picket at Paramount to honor the people — like Harlan Ellison, John D. F. Black and Ron Moore — whose stories over the years made Star Trek such an important part of our culture, and inspired writers, actors, engineers, and others to reach out for the stars.

The picket is scheduled from 11-3 at Paramount’s Windsor gate. I’ll be there, and I hope you’ll all join me, at least in spirit, as we thank the people who made Star Trek possible, and fight for the rights of the next generation of writers.

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54 thoughts on “Star Trek alumni support the WGA”

  3. Darn! I was out in Culver City for Thanksgiving. (My flight out there was perfectly scheduled to make me miss out on being one of the THDOOL300.) If my timing had been better, I surely would have joined you.

  4. You were in STTNG? Who did you play? One of them hot romulans?
    Oh, THAT Wil Wheaton! Sorry. Got my meds mixed up. We support you! Shout out loud for us!

  5. Totally with you guys in spirit because I’m too far away geographically to be there in person. Yeah, pics would be awesome if you have time to take them. 🙂

  8. Man, I wish I could be there, for so many reasons (you, of course; supporting the writers; love of Armin Shimmerman; David Gerrold is the reason I’m a Trekkie; well, mmmm, Brent Spiner…), but, alas, I must earn money. Though one of my bosses is a big Star Trek fan – maybe if I talk to him, he’ll understand and let me go…
    Ah well, I am definitely there in spirit.

  13. In as much as I support the writers strike I have absolutly nothing to lose by being out spoken about it.
    You are a writer and an actor so you have lots to lose by alienating the producers that may or may not hire you.
    Granted you are not the only SAG member to stand up with the WGA but does it not make you nervous?
    So I guess my question is do you feel you may be limiting your chances or is the community a bit more Bygones than to let a labor dispute get in the way of professionalism?

  17. I know I support the writers, even if it means my shows are on hold 😛
    Also on that note, I finally watched that episode of Numb3rs you were on, and it was awesome. I now have a new show to follow.

  19. Listening to “My Live Show” right now. I think you’re official time is over right now, but hoping they grab you to yak at. Totally there in spirit.

  21. Was there in spirit, hovering over the crowd, as I had an out-of-body experience – OK, that’s a bit weird, but it’s what I think of immediately when someone starts talking about spirits… (either that or liquor!!)

  26. Fight the good fight, Wil!
    I was also there in spirit, although my spirit was about 8 hours late. I’m proud of everyone who showed up to do this. Makes me proud to be a Star Trek fangirl :D.
    (And might I add that your backpack is awesome!)

  28. I hope it went well yesterday at the picket line – goodness knows, us in the UK know all about striking!!! As a writer myself (not on your scale of course – I write for pleasure) I fully support and understand the ideology of the WGA strike. Best of lick and lots of love. Sandy

  29. I hope it went well yesterday at the picket line – goodness knows, us in the UK know all about striking!!! As a writer myself (not on your scale of course – I write for pleasure) I fully support and understand the ideology of the WGA strike. Best of luck and lots of love. Sandy

  30. ok my writing skills are not very well displayed here but it’s freezing cold in the UK right now and my heating has gone off. Cold fingers.

  31. Last one I promise, loved the Datalore review on TV Squad – I’ve managed to get this site (your blog’s) and TV Squad bookmarked into my mobile phone so I can keep up to date with you while on the move. Oh and please Wil can you come see us on this small little island we call the UK. We’d love to have you over.

  32. Best Wishes and support from the Detroit burbs. You have no idea how much I’d love to be there in person, but going 2300 miles off my route may make me a bit late for work.

  33. Wil,
    Hello for the first time! I just finished reading your well written books, _Just a Geek_ and _Dancing Barefoot_. Both books belong to my fiance of five months and he is without a doubt an adoring fan of your careers. Don’t tell him I said “adoring.” 🙂 In your descriptions of your relationship with your Mrs., I couldn’t help to notice how similar our relationship is to yours. Thus, I have a HUGE favor to ask…is there any way I could get an autographed paper copy of _The Happiest Days of our Lives_? I am willing to pay whatever you may ask for this hopeful Christmas gift for him. He has read your website religiously for six years now yet has never gotten the courage to write to you. From what you have written about yourself, he is a lot like you…the happiest of true computer geeks.
    May all work out for the WGA! All the best to you and to yours.
    With lovingkindness,
    Adrian

  34. I hope Paramount didn’t employ any Sopranos style picket/strike breakers.
    “O A whadda ya doin here. I’m tellin ya ta get lost!”
    THUD with the 2×4.

  36. Hi Will, if I lived anywhere near LA I would’ve been over there in heartbeat yesterday. In lieu of location, I bought two t-shirts yesterday.

  37. from Germany
    You won’t get me by E-Mail—
    but
    >lizen< still lieening........ >open _ core.sense.meaning
    >accomplish
    >things to come
    >open query
    >open corE
    >tar con get 192.0.0.255
    >open every day
    no doubt…
    /.

  38. muaaaaahahahahahahahahahah
    it went all so easy on that fu……. C=64 an all these Amiga….
    I know, You didn’t like it
    I know.
    Greets
    You will think about it… I know……
    heheheheheheh

  39. First, let me say that based on my limited knowledge of the situation, I’m completely in favor of the writers. Without them, no one else on a TV show or movie would have anything to do — even reality and game shows need writers to think up the contests, design the voting/scoring systems, etc.

    That said, I’d like to point out (for those who didn’t go watch it) Harlan Ellison piece referenced by DJC (Dec 10, 11:12am) kinda includes “the next generation of writers” as part of the problem because too many are willing to work for peanuts (perhaps literally) in order to get “discovered.” Ellison points out that they are likely hurting their own future (and those of all other writers, too) by creating wrong expectations in the TV/movie industry. They may not be worthy of top dollar, but writing a screen- or teleplay for nothing more than a writing credit probably hurts everyone in the long run.

    OTOH, “the Next Generation writers” surely deserve all the support they can get! [smile]

  41. Read an interesting article today that the studios are using the WGA as a warm for the real fight……SAG. If there’s any truth to this, we’re in for a DIFFICULT 2008!
    http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-goldstein11dec11,1,2190634.story?coll=la-promo-entnews
    From the Los Angeles Times
    THE BIG PICTURE
    THE BIG PICTURE: In the strike, the studios are playing to win
    While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation with the actors guild looms down the road.
    By Patrick Goldstein
    Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
    December 11, 2007
    DESPITE what they say about global warming, it’s going to be a long, cold winter for the writers of Hollywood. The studios pretty much made it official Friday, when they walked away from the negotiating table after giving the Writers Guild an abrupt “put up or shut up” ultimatum. Considering that the studios were asking the writers to give up much of their core Internet residuals proposal, there was little left to negotiate.
    The studios’ message was obvious: They’re going to play hardball. Believing they have comparatively little to lose by letting the strike drag on, the studios will try to weaken the guild by letting writers spend Christmas out of work while studio operatives sow seeds of discord among the membership, hoping to persuade some high-profile writers to cross the line and go back to work.
    This puts all of Hollywood on the road to perdition. That still leaves the real unanswered question: Why have the studios walked away from the negotiating table? Although it seemed hard to believe at first, the evidence is overwhelming that they never had any serious intention of making a fair deal, at least the kind of deal that, as Lew Wasserman might have put it, would’ve allowed both sides to come away declaring victory. There is clearly a powerful studio faction that believes that giving residuals to the writers was a fundamental mistake. Since it’s impossible to put that genie back into the bottle — not that the studios didn’t try — the next best thing would be to put a tight lid on any new media revenue streams, since they will someday become the studio’s biggest new source of profit.
    The studios’ behavior appears shortsighted unless you look at the negotiations in a broader light. While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation looms down the road. No one expects that the studios will have much of a problem settling with the Directors Guild of America, whose contract is up June 30, 2008. But the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract is also up that day, is another matter.
    The largest union, with 120,000 members, SAG also has a relatively new president, Alan Rosenberg, who came to power after promising a much more aggressive stance about new media revenues. For the first time, SAG also brought in an outsider, former NFL Players Assn. executive Doug Allen, to be its executive director, another sign that the guild is preparing for a hard-nosed negotiation.
    The studios don’t want to make any concessions to the Writers Guild of America that would set a precedent for the SAG negotiations. In fact, many insiders believe the studios are trying to crush the writers as a way of signaling to SAG members that they can expect similar treatment if they don’t soften their negotiating stance.
    The studios have little to lose by stonewalling, since it’s all too clear that they can win any prolonged strike. Their pockets are too deep, their weaponry too strong. But at what cost? Even many studio supporters admit that squashing the WGA after a prolonged strike would be something of a pyrrhic victory. If network TV turns into a 24-hour reality TV and game show channel, it will simply accelerate the trend of young viewers deserting the tube for the Internet.
    For the writers, their best defense now is a good offense. As I’ve argued before, their future lies in becoming more entrepreneurial. This would also be good strategy for future strike negotiations. With the studios stuck churning out reality sludge, the barriers for entry for an outsider are lower than ever. What’s to stop Google, Yahoo or Mark Cuban from striking a deal with a top TV show runner who has a proven ability to create characters and stories that would bring eyeballs to the Internet?
    I suspect the guild is already in the process of setting up interim deals that would allow writers to work with companies not represented by the studios. It would be a way to show the WGA rank and file that other opportunities exist outside of the traditional studio model while sending a message to the other side that, when it comes to negotiating, the guild has other arrows in its quiver.
    And speaking of arrows, the studios last week hired Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, former aides and advisors to Bill Clinton and Al Gore with reputations for canny damage control and bare-knuckled attacks on political adversaries.
    It is widely believed that the new consultants had a hand in a recent studio proposal designed to portray the studios as willing negotiators. Although it offered precious few concessions, it was labeled a “new economic partnership,” which brings to mind the time the Bush administration described a pro-logging proposal as a “healthy forests initiative.” Nonetheless, the studios flogged it as a big step forward, claiming it would increase the average working writer’s salary to $230,000 a year.
    The proposal doesn’t mention anything about the average nonworking writer, who, as it happens, is on strike too. If you include all writers, the plump $230,000 figure ends up being roughly a quarter of that. The new consultants also clearly had a hand in the studios’ Friday statement about the collapse of the talks, a statement that many in the guild leadership view as a “red-baiting” style campaign designed to divide the guild — and chip away at its public support — by branding the leadership as radicals.
    It’s a fascinating statement, not for what it says, but for the language it uses, which would bring a blush even to the face of wily GOP rhetorician Frank Luntz, the man the WGA should hire if it really wants to win a PR battle with the studios. A new word that pops up in the document is “ideology,” as in “the WGA organizers are on an ideological mission far removed from the interests of their members.”
    The document also criticizes the guild’s “radical demands” and repeatedly refers to the WGA leadership not as negotiators but as “organizers,” another sign that the studios are attempting to brand them as militant apparatchiks. That would be in keeping with the traditional tactics of the studio’s new hired guns, it being Lehane, who, as Gore’s campaign spokesman, once compared a Florida secretary of state to a “Soviet commissar” during the 2000 election uproar.
    The statement also charges that guild leaders have “never concluded one industry accord,” implying that they are clueless outside agitators. It has a nice ring to it until you realize that the single most successful labor negotiator of modern times, baseball players union leader Marvin Miller, had never done a baseball deal either when he came to the game. He’d been an economist with the United Steelworkers.
    From where I sit, it was telling that the labor talks collapsed just days after the Baseball Hall of Fame revisited its own divisive labor history, electing former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, a die-hard opponent of free agency, while once again overlooking Miller.
    Like today’s studio bosses, Kuhn had become so beholden to the old rules of the game that he was paralyzed by a fear of the future, convinced that allowing players to become free agents would destroy the sport. Of course, he was wrong. Baseball franchises are more lucrative than ever. But that distrust of the future is at the core of this labor dispute too. The studios have assembled a comfortable business model, one so comfortable that they are loathe to tinker with it.
    Kuhn once warned that if the players gained free agency, the game wouldn’t survive unless “we find oil under second base.” Hollywood is different. In an era when show business is the secular religion of America, there’s oil under every studio in town. If the studios aren’t willing to share some of that black gold, the writers should do what any good entrepreneur would — start digging for themselves.
    “The Big Picture” runs each Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to [email protected].

  42. Read an interesting article today that says that the studios are using the WGA as warm for the real fight–SAG.
    http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-goldstein11dec11,1,2190634.story?coll=la-promo-entnews
    From the Los Angeles Times
    THE BIG PICTURE
    THE BIG PICTURE: In the strike, the studios are playing to win
    While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation with the actors guild looms down the road.
    By Patrick Goldstein
    Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
    December 11, 2007
    DESPITE what they say about global warming, it’s going to be a long, cold winter for the writers of Hollywood. The studios pretty much made it official Friday, when they walked away from the negotiating table after giving the Writers Guild an abrupt “put up or shut up” ultimatum. Considering that the studios were asking the writers to give up much of their core Internet residuals proposal, there was little left to negotiate.
    The studios’ message was obvious: They’re going to play hardball. Believing they have comparatively little to lose by letting the strike drag on, the studios will try to weaken the guild by letting writers spend Christmas out of work while studio operatives sow seeds of discord among the membership, hoping to persuade some high-profile writers to cross the line and go back to work.
    This puts all of Hollywood on the road to perdition. That still leaves the real unanswered question: Why have the studios walked away from the negotiating table? Although it seemed hard to believe at first, the evidence is overwhelming that they never had any serious intention of making a fair deal, at least the kind of deal that, as Lew Wasserman might have put it, would’ve allowed both sides to come away declaring victory. There is clearly a powerful studio faction that believes that giving residuals to the writers was a fundamental mistake. Since it’s impossible to put that genie back into the bottle — not that the studios didn’t try — the next best thing would be to put a tight lid on any new media revenue streams, since they will someday become the studio’s biggest new source of profit.
    The studios’ behavior appears shortsighted unless you look at the negotiations in a broader light. While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation looms down the road. No one expects that the studios will have much of a problem settling with the Directors Guild of America, whose contract is up June 30, 2008. But the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract is also up that day, is another matter.
    The largest union, with 120,000 members, SAG also has a relatively new president, Alan Rosenberg, who came to power after promising a much more aggressive stance about new media revenues. For the first time, SAG also brought in an outsider, former NFL Players Assn. executive Doug Allen, to be its executive director, another sign that the guild is preparing for a hard-nosed negotiation.
    The studios don’t want to make any concessions to the Writers Guild of America that would set a precedent for the SAG negotiations. In fact, many insiders believe the studios are trying to crush the writers as a way of signaling to SAG members that they can expect similar treatment if they don’t soften their negotiating stance.
    The studios have little to lose by stonewalling, since it’s all too clear that they can win any prolonged strike. Their pockets are too deep, their weaponry too strong. But at what cost? Even many studio supporters admit that squashing the WGA after a prolonged strike would be something of a pyrrhic victory. If network TV turns into a 24-hour reality TV and game show channel, it will simply accelerate the trend of young viewers deserting the tube for the Internet.
    For the writers, their best defense now is a good offense. As I’ve argued before, their future lies in becoming more entrepreneurial. This would also be good strategy for future strike negotiations. With the studios stuck churning out reality sludge, the barriers for entry for an outsider are lower than ever. What’s to stop Google, Yahoo or Mark Cuban from striking a deal with a top TV show runner who has a proven ability to create characters and stories that would bring eyeballs to the Internet?
    I suspect the guild is already in the process of setting up interim deals that would allow writers to work with companies not represented by the studios. It would be a way to show the WGA rank and file that other opportunities exist outside of the traditional studio model while sending a message to the other side that, when it comes to negotiating, the guild has other arrows in its quiver.
    And speaking of arrows, the studios last week hired Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, former aides and advisors to Bill Clinton and Al Gore with reputations for canny damage control and bare-knuckled attacks on political adversaries.
    It is widely believed that the new consultants had a hand in a recent studio proposal designed to portray the studios as willing negotiators. Although it offered precious few concessions, it was labeled a “new economic partnership,” which brings to mind the time the Bush administration described a pro-logging proposal as a “healthy forests initiative.” Nonetheless, the studios flogged it as a big step forward, claiming it would increase the average working writer’s salary to $230,000 a year.
    The proposal doesn’t mention anything about the average nonworking writer, who, as it happens, is on strike too. If you include all writers, the plump $230,000 figure ends up being roughly a quarter of that. The new consultants also clearly had a hand in the studios’ Friday statement about the collapse of the talks, a statement that many in the guild leadership view as a “red-baiting” style campaign designed to divide the guild — and chip away at its public support — by branding the leadership as radicals.
    It’s a fascinating statement, not for what it says, but for the language it uses, which would bring a blush even to the face of wily GOP rhetorician Frank Luntz, the man the WGA should hire if it really wants to win a PR battle with the studios. A new word that pops up in the document is “ideology,” as in “the WGA organizers are on an ideological mission far removed from the interests of their members.”
    The document also criticizes the guild’s “radical demands” and repeatedly refers to the WGA leadership not as negotiators but as “organizers,” another sign that the studios are attempting to brand them as militant apparatchiks. That would be in keeping with the traditional tactics of the studio’s new hired guns, it being Lehane, who, as Gore’s campaign spokesman, once compared a Florida secretary of state to a “Soviet commissar” during the 2000 election uproar.
    The statement also charges that guild leaders have “never concluded one industry accord,” implying that they are clueless outside agitators. It has a nice ring to it until you realize that the single most successful labor negotiator of modern times, baseball players union leader Marvin Miller, had never done a baseball deal either when he came to the game. He’d been an economist with the United Steelworkers.
    From where I sit, it was telling that the labor talks collapsed just days after the Baseball Hall of Fame revisited its own divisive labor history, electing former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, a die-hard opponent of free agency, while once again overlooking Miller.
    Like today’s studio bosses, Kuhn had become so beholden to the old rules of the game that he was paralyzed by a fear of the future, convinced that allowing players to become free agents would destroy the sport. Of course, he was wrong. Baseball franchises are more lucrative than ever. But that distrust of the future is at the core of this labor dispute too. The studios have assembled a comfortable business model, one so comfortable that they are loathe to tinker with it.
    Kuhn once warned that if the players gained free agency, the game wouldn’t survive unless “we find oil under second base.” Hollywood is different. In an era when show business is the secular religion of America, there’s oil under every studio in town. If the studios aren’t willing to share some of that black gold, the writers should do what any good entrepreneur would — start digging for themselves.
    “The Big Picture” runs each Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to [email protected].

  43. Read an interesting article today that says that the studios are using the WGA as warm for the real fight–SAG.
    From the Los Angeles Times
    THE BIG PICTURE
    THE BIG PICTURE: In the strike, the studios are playing to win
    While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation with the actors guild looms down the road.
    By Patrick Goldstein
    Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
    December 11, 2007
    DESPITE what they say about global warming, it’s going to be a long, cold winter for the writers of Hollywood. The studios pretty much made it official Friday, when they walked away from the negotiating table after giving the Writers Guild an abrupt “put up or shut up” ultimatum. Considering that the studios were asking the writers to give up much of their core Internet residuals proposal, there was little left to negotiate.
    The studios’ message was obvious: They’re going to play hardball. Believing they have comparatively little to lose by letting the strike drag on, the studios will try to weaken the guild by letting writers spend Christmas out of work while studio operatives sow seeds of discord among the membership, hoping to persuade some high-profile writers to cross the line and go back to work.
    This puts all of Hollywood on the road to perdition. That still leaves the real unanswered question: Why have the studios walked away from the negotiating table? Although it seemed hard to believe at first, the evidence is overwhelming that they never had any serious intention of making a fair deal, at least the kind of deal that, as Lew Wasserman might have put it, would’ve allowed both sides to come away declaring victory. There is clearly a powerful studio faction that believes that giving residuals to the writers was a fundamental mistake. Since it’s impossible to put that genie back into the bottle — not that the studios didn’t try — the next best thing would be to put a tight lid on any new media revenue streams, since they will someday become the studio’s biggest new source of profit.
    The studios’ behavior appears shortsighted unless you look at the negotiations in a broader light. While attention is focused on the writers strike, a bigger confrontation looms down the road. No one expects that the studios will have much of a problem settling with the Directors Guild of America, whose contract is up June 30, 2008. But the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract is also up that day, is another matter.
    The largest union, with 120,000 members, SAG also has a relatively new president, Alan Rosenberg, who came to power after promising a much more aggressive stance about new media revenues. For the first time, SAG also brought in an outsider, former NFL Players Assn. executive Doug Allen, to be its executive director, another sign that the guild is preparing for a hard-nosed negotiation.
    The studios don’t want to make any concessions to the Writers Guild of America that would set a precedent for the SAG negotiations. In fact, many insiders believe the studios are trying to crush the writers as a way of signaling to SAG members that they can expect similar treatment if they don’t soften their negotiating stance.
    The studios have little to lose by stonewalling, since it’s all too clear that they can win any prolonged strike. Their pockets are too deep, their weaponry too strong. But at what cost? Even many studio supporters admit that squashing the WGA after a prolonged strike would be something of a pyrrhic victory. If network TV turns into a 24-hour reality TV and game show channel, it will simply accelerate the trend of young viewers deserting the tube for the Internet.
    For the writers, their best defense now is a good offense. As I’ve argued before, their future lies in becoming more entrepreneurial. This would also be good strategy for future strike negotiations. With the studios stuck churning out reality sludge, the barriers for entry for an outsider are lower than ever. What’s to stop Google, Yahoo or Mark Cuban from striking a deal with a top TV show runner who has a proven ability to create characters and stories that would bring eyeballs to the Internet?
    I suspect the guild is already in the process of setting up interim deals that would allow writers to work with companies not represented by the studios. It would be a way to show the WGA rank and file that other opportunities exist outside of the traditional studio model while sending a message to the other side that, when it comes to negotiating, the guild has other arrows in its quiver.
    And speaking of arrows, the studios last week hired Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, former aides and advisors to Bill Clinton and Al Gore with reputations for canny damage control and bare-knuckled attacks on political adversaries.
    It is widely believed that the new consultants had a hand in a recent studio proposal designed to portray the studios as willing negotiators. Although it offered precious few concessions, it was labeled a “new economic partnership,” which brings to mind the time the Bush administration described a pro-logging proposal as a “healthy forests initiative.” Nonetheless, the studios flogged it as a big step forward, claiming it would increase the average working writer’s salary to $230,000 a year.
    The proposal doesn’t mention anything about the average nonworking writer, who, as it happens, is on strike too. If you include all writers, the plump $230,000 figure ends up being roughly a quarter of that. The new consultants also clearly had a hand in the studios’ Friday statement about the collapse of the talks, a statement that many in the guild leadership view as a “red-baiting” style campaign designed to divide the guild — and chip away at its public support — by branding the leadership as radicals.
    It’s a fascinating statement, not for what it says, but for the language it uses, which would bring a blush even to the face of wily GOP rhetorician Frank Luntz, the man the WGA should hire if it really wants to win a PR battle with the studios. A new word that pops up in the document is “ideology,” as in “the WGA organizers are on an ideological mission far removed from the interests of their members.”
    The document also criticizes the guild’s “radical demands” and repeatedly refers to the WGA leadership not as negotiators but as “organizers,” another sign that the studios are attempting to brand them as militant apparatchiks. That would be in keeping with the traditional tactics of the studio’s new hired guns, it being Lehane, who, as Gore’s campaign spokesman, once compared a Florida secretary of state to a “Soviet commissar” during the 2000 election uproar.
    The statement also charges that guild leaders have “never concluded one industry accord,” implying that they are clueless outside agitators. It has a nice ring to it until you realize that the single most successful labor negotiator of modern times, baseball players union leader Marvin Miller, had never done a baseball deal either when he came to the game. He’d been an economist with the United Steelworkers.
    From where I sit, it was telling that the labor talks collapsed just days after the Baseball Hall of Fame revisited its own divisive labor history, electing former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, a die-hard opponent of free agency, while once again overlooking Miller.
    Like today’s studio bosses, Kuhn had become so beholden to the old rules of the game that he was paralyzed by a fear of the future, convinced that allowing players to become free agents would destroy the sport. Of course, he was wrong. Baseball franchises are more lucrative than ever. But that distrust of the future is at the core of this labor dispute too. The studios have assembled a comfortable business model, one so comfortable that they are loathe to tinker with it.
    Kuhn once warned that if the players gained free agency, the game wouldn’t survive unless “we find oil under second base.” Hollywood is different. In an era when show business is the secular religion of America, there’s oil under every studio in town. If the studios aren’t willing to share some of that black gold, the writers should do what any good entrepreneur would — start digging for themselves.
    “The Big Picture” runs each Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or criticism to [email protected].

  44. I saw this review yesterday, and thought you might like to check it out. Will Hindmarch writes:
    “All throughout The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Wil Wheaton does something that irks every writer I know: He makes it look easy. He draws importance out of simple moments. He gets across unhappy feelings without whinging, elation without being saccharine. He does all this with writing so simple and clear that it must either have been pruned like a bonsai or grown organically out of his guts like that. It makes the book feel genuine and personal.
    I hope he had to prune it. I hope it was painstaking. I hope he doesn’t simply remember things with this kind of dramatic clarity and resonance. I hope it’s not this easy for him.”
    http://wordstudio.net/thegist/?p=177#more-177

  48. Hey Wil!
    Of all the people in Blogsphere — i thought that you, of all people, would appreciate this…
    Merriam-Webster’s poll for Word of the Year declared ‘w00t’ the WINNER!
    Spread the Joy for all GEEKS… w00t w00t!

  50. I support the writers, but I feel for everyone else who is out of work. It’s a hard situation especially during the holidays.
    This strike is far reaching. I’m not in LA, but I work in broadcasting, for a station owned by a major studio, and they’ve put the squeeze on us. No overtime, cutbacks for holiday celebrations (not a huge deal, but still hurts morale), no new hires etc. I’m afraid if the strike goes on for too much longer I won’t get a raise next year. Or worse yet there could be layoffs.
    Wil – what do you think of all the other people who have lost paychecks due to this?
    I’m hoping for a speedy resolution for all of our sakes. This hurts economically.

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