Writers on strike
By TONY EVANS
While the West Coast Writer’s Guild strike is little more than a squabble by Hollywood insiders over the future proceeds from Internet broadcasting, I’d like to think it might lead to something bigger. What if the lowly writer begins to exert power in the Age of Information like the factory worker did during the Guilded Age? How dumb might the world become without thousands of Cyrano de Bergeracs putting clear prose and inspiring poetry in the mouths of TV’s talking heads?
Ever since the written word started taking hold of the human imagination, someone higher up in the political hierarchy started taking hold of a writer’s efforts. The Roman Catholic Church held an effective grip on the writer/monks of the Middle Ages, offering endless re-writing opportunities of the gospels in exchange for room and board in moldy scriptoriums. These scribes knew better than most that there was only one correct answer when the Inquisition came knocking on your door with a torch asking, “Are you Catholic?”
Fortunately, we live in more enlightened times where satire has become king. Especially on the late-night TV shows, which are likely to suffer first during the writer’s strike; Jay, David, Conan and others depend on a quick turn-around of the daily news, making it into something we can laugh at, rather than cry over.
Even distant world leaders have been eager to get in on the act. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sipped tea on the Jon Stewart Daily Show earlier this year in front of millions of viewers before Stewart looked at him and bluntly asked, “So, where’s bin Laden?”
The question provoked a lot of laughs in the audience because it cut to the quick and put a world leader on the spot. But in the world of real news, Musharraf went on to become a scourge during his crackdown on civil liberties in Pakistan, as though disavowing his TV imprimatur to goof off. Maybe he should have taken some Daily Show writers back to Islamabad with him to lighten things up.
Musharraf’s return to his official duties as a despot marked a step backward from a world in which story telling and communication could take the place of politics. Just imagine a world where endless dialogue and a few good jokes took the place of bloody protests. Surely this would be more satisfying to constituents and fanatics alike, but someone would still have to write the shows.
The film and television industries reflect a uniquely collaborative artistic process, with most of the proceeds going to the participants with the biggest agents, klieg lights and cheekbones. Why shouldn’t the original architects of a story benefit as much as the executives, producers and movie stars who put the show on? If the studios don’t settle this quickly, the writing talent might find work writing political speeches. Let’s hope they pick good bosses. If they’ve been putting the humor in Jon Stewart, just think how convincing they could make a politician.
