Nice legacy to leave behind

• John Michael Hayes, 1919-2008.

Mr. Hayes adapted four films for Hitchcock: “Rear Window” (1954), from a story by Cornell Woolrich; “To Catch a Thief” (1955), from a novel by David Dodge; “The Trouble With Harry” (1955), from a novel by Jack Trevor Story; and the 1956 remake of “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

...Besides his work for Hitchcock, he was known for writing the screenplay for “Peyton Place” (1957) — no enviable task given the challenges of turning Grace Metalious’s novel of small-town scandals into Hollywood fare. His screenplays for “Peyton Place” and “Rear Window” were nominated for Academy Awards.

...Mr. Hayes’s later screenplays include adaptations of “Butterfield 8” (1960), in which Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for best actress and “The Children’s Hour” (1961). He also wrote television movies and in the 1980s and ’90s taught film at Dartmouth College.

The verdict is still out

• David Carr assesses the good and the bad of the writer's strike in The New York Times.

It appears to be over, and like most victories of this sort, it's highly Pyhrric:

It is equally true, however, that the strike was bad for writers in the short term. The delays caused by the strike prompted the studios to ask themselves a fundamental question about the need to finance all manner of pilots for a traditional upfront extravaganza followed by a traditional introduction in the fall. That system, fairly unchanged through the years, has historically been lucrative for writers.

Emboldened by the strike, the studios severed existing contracts with writers, successfully turned over more of their prime-time schedules to reality programming and vowed to hold the line on filming new shows for next season.

Some 70 development deals in which writers were essentially paid lucrative stipends to come up with shows that might not ever be broadcast are now gone, and they will not be coming back any time soon.

The events are likely to bring at least a few lean years to the workaday writers. With less spending on pilots, established writers will be in the hunt because they lost their cushy deals on the lot. With increased incursion from all forms of reality programs, finding work that pays the bills, never mind the residuals, is going to be a slog.

Another word about the strike

This post at a screenwriter's online forum is a spot-on assessment of the situation, and recommended reading for anyone who thinks the members of the WGA are overpaid crybabies:

As a WGA member living in Los Angeles here is a summary of life:

The poverty line is $25,000
The average rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1200.00
The average price for a one bedroom condo:$400,000
A two-bedroom house: $1,000,000
Sales tax is 8.25%
A gallon of gas this morning - $3.56

Someone mentioned this up thread so here is the actual run of what a Guild minimum feature will probably get you:

$103,000 is the starting price. You get an increment of that up front. I'm being generous and saying you get half up front so it's $51,500.

Agent/legal fees - 10% so you’re at $46,350
State and Federal lands you at $23,175

And then the project folds and you end up getting a penalty fee of about $1000.00.

So, for nine months of work, phone calls and meetings you get $24,175.

Keep in mind the poverty line is $25,000.

I'm on strike for the future of my union, for my health insurance and my pension. Right now, it's sadly not about the writing which I love but about the business of writing which always plays like black comedy.

One more reason to fall in love with Tina Fey

Back to the picket line

• The New York Times reports on the upcoming Writer's Guild strike.

Looks like it'll probably happen. Not being a guild member I don't know the particulars, but I can tell you that residuals for writers are paltry at best, and with various new forms of media distribution booming in popularity, they're going to continue to get screwed unless something decisive is done. I'm not in favor of putting all my friends in LA out of work, but at the same time, I can understand the writers' desire to be compensated at an equal level with other above-the-line talent, and to be viewed as something other than an evil necessity.

The strike would pit union writers, whose position has been eroded by reality television and galloping technological change, against studios and networks that are backed by big corporate owners like General Electric and News Corp., but are also unsure of the future.

The walk-out threatens an instant jolt to television talk shows like “Late Night With David Letterman” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” which rely on guild writers to churn out monologues and skits. And if the strike drags on, audiences could see the eventual shutdown of soap operas, TV series and movie productions, as they exhaust their bank of ready scripts.

In the near term, a writers' strike will have an immediate impact on more than 200,000 workers in the movie and TV industry here and the thousands more who produce or sell entertainment elsewhere in the United States and abroad. The dispute may also signal more labor trouble to come, as directors and actors face similar issues when their contracts expire next June.

Writing is writing, regardless of medium

• The Los Angeles Times reports on the "online factor" of the brewing writer's strike.

I'm a bit amazed that the industry is still scrambling to come up with a business model for online production that will satisfy all concerned parties, but then again, this is Hollywood we're talking about -- a town not noted for its sympathy towards scribes.

The issue of how to compensate talent for work distributed online is central to contentious contract talks with writers -- and could trigger the first major strike in Hollywood in nearly two decades.

"The more it looks like television is migrating to the Internet, the more important it is for us to ensure that writers are covered under a writers guild contract," said Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West. "We certainly don't want to get left behind the way we were with cable television, reality TV and animation."

Network executives are loath to further inflame the issue by discussing it publicly. Privately, however, several studio and network executives said they were not trying to circumvent the unions but instead attempting to adapt to a changing landscape in which entertainment plays out on multiple screens.

Many likened their situation to being in a vise grip, squeezed on one side by advertisers and fans demanding more online entertainment while pressured on the other side by guild officials who insist that ground rules be established first.

The problems of adaptation

• Bookforum examines "fiction into film."

A six-part look at different prose-to-screen adaptations, focusing on The Godfather, Jackie Brown, Godard's Contempt, Minnelli's 1949 take on Madame Bovary, From Here to Eternity, and David Lean's 1946 version of Great Expectations.

First, it may be necessary to question the received wisdom. One such premise is that it is easier to make a fine film out of a mediocre novel than out of a superior one, because the adapter will feel less reverent toward the source material. (In reality, a screenwriter who has had to adapt a weak novel can tell you that inheriting a lousy plot and thin characters does not make the job any easier.)

...Another received truth is that the way to make a vivid adaptation is to cut loose from the novel as soon as possible. Some screenwriters boast that they read the novel once, then never go back to it, and there are directors (such as John Ford with "The Grapes of Wrath" [1940]) who say they never read the novel at all. There may be some egoprotecting here: Jean-Luc Godard was being a bit disingenuous in dismissing his source for "Contempt," Alberto Moravia’s A Ghost at Noon, as a mediocre novel to read on a train, thereby downplaying the psychological dynamics he had borrowed from the author. But for every instance in which a rough, indifferent attitude (or the pretense of one) toward the source material resulted in a successful film, there are plenty of others in which the screenwriter and/or director took the original very seriously, such as Nelson Pereira dos Santos, who used the pages of Graciliano Ramos’s novel as the shooting script for his beautiful "Barren Lives" (1963).

A blinding whiteness

• Reuters reports on the diversity (or lack thereof) of LA-based screenwriters.

The headline's a definite candidate for the NSS Awards, but the story itself is no laughing matter:

In 2000, U.S. television networks NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox unveiled plans to boost minority hiring.

But the Writers Guild report predicts the situation will worsen before it gets better, in part because of the recent merger of the UPN and WB television networks into the new CW.

That move resulted in the cancellation of minority-themed sitcoms that employed a disproportionate share of minority television writers.

Female and minority writers in Los Angeles are pitifully underrepresented, and it's often ten times as hard for them to get work read or to get representation, let alone actually get anything made. One of the unfortunate truths about this country is that if you're a white male with at least half a working brain, you have no excuse for not being able to make ends meet. (You could end up getting elected president, after all.) Women and minorities have to toil considerably longer and harder just to get a toe in the door -- and it's not just in LA, it's everywhere.

It's easy for production companies to say something to the effect of, Well, we just hire who we think are the best writers. But those "best" writers often are the best based on your own cultural predilections -- someone who says something interesting based on the background that created them. When white folks are calling the shots, you may get a lot of good writing, sure, but it's probably going to be most relevant to other white folks. If you're really lucky you stumble upon that writer who has a finger on universal pulses. But more often than not your writing is relative to your background -- your family and the culture that the family exists in.

Most minority-focused sitcoms and/or dramas end up sucking monkey toes not because their staff isn't trying hard enough, but because the infrastructure that they operate within is not designed to accommodate what they'd like to do. I won't go so far as to call it institutional racism but it's pretty damn close a lot of the time. There's a lot of quite daring work done solely by minority creatives out there, but you rarely see it on any of the major networks. I suppose the thinking is that the black audience is a niche market, that the Hispanic audience is a niche market, that the gay/lesbian audience is a niche market, et cet, et cet. But what the suits don't seem to realize is that something that's galvanizing and truthful will always attract an audience, regardless of whom the show happens to be pitched towards.

A safe place to create

• Jay Fernandez details the "Safehouse" workshop in the Los Angeles Times.

The brainchild of screenwriters Jim Uhls (Fight Club) and Aleks Horvat (Sweethearts), it's basically a chance for aspiring screenwriters -- writers at "a certain level", according to Horvat -- to workshop their scenes with actors. This kind of thing is incredibly valuable, especially for scripts/plays. Prose, not so much, but this ain't that kinda thang:

While the actors' attendance is free, the writers each pay $45 monthly dues (mostly to cover Horvat's loss of business on that night). Membership is at Horvat's discretion, with the main requirement being that a writer or actor is working — i.e. being paid — though the writers aren't required to have produced credits. A writer can also acquire an invitation by having a great piece of material that Horvat or Uhls has read and likes, plus a strong referral.

"We want to keep the bar at a certain level," says Horvat of a roster that includes Roger Soffer ("Slow Burn"), Meredith Stiehm ("NYPD Blue," "ER") and a bundle of writers who have sold pilots and specs or written low-budget independent films.

Any format is welcome for presentation — feature scripts, TV pilots, plays, short films, free-standing scenes or exercises, even potential animated material. Writers have brought in both spec work and studio assignments, and both Uhls and Herron attest to the necessity of working out certain dramatic muscles in this workshop environment that keep them from slipping into formula with their rewrite gigs.

When hack novelists strike

• Clive Cussler's iron-fisted grip on the film of Sahara is dissected in the Los Angeles Times.

I once saw George Romero relate a great Stephen King anecdote. Romero was talking about how whenever someone went up to King and complained how whichever movie ruined his book, King would point to the bookshelf and go, "No, they didn't. The book's right there." I kept thinking about this the entire time I was reading this article. I find it ironic that Cussler, whose junk-food pulp-adventure novels have long wallowed in blatant racism and sexism, considers the many screenwriters who tried to turn a turd into a diamond as "hacks."

As a best-selling author, Cussler was used to getting his way. "Traditionally, all my editors have suggested changes and I have only followed them 20%," he said in a deposition.

Cussler's approval rights troubled the movie's creative personnel, who were unaccustomed to catering to the whims of a novelist.

Studio officials at Paramount, the distributor of "Sahara," resisted Cussler's active participation in the script, according to Karen Baldwin, who served as executive vice president of creative affairs for Anschutz's film company.

"Paramount has always been cagey in that respect — urging us to keep you out of the loop and lie when necessary," Baldwin wrote Cussler in July 2003. "Essentially, Paramount feels … the author should not have much input when it comes to script."

In all, Anschutz's firm spent about $4 million on writers, many of whom produced scripts that Cussler deemed inferior. In one memo, the author wrote that the money producers have "thrown down the sewer with hack writers is a crime."

It's the typical Hollywood bullshit -- throw money at it, that will always work, right? -- but it's still incredible to read. Aspiring screenwriters, take note...

Writing for the small screen

• Slate eavesdrops on a writing session for Battlestar Galactica.

I haven't seen this show -- I don't watch much TV -- but I keep hearing it's really good. One of these days... Anyway, this is a very interesting peek into the process of scripting a weekly television show. Executive producer Ronald D. Moore has made available unedited podcasts of about four hours' worth of writing-room sessions, via iTunes, in addition to various audio commentaries for each episode, and the results sound fascinating:

But the podcasts are about more than geeky plot points. While the BSG writers break the story, they also bare their souls. And it's here that the podcasts move from a peek at the sausage-making process to great, almost intimate, radio drama. I don't recognize any of the writers' voices except for Moore's, but it takes all of 20 minutes for their personalities to shine through. One falls back on Hollywood shorthand, blazing through a string of references to other TV shows and movies—The Right Stuff, The Getaway, and so on. Another turns to military history for inspiration, referencing Royal Navy traditions and heavy drinking among Vietnam-era pilots. (So that's why Starbuck, one of the main characters, takes that crazy, boozy dive off a barroom table.) Family stories get told, like how a writer's salesman father superstitiously avoided ever putting his hat on a hotel-room bed. The writers have all become characters in their own story, the particulars of which dribble into the episodes.

Slate's "TV Club" also recently hosted an ongoing dialogue featuring David Mills, one of the brains behind HBO's superb show The Wire:

The big difference, as you suspect, is the absence of commercials. A decade ago, on shows like "NYPD Blue" and "ER," you divided your story into five pieces: a teaser (before the opening titles) and four acts. Today, the broadcast networks generally demand a teaser and five acts, because the commercial breaks between acts were getting so painfully long. (I would guess that, over the last 15 years, the average "story length" of a given drama episode has shrunk from 47 minutes to 43.)

So, now you're chopping your story into six pieces. Which means you can't go more than seven, eight minutes without slamming on the breaks. So, you try to end each act in a way that'll keep viewers watching, and then, at the beginning of the next act, you're working to build up another head of steam ... only to slam on the breaks again.

The ability to tell a tale from start to finish without interruption allows for much denser, much more nuanced writing. The viewer is presumed to be paying closer attention. Multiple plays during the week are another benefit of HBO and Showtime. I happily check out episodes of "The Sopranos," "Deadwood" and "The Wire" twice, confident of catching things I'd missed the first time. Broadcast TV will never be a home for shows like these, just as Top 40 radio was never the place for Coltrane.