Dispatches from the City of Angels
I'm a writer and humorist living in and writing about Los Angeles. You can catch my novel LOSING CLEMENTINE out March 6 from William Morrow. In the meantime, feel free to poke around. Over at my website you can find even more blog entries than I could fit here, as well as a few other ramblings. Enjoy and come back often.
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Favorite Quotes:
"Taint what a horse looks like, it’s what a horse be." - A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
"Trying to take it easy after you've finished a manuscript is like trying to take it easy when you have a grease fire on a kitchen stove." - Jan Burke
"Put on your big girl panties, and deal with it." - Mom
"How you do anything is how you do everything."
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I'm down with the writer-hood
(Promised Pia Zadora post coming soon. First, a late-breaking news alert.)
Hollywood is peeing itself right now.
The Writers Guild is on strike. The powers-that-be wanted the Guild, which represents all television and screenwriters, to accept a contract that cut them out of all payment for movies and shows distributed through the internet. So if you went to Best Buy and bought a DVD, the writer would get paid. If you downloaded the same movie online, the writer wouldn't get paid. Which is what we call, in official writer-ese, total crap-ola.
So no writer in Hollywood went to work yesterday or today. Shows are starting to shut down. A friend of mine works on "The Office," and their star Steve Carell has refused to cross the line as have some members of the Teamsters Local 399. (And anyone in this town will tell you, you do not piss off the Teamsters. Pissing off the Teamsters is a little like provoking the wrath of God, but without the mercy and forgiveness parts.)
I'm not a member of the Writers Guild. I'm strictly novels, and we're not covered. (Although, I'd take a little contract work from them any day of the week and twice on Sunday if they offered.) Nonetheless, I'm down with the writer-hood. Those are my peeps. Their scripts are the foundation on which an entire industry is built. And still they get no respect.
Until they strike. Then Hollywood pees itself.
"What do we want? Fair pay! When do we want it? Now!"
Hollywood is peeing itself right now.
The Writers Guild is on strike. The powers-that-be wanted the Guild, which represents all television and screenwriters, to accept a contract that cut them out of all payment for movies and shows distributed through the internet. So if you went to Best Buy and bought a DVD, the writer would get paid. If you downloaded the same movie online, the writer wouldn't get paid. Which is what we call, in official writer-ese, total crap-ola.
So no writer in Hollywood went to work yesterday or today. Shows are starting to shut down. A friend of mine works on "The Office," and their star Steve Carell has refused to cross the line as have some members of the Teamsters Local 399. (And anyone in this town will tell you, you do not piss off the Teamsters. Pissing off the Teamsters is a little like provoking the wrath of God, but without the mercy and forgiveness parts.)
I'm not a member of the Writers Guild. I'm strictly novels, and we're not covered. (Although, I'd take a little contract work from them any day of the week and twice on Sunday if they offered.) Nonetheless, I'm down with the writer-hood. Those are my peeps. Their scripts are the foundation on which an entire industry is built. And still they get no respect.
Until they strike. Then Hollywood pees itself.
"What do we want? Fair pay! When do we want it? Now!"
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