Why Should Anyone Care About Writers Anyway?

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Why are the writers striking?

The most relatable take on the #Scandoval VPR drama.

So much Yellowstone drama!

The most random group of celebs ever.

What’s the Deal With This Strike?

On June 19, 2009, Pushing Daisies was taken away from me. Its final episode aired that night, after two seasons.

The series was colorful, inventive, and funny, and it had a touching fascination with death. (In the case of this show, I mean quite literally “touching.”) It featured Kristin Chenoweth singing “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease in a pie shop. It gave us Tall Boy Extraordinaire Lee Pace in a major role, before he was in blockbuster movies.

For anyone to deprive the world of all that wonderfulness points to how extreme circumstances must get to necessitate a writer’s strike, which shut down production of Pushing Daisies’ fantastic first season and, in part, was responsible for a downturn in ratings when it returned for Season 2. (There’s a more nuanced take about how the 2007-8 Writers Guild of America strike affected Pushing Daisies and other programs in this thread here.)

Pushing Daisies has been top of mind these last few days, as the WGA strikes for the first time since 2008. The work stoppage started Monday, after breakdowns in contract renegotiations with studios over wages, staffing issues, residuals, health insurance, and—let’s face it—just-plain fairness and decency. (You can read a more detailed explainer here.)

There is already an onslaught of news about how the strike is affecting TV production: planned Saturday Night Live episodes hosted by Pete Davidson, Kieran Culkin, and Jennifer Coolidge have been scrapped, while Drew Barrymore has stepped down as host of the MTV Movie & TV Awards in solidarity with the writers. (More links! Here’s a rundown of how the strike will affect your favorite shows.)

But you know what is also news? How not striking would have affected humans, the writers on the picket lines who are fighting for a seismic, though necessary change in their industry.

This strike is happening at the same time as I’m seeing colleagues, friends, and people whose work I’m simply a fan of announcing, almost every day, that they’ve been laid off from their jobs at major media organizations—the places you and I read every day. I see just how many WGA members and industry allies are picketing, because despite working for majorly profitable companies, they can’t afford to, in some cases, live.

It all just feels…so…not great, as if each morning I, and so many other writers I know, am playing Russian Roulette with a trap door. Every day, the lever is pulled, and we know that, at some point, it’s going to open. It feels like there’s a certainty of it, that it’s inevitably going to happen. What we don’t know is how far we’re going to fall, or if we’ll ever land somewhere.

Why should you care that I, or anyone, write for a living—and can actually make it a livelihood? I’ve thought about this a lot, in attempting to figure out how to explain to people why they should care about this WGA strike. It’s not just because the next season of Abbott Elementary might be shortened, or that my imaginary husband Seth Meyers won’t be on TV every night. (Though these are two scenarios that, in my life, at least, are positively devastating! )

The question I keep asking myself is: How do I explain to people that writing matters, without sounding like a person who of course would say that—because he’s a writer?

The work people do has worth, is the simplest answer. Being taken advantage of is sinister. When it’s being done at the expense of our leisure and enjoyment, we should be furious on those people’s behalf. (However someone might feel about Hollywood’s reputation, the fact is that we rely upon it for our leisure and enjoyment.)

We should defend writers. I have observed in my incredibly short, admirably youthful life that the wealth disparity in creative fields is, in a word, obscene. The barrier to entry is ridiculous. Talented people are forced out because their work is demeaned as “just writing,” and the burnout, combined with the low wages, makes whatever calling they felt to this career no longer seem worth it.

There’s a story that went viral this week about a writer for The Bear. For him, it was a dream job. That is, except for the fact that he often couldn’t write scripts for the show from his apartment, because he couldn’t afford heat, and he had such little money in his bank account when his work won a WGA Award that he had to purchase the bowtie he wore to the event on credit.

I think this story was shared so much because it exemplifies what we forget, and that the suits on the other side of the WGA bargaining table seem blind to: These people are humans. (Sorry to the AI community.) We pay rent. We need healthcare. We stress about finances. And we have dreams.

Writing is, in many ways, the act of dreaming. How ridiculous it is to be told, time again, with every round of media layoffs, and with every broken negotiation that results in a strike, to stop dreaming and settle. It’s the antithesis of what this job is about.

Writers aren’t heart surgeons, sure. But they are heart massagers. Or heart ticklers. (Depends on the show or, in my case, the article, I guess.) Obviously we are not building houses or laying pavement or working as doctors. (Though we do widely circulate our Ozempic connections.) But we are people who have a skill, one that we studied. It’s a skill that was nurtured, and that people told us has value in this world.

A person could say that the simple act of capturing another person’s interest is the value of writing; a person could also say that some of the words that we write and the stories we tell can and do open minds and, in some cases, save lives. I would say both things are true.

Writing is an act of narcissism, but it is also one of generosity. We can be compassionate egoists—we’re a complex people. It is still outrageous for me, or most writers, to think that anyone who’s reading a story that I’ve written cares what I have to say. But the act is also, and I am sure many writers feel this way too, something I think of as a responsibility. This is my profession, and it is a duty. (Also, obligation shouldn’t negate compensation.)

It is painful to break open your heart and let it bleed on a page, but the hope is that it heals you and maybe someone else that sees the words. It is important to spotlight the experiences of the marginalized and the slighted. It is imperative to make people laugh. The requirement, always, is to write the truth—as gratifying or as uncomfortable or as silly as that may be.

I can write about my struggle to come out, battling cancer, or the extreme grief I experienced during the pandemic—or I can write thousands of words in ode to Kristin Chenoweth being fabulous. Or even, like, a fart joke. I consider all of it work. Work that other people would enjoy. And as such, work that should receive a paycheck.

In the short term, there are things you will notice as a result of this strike, like TV series you like taking longer to return to air, and the futures of many projects will suddenly become precarious—like what happened to my beloved Pushing Daisies. In principle, there are other things that you should be concerned about: Treating TV writers as replaceable freelancers, or dispensable entirely, makes the TV you like bad. And when it comes to the media, I assume you like reading the news. I’m not sure how the news—the actual news—is going to exist if layoffs, shutdowns, and reductions continue at this rate.

Why should you care about writers? Because people matter. And the thing about writing is, we’re not just writing about or for ourselves. It’s all about and for you, too. And I just have a hunch, but I expect that you believe you just might matter.

Whoopi Speaks for All of Us (at Least for Me)

There are two stories that are dominating all entertainment industry talk right now, in equally explosive ways: the writer’s strike, that a charged and rare labor act that could change Hollywood as we know it; and those damn people on Vanderpump Rules.

You’d think one wouldn’t have to do with the other. Reality TV shows aren’t largely affected by the strike, other than, a boom in reality TV was one result of the 2007-8 work stoppage on scripted shows.

One VPR cast member, Lala Kent, has canceled her appearance at the very in-flux MTV Movie & TV Awards in solidarity with the writers, becoming something of a social-media folk hero for it; she’s the Norma Rae of Bravo TV. But the rest of the cast has been on a speeding hamster wheel, bowling through every TV studio in Hollywood giving interviews to capitalize on the show’s mainstream moment, thanks to the juicy (though quite sad!) #Scandoval.

In any case, leave it to Whoopi Goldberg to find a way to connect these two major stories.

Goldberg was forced to discuss the VPR cheating drama on The View, because we all are. It goes down like an exhausting, hilarious spin on “Who’s on First,” with Goldberg unable to keep track of the names, who is sleeping with who, who owns what house, etc. There’s a feeling of resignation to it all: Try as a person might, one cannot escape this VPR drama—so might as well try to understand it.

(You can watch their initial Hot Topics discussion here.)

It’s clear that this episode The View is the limit of time and energy Goldberg will ever be willing to give to this controversy, and I support that. Especially because the episode led to what I think are the two single best VPR-related media moments yet.

The first is when Goldberg, at one point in the episode, references the writer’s strike, saying, “We don’t have any writers, which is why I’m forced to talk about Vanderpump Rules.” I tell you: I screamed from the depths of my soul. The second is when she, clearly still buzzing from and slightly perturbed by having to talk about it, tries to rope Jennifer Lopez into it all, later in the episode. It’s the most A-list version of “misery loves company” that I’ve ever seen.

“Do you watch the show Vanderpump Rules?” Goldberg asks J. Lo. Mrs. Affleck, who is mid-sip from her mug, nearly does a spit take in confusion and looks at Goldberg with concerned bewilderment, like she was watching her friend have a stroke. “Do I what?!”

It’s almost better TV than VPR, in my opinion.

The World’s Most Expensive Horses

We hear a lot about how wildly expensive some TV series are. The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power: The Rings of Power is the most expensive show of all time (different outlets report different numbers, but $715 million pops up a lot). While that’s so much money, it makes sense to us; it’s Lord of the Rings. Other series in the “most expensive” conversation, like House of the Dragon or The Crown, also track; one’s a Game of Thrones spinoff, and the other is rebuilding freaking Buckingham Palace.

But the news about how much the series in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe cost made my eyes pop out their sockets and travel all the way to his Montana ranch, to see where the world’s priciest horses must live. Yellowstone, 1923, and the other spinoffs: These are not the shows that you’d expect to cost so much. Excuse me while I quit my job and start a TV-studio-ranch business.

Can We Leave Some of Them Up There?

This week in Hollywood Mad Libs, Fox announced a new reality competition series titled Stars on Mars, in which the most random-ass list of celebrities you’ve ever seen will train and live as if going to Mars.

Contestants include Vanderpump Rules star Tom Schwartz, disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, former Modern Family star Ariel Winter, Bravolebrity Porsha Williams, singer Tinashe, Olympian Adam Rippon, and McLovin himself, Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

The winner will be dubbed “the brightest star in the galaxy.” The host of the show will be William Shatner.

I’d say “what in this world?” about the show. But, hey, the whole idea is that it’s not in it!

My Queen of the Met Gala

I know nothing about fashion, and the Met Gala perplexes me. But, hey, look at how great Glenn Close looked!

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: It’s the best Marvel film in years! Low bar, but yay! (Now in theaters)

Bupkis: I did not have “crying while watching Pete Davidson’s new show” on my Bingo card. (Now on Peacock)

The Other Two: I laugh more in a single episode of this show each week than I do watching several other shows combined. (Now on HBO Max)

Love Again: It goes against everything I believe in to say something Céline Dion is involved with is bad. But alas… (Now in theaters)

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