Golden Globes and Writers Strike

The lackluster Golden Globe Awards news conference provided a stark background for the Hollywood writers strike.

The Golden Globes went fizzle and pop last night, with all the glitz of a shunned prom date who decided to go bowling. I tried to watch about five minutes, but only made it to three, which made it easier to honor my unofficial boycott.

The writers strike is crippling Hollywood. The ripple effect is decimating not only writers and actors (meaning the majority of guild members not rich enough to live off of past earnings or residuals), but the rank and file production crews and support services, as well as subsidiary businesses.

Nobody “wants” this strike. And it’s beginning to outrage a lot of people, like Richard Zanuck, who produced Sweeny Todd (winner of the Golden Globe for Best Movie: Musical or Comedy).

“Some people can never recover no matter how writers settle for themselves,” Zanuck was quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “When you think of it in those terms, you feel outrage at both sides. It has to end. You’ve got to have people with the courage to stand up and say we’re not going to take it anymore.”

But isn’t that precisely what the writers have done, to take a stand and say they’re not going to take it anymore? They’ve been largely treated like Hollywood’s red-headed step children from the get go, as if they were golden-egg-laying geese whose only purpose was to be milked by the studios for as much as they could get.

Writers have been more than patient with studios over the years, while being bilked out of a reasonable cut of video and DVD revenue. They’re tired of it, and simply want a fair share of new media. If the geese are tired of producing content for pennies on the dollar, it’s time for the studios to budge.