About three and a half months ago, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) went on strike. All the popular television shows, even the unpopular shows, were instantly halted, leaving poor viewers at home, jaws wide open in horror. “How could they . . . ?” “Why did they . . .?” Everyone felt like the cartoon Lorne Michaels at the end of TV Funhouse on SNL shouting “Give me back my show!”What did people do? We are so notoriously set in our ways that watching TV is no longer something we do for occasional fun; it’s what we do every single day for hours to use up the time between eating dinner and going to bed. Is it so bad? Depends who you ask. Health professionals will shout “Get off your ass!”, and hipsters who claim to not own a television or who feign wonder when a famous personality is brought up in conversation will of course say there are better and more creative outlets for human beings. And, to be truthful, there are. You could have, say painted a picture or visited your old bookshelf . . .but what’s wrong with loving watching TV?
There are some really great shows out there today. Intelligently written dialogue paired with brilliantly timed acting equals straight up entertainment; it was the formula that used to bring audiences to their knees on Vaudeville stages. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t think that Dwight (Rainn Wilson) and Michael (Steve Carell) have the funniest and most outrageous interactions as a comedy duo on The Office. ER has been around for 14 years and CSI and Law & Order (in all varieties) have made nearly every seventeen year old explore police work as a career at least once. There are hundreds of TV shows – old ones (Friends, Seinfeld) and new ones (Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes) that create dialogue in most workplaces, restaurants and homes in
If people love television so much, why is it that a writer’s strike was even necessary? I applaud the actors and actresses who marched diligently with the writers trying to get better contracts. It looks as though they achieved what they wanted as well, by receiving a percentage of distribution income rather than a flat fee in the third year of their contract. Good for them! If you (and your team) are responsible for putting the words, quite literally, into the mouths of actors, why shouldn’t you be receiving a similar amount to those who act, direct and edit? It just makes sense.
What didn’t make sense was trying to fool intelligent TV watchers into staying tuned to reality shows, which saw a huge growth these past months. Reality TV is nothing more than fame-seeking beautiful people trying to get dates – no matter the show. Even the ones that used to be good, like Survivor or The Amazing Race, focus more on personal relationships than they do the actual game. Last night I wasted ten minutes watching some frat boy on Big Brother call a bimbo every name – and I mean every name - in the book, all for a few hundred thousand dollars that are sure to be wasted on beer t-shirts and trips to Vegas, baby. How can people watch this drivel and something brilliant like Arrested Development (still have sour grapes over that one) can get pulled off the air?
Thank God for movies these past few months. This year saw some truly amazing stuff. Who didn’t tear up when Daniel Day-Lewis shouted “I’ve abandoned my son!” in There Will Be Blood? Juno, starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera (who I wish would get married in real life), had one of the greatest teen romantic gestures - Tic Tacs in the mailbox, sniff - that, dare I say, rivals John Cusak’s moment in Say Anything. And, even though he’s quite handsome in real life and has lost that Darth Vader haircut, I will never be able to look at Javier Bardem again after No country For Old Men. Ever. It was a fabulous throw back to simple, character-driven movies that relied more on acting than a huge budget of explosions and car chases . . . not that we didn’t all love Transformers.
The Oscars are this Sunday and thanks to the hard-working folks at the WGA, they won’t be replaced with some
knucklehead reality show. Jon Stewart just may be the best Oscar host ever; his presence alone guarantees a hilarious, clever four hours of celebrity pestering and political roasting. Beyond the clothes and the theater stuffed full of fabulous, seeing all involved in the film industry celebrating each other and what they do is an amazing thing. Not every vocation has this, you know. Has there ever been an awards ceremony for data entry people or insurance adjusters?
So, after losing anywhere from 2 to 3.5 billion (depends on what news source you trust), the 2,500 members of the WGA are back at it, sitting behind their writer’s desks, penning the next great catch phrase. Come mid-April, I will return from work, kiss my lovely boyfriend, and settle in on the sofa for two hours to unwind, relax, laugh, and wonder. And I don’t have to worry that my favorite actors in the world will be replaced with Neanderthals selling their souls (and their dignity) for a few bucks when it should have just gone to the writers in the first place.
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