“My friend Jeff often jokes (half-jokes, I think) that he wishes he got residuals on spreadsheets he made in 2003…Why should screenwriters get paid extra money years after they finish their work? After all, plumbers don’t get residuals. Neither do teachers, secretaries or auto workers.” But they’re at the heart of the ongoing WGA strike.
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Sometimes a form of entertainment can become so bad that it transcends badness and becomes something new and wonderful. The world of newspaper comic strips is a gold mine for this, where strips that were built on a shaky premise to begin with run for decades after the writers and artists have long gone insane.
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As Hollywood digs in for a second week of a strike, the screenwriters might want to send a few angry picketers over to Will Smith’s place. Or Steven Spielberg’s. And maybe the studio executives should think about joining them on the line. As it turns out, the pot of money that the producers and writers are fighting over…
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Because of TiVo, iTunes and BitTorrent, TV’s becoming obsolete. Like the music industry, the TV industry realizes that their tried-and-true business model is about to be useless, and its lashing out in panic. Unlike the music industry, who attacked its fans, the TV industry is attacking its own: writers. Gizmodo talks to both sides.
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