And so, the Writer's Strike rant...

Currently, I'm listening to The Nosebleed Section, by the Hilltop Hoods.

I would like to congratulate the oldest blogger in the world, who is 95 years of age. Nice ripe age.

Tomorrow, I'll be going to see a production of Philadelphia, Here I Come, and I have to say, I'm rather excited. I might give a review of it here if I feel like it.

However, today, I wish to talk about the issue which is on every film lovers lips this week. The WGA writers strike. For those of you who don't know, WGA stands for the Writer's Guild of America. It is the union of writers.

Basically, writers get a raw deal. Some people seem to think that anybody involved in the film industry has a solid gold house, and a rocket car. No one does. A small percentage even has a Ferrari. Why? Because it's a normal job. It has hours, and wages.

Only the most ignorant of people think that the cameraman for the Dolly shot in Die Another Day is a millionaire. He's a normal, average, reasonably paid guy, who probably has a wife and kids. I didn't look him up. But that's my portrait of him.

The average writer's pretty much the same. They have to pay the mortgage, stretch their lump payments over months, maybe even years, before they make another break.

Most people go to work, 9 to 5, return home, cuddle their wife/husband, tell their kids to do their homework, go to bed, have sex, pay the bills, pay the mortgage, and work, nine to five, and get paid $25,000 a year.

Writers stay at home (sometimes), cuddle their wife/husband unless there's a bit of tension, tell their kids to do their homework, go to bed (or not), have sex (if they have time), pay the bills (if they have the money), pay the mortgage (or dream about doing so), and work, three hours some days, 24 the next, everyday, of every week, of every year. They can get paid between $0 and $200,000 a year.

In a good year, a writer might sell about four spec scripts. At a minimum price of $4,000, that's $16,000 from that. So, you might ask, how the hell can they pay the mortgage, bills, sends the kids to school, and give the partner the pleasures of the bedside?

Royalties. It's a wonderful word. It sounds so... Royal. Rich. Doesn't it? Not really. 4¢. That is the figure. As a writer of a film, you get four cents for every single DVD that is bought of your film. It's coming up to Christmas, so not a great time to be spouting statistics. Let's go with Gladiator. The film's been out for a few years, it was pretty huge, and the Units sold 23,851 approx. in the week starting October 7th. At four cents per DVD, that's $954.04. That's pretty damn good, don't you think? That's their mortgage paid. No bother. If that's what they get every month, they should be happy. Great.

But, they won't get even four cents for every single download of the Gladiator film from the Internet. What does that mean? It means that because of the digital age and everybody downloading films off the Internet, then, when they do pay for them, there isn't going to be any $900. Gone. All they'll get is a credit on the film.

So, basically, the evil movie moguls are going to cut out the writers, and grub at all the profits themselves. What they are too stupid to realise however, is that writers write films.

Writers provide coherence, style, language, humour, and structure to a film or series. Without them, we'd have Big Brother on TV all day segmented by ads for dating agencies.

Writers should be provided with the respect that they deserve, they should be driving petrol guzzling Rolls Royces. They should be sucking down pina coladas as they crouch over their typewriter. They should be accompanied by at least three paid muses and one real one. Paparazzi should be shot on sight, and they should have chauffeurs. They shouldn't have a mortgage, their bills ought to be paid by an undersecretary, they should have medical attention at the Mayo Clinic, and their condoms diamond studded.

And all they want is an extra four cents.

To conclude, I provide a link to a YouTube video (because I don't like embedding), and I wish to inform you that I'm now listening to 'Dude (looks like a lady)'.

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ55Ir2jCxk