Chrth, I have always enjoyed your posts, especially from the "Heroes" TBs (Last season I participated but this year I wasn't interested enough and I tried not to be so negative to come on here and bitch about it.)

I honestly would have thought from reading your in depth fan sight into the episodes - and they have been eye opening to me, at least - that you would have had more appreciation for the people who crafted the stories.

I worked as a 2nd asst camera (had a union), then as I got older and I couldn't hustle as well as I used to, so I went in for MUFX (a different union). I have had on and off jobs outside of the business to make ends meet. But the people who write *give* me my jobs. I depend on them to give me something to create, to try to excel at and to be a part of a team. The end of a shoot is an accomplishment - big or small. And when the studios take advantage of the accomplishments of one sector, it takes advantage of us all.

PS: Snowpuff makes me smile. Sincerely.Ï

Especially you Sick Fixx, because artists suffer for you, you sick bastard.+

i have 2 good friends who are writers, and they do have 2nd jobs even when they are writing. this myth that all writers are living a luxurious lifestyle is bullshit.

since when did asking for more money mean that it isn't deserved or earned?

i'm working class, and have asked for several raises, and received most of them (in addition to raises and promotions i didn't ask for)

so you are anti-corporate, but you are all for the studios making more profits off of dvd's and online content and keeping it all to them selves. i suppose you support big oil as well?

also, if you worked an 11 hour shift and dehydrated yourself, you have just proven what a complete and utter moron you really are. it's called a "water bottle" dipshit. if you really don't know how to keep yourself hydrated, maybe you should stop working the french fry bins and stick to cleaning the bathrooms

and lastly, FUCKING WAAAAAAHHH, I CAN'T WATCH TV CAUSE THE WRITERS ARE ON STRIKE!!!!! (fortunately for you, gay porn doesnt require writing)

you'll be in front of manns chinese in a beat up spiderman costume, begging for handouts within 2 months. by month 4 you'll be giving handjobs in the 3rd stall of the greyhound station downtown.

you couldn't write a limmerick on the back of a toilet stall door, much less write a seasons worth of episodes.

you're bitterness towards people who attempt to make a living being creative is transparent.

what creative field did you fail at/never even attempt to pursue?

But I knew I couldn't trust your judgment from the moment you said you'd lick Katie Sackhoff. Come ON! She's a MAN, baby!

Writers are the creative force behind everything in entertainment. An actor without a script is just a body on a stage. A director with no script is unemployed. A cameraman with no script has nothing to shoot. A crafts person with no show to cook for is out of work and shit out of luck. EVERYTHING begins with SOMETHING to shoot, and that is - THE SCRIPT!!!

Damn, but there's some thick fuckers on this TB tonight. Up and at 'em!!!

i love reading these cry baby posts about how people are being "robbed" cause there won't be new tv shows for a while

BOO-FUCKING-HOO! read a fucking book, do voluteer work for habitat for humanity, interact with other human beings!(actually, ix-nay on that last one...that could be a scary proposition... maybe just spend more time playing 'second life')

if no new tv is the worst thing in your life, you've got it pretty fucking good

it's hard for me to feel sorry for the studio execs making multi-millions per year

so there should be a residual cap for the writers, but no profit cap for the studios? interesting... interesting... retarded logic, but interesting...

why not lay the foundation now for future generations?

the licensing and merchandise for the three stooges makes millions a year, and the stooges and their heirs see jack shit of that- all because back in the 30's and 40's the studios basically forced artists to sign contracts (without representation) that signed away all of their future rights.

i suppose the civil rights leaders in the 60's should have just shut up and let the future generations fight for themselves?

the studios are equally if not more responsible for this strike than the writers are- but that is somehow irrelevant?

and since when were strikes supposed to be convienient for everyone? a strike with no adverse consequences is basically a coffee break...

did you wave to your head as you passed it?

So none of these offical torrent sites have advertising on them, then. Telling you to buy this Lexus, drink this Coke, watch this football game. Those ads are paid for by the companies that they are promoting. The money the ad agencies pay to put these ads on the site goes to the guys who run the site - ie the fucking Studio. Are you with that, turniphead? Or does tis still confuse you?

I'll make it easy on you: that fucking annoying SHAUN OF THE DEAD 12" figure advert by Sideshow Collectables on the top right of this talkback? Paid for by Sideshow. Paid TO Harry Knowles, for him to show the ad on his site. See? That's how come Harry doesn't have to work for a living: THE ADS PAYMENTS ARE HIS LIVING!!!

If Harry didn't get paid, the site would close. If the wrtiers don't get residuals on net screenings, then when one day TV goes exclusively net - and this could be broadened to include cable, satellite, whatever - the writer will get NOTHING for the show that would never had existed before THEY put pen to paper. You fucking moron.

most companies do their annual health benefits enrollment this time of year, might i suggest the hmo with the free 25 mental health visits....

Here we go…

Number 10. We are waiting for the mothership to come take us back to our home planet, (we’ve always known we didn’t ‘belong’)

Number 9. Organizers always seem to pick Wednesdays to protest- don’t they know that’s when the new comic books come out.

Number 8. George Bush is no Lex Luthor, so how bad could he really be?

Number 7. The White House website doesn’t have a cool talkback section or post pics of hot half women-half reptile chicks, so why even bother?

Number 6. Cuts into our ‘World of Warcraft’ gaming. Level 70 doesn’t come to those who waste time protesting…

Number 5. When Dick Cheney is on TV, it’s like he can see you… and he knows what your thinking. And he’s just out there, lurking…

Number 4. Cause we could just Tivo the Babylon 5 marathon weekend and watch it later, but where is the fun in that?

Number 3. The Prime Directive dictates we don’t interfere

Number 2. If it guaranteed hot chicks will finally dig us, we might reconsider

And number 1 Cheney is scarier than anything in “The Mist”

if you generate a shit load of revenue, your commission will usually well exceed your salary

you do know those base salaries for writers are typically low, and the residuals are what keep the writers eating/paying rent between jobs(that and waiting tables/tending bar) don't you ?

the industry in general is very transitory, there are no guarantees you will work week to week.

think of it this way, getting a secure/steady writing job on a network show is like making it to the nba or nfl- only a small, small percentage actually make it (as in under 5% in the entertainment industry- sag/wga- make enough to not have to take a second job waiting tables/tending bar)

so if you are skilled and lucky enough to write 2, 6, or even a full season of episodes, you can still find yourself out of work and scrapping to get your next job- the residual checks are what help get you through the in between periods.

i don't care if they make 35k or 200k, if a studio one year makes 10 mil profit off your creation, and the next year makes 30 mil profit, you as a writer should get a piece of that increase. is that somehow unreasonable

and for the record, bartenders in l.a. can make pretty good $. our happy hour beers are $5, its re-god-damn-diculas

tell them you have anxiety and lower back pain

it's like in the pilot mini-series of Battlestar. The human representative kept showing up for 40 years, but the cylons never came to the table to negotiate. when they finally did, look what happened....

also, one thing I have learned in my 10 years in l.a., you have to be (to some degree) batshit insane to try to make it in the industry. and if you do end up making it, that remaining percentage of humanity is then completely overtaken by the ego and thats when the fun begins.

i love my writer/actor/producer buddies, but they are all fucking crazy to some degree...

myself, I like a steady paycheck, retirement/401k and health benefits and do my creative shit on the side as a balance.

Right, Wolvenom. So if I sell one script to one network once, that means I'll be as rich as Joe Eszterhas, right? So the guy who writes balls like MANSQUITO is getting paid the same as Carlton Cuse and JJ Abrams? You get paid the same as your manager? I suppose you think all novelists get paid the same too - like every Mills and Boon book pays as well as J K Rowling got paid for the last HARRY POTTER book.

You're so fucking dumb, Wolvenom, that there isn't yet a word in the English dictionary to describe the fucking monumental inanity of your lack of intellect. You have all the intelligence of a pulsating, festering turd. Maybe you ought to consider a life as a studio exec. I think you'd be great up in there.

Not everyone gets paid the same, you THICK FUCK!!!

Oh, and as for writers not taking risks - if you choose to put in hundreds of hours unpaid labour to write a screenplay and re-edit it through several drafts to get it as good as it can be - those hours are UNPAID, by the way, unless the script is already commissioned - and then you start shopping it round studios, there's no guarantee that anyone will option or buy it. If they don't, those hundreds of hours spent writing it and rewriting it are lost. Unpaid. Who's not taking the fucking risk there?

I smell chlorophyll. You're a fucking suit, aren't you?

What, you think the studios would pay these people what they're worth?

Like it or not, movies and TV shows are BIG FUCKING BUSINESS. This means that, no matter what you think of capitalism as a social structure (and I'd agree with you, it's frequently unfair, it's wide open to abuse, it doesn't take care of everyone and is generaly pretty fucking far from perfect), every time a TV show gets watched or a movie gets watched, the money generated has to be split between people fairly. You're saying that the creators of that movie/TV show/whatever should not expect future payments for what THEY created, while the guys who ponied up the money but precious fuck-all else, should take all the future prifts too. Right?

Here in the UK we have an entrepreneurial show on TV called DRAGONS DEN. An inventor, entrepreneur or whatever with little or no money comes in to see a bunch of rich investor bastards who watch the poor sap pitch for their investment in their product / invention / whatever. The dragons - the investors - then tear these poor bastards to pieces, and maybe decide to invest in them and get their product mass-marketed and into production.

Do you know what kind of proportion they offer? Around 60% of the business to the inventor, 40% to the investor. It can go as far as 70% / 30% in either way, but rarely more or less than that.

Writers get 0.4% of the profits on each DVD sold on what THEY created or wrote for. 0.4%. That's fucking peanuts. It's crumbs offthe table of the studios. Or , put another way: the writer has had to develop as a writer to create scripts good enough to get past their own agent, into a slush pile, into the hands of a script reader, past the script reader, to a studio exec that can greenlight, who then tears the script (whose structure he understands fuck all about) to pieces with other execs before agreeing whether or not to make it. Then you get loads of inane comments like "Can't this Ripley woman in this ALIEN script be a fucking guy?".And the writer has to watch a talentless non-writer tell HIM how to do HIS fucking job. Then the movie gets made - or not - and the talentless exec takes most of the movie, and now wants ALL the money made from internet distribution, which they well fucking know is the next big thing in giving entertainment to the masses.

The analogy of soldiers to queens doesn't work - soldiers actually DO something for a living. The Queen does fuck all. If you're arguing should nurses get paid as much as the suits who run the hospitals - well, hell yeah! Who's doing the more important work? Obviously the fucking nurse. The suit isn't gonna save your life - SHE is. But in the case of a studio and a writer, without the writer doing what they do, there is nothing for the suit to promote, sell, or ultimately, make any profit on. Without a writer, a suit and his studio is out of work. The writer is worth way fucking more than these studios are saying they are.

Also, for more information, the fans4writers.com site has some links to various blogs and such. I've been favoring the unitedhollywood, Variety Strike watch (Scribe Vibe), and Deadline Hollywood Daily. John August's blog has been an interesting read as well.4

it's amusing how distorted your perception of hollywood really is. come out to l.a., seriously. meet these "rich sycophants" who live on "king crab" every other day. you want to see the divide between the rich and the poor, this city is a fucking thesis on the divide.

as for collecting residuals on your "excellent customer service", i guaran-fucking-tee that if your company was making millions a year directly off your service, you wouldn't settle for .4%

you support players associations but not the writers unions. SPORTS ARE ENTERTAINMENT, YOU FUCKWAD!

athletes make millions because the entertainment they provide makes the teams owners multi-millions/billions. it's the same premise with writers, the entertainment they provide makes the studios a shit load of money

based on your logic, athletes should just be happy making 200k a year and the team owners should keep the rest. icons like michael jordan shouldn't get a piece of the merchandising $ that they generate.

do you really believe that if writers/actors/directors chose to cut their earnings that the studios in any way would pass on that savings to consumer? you are fucking living in wonderland if you believe that, alice

it is big business, and big business is all about making product as cheap as possible, and then selling it at the highest profit margin possible.

you don't think studios dangle the "we can find someone to do it for less" threat over writers on a regular basis. move out here, test your "creative juices". you and sick fixx can be roomies/writing buddies.

the one thing i agree with you on is that teachers, cops, and other in the civil service industry make shit- but their paycheck comes from the government via the taxes we pay. last time i checked, our taxes weren't funding movies and tv. and the second to last time i checked, it IS a free economy, meaning if you don't like the price of luxury items (which is what dvd's, cable/satellite, cd's, movies in theaters are) DON'T BUY THEM! if i was poor and struggling through my job as you seem to claim to be, guess what? I'm not at WalMart loading up on DVD's. and when was the last time you bought a dvd because the writing sucked? you can take a great script and have if fucked up by producers/actors/directors/edi tors , but no amount of production, directing,editing or acting can make shitty writing into a great movie

Speaking of WalMart, go pick up "The high cost of low price". talk about the rich screwing the lower classes

and lastly, 'wolvenom'? really? you combined wolverine with venom? really... wow... thats some serious compensation...

"who hurt you... who hurt you?"-peter griffin

i'm done with this topic, gotta go argue about 'ki-ki-ki' vs "ch-ch-ch'

The Writer's Guild is creative property union...but not really. It is also a labor union....but not really. It is a union that spans writers who make $5000 a year to Showrunners that makes $250000 a year. This is who they have to incompass when it comes to negotiations - the entire spectrum of their guild . Because they made a bad business decision in '88, they are not allowed to re-negotiate their contract today? Now is *exactly* the time to to negoiate. T

they basically feel they are underpaid for what they do, and that anyone who makes more than them doesn't deserve it.

it's like short guys who are angry at tall guys all the time. like we had anything to do with them being short

they wouldn't last 5 minutes trying to pursue a career in a creative industry. not because they don't have the talent (they may... it just ain't writing though) it's because they are delusional about how the business works. l.a. is filled with people who believe that all they need is talent and the will to succeed. it's also filled with people who will exploit the naivety every chance they get.

they like to catorgorize people by generalities and stereotypes... it's easier that way...

they talk about how they work hard and suffer for little to no money, yet they do nothing to get a better lot for themselves in life

"i earn raises, i don't ask for them" that statement alone says it all.

and for the record.... it's 'ki-ki-ki-ki'

I'm not going to insult them personally or deride their tastes but talkbacks by definition run their course when they are off the main page (Lost TB, notwithstanding). The last few TBs I have participated in - re: strike - I've been getting the last thoughts in and it just doesn't feel right. I keep expecting better pitches down the middle. So far, it's just been balls.



if for no other reason than it it just PLAIN FUN!

if you haven't checked out the friday the 13th remake debate of"ki-ki-ki" vs "ch-ch-ch" IT IS FUCKING CLASSIC!