Why You Don't Need An Education To Be A Screenwriter

Or: What I Didn't Learn in Film School
by Unnamed Successful Screenwriter.

Nikki Finke's rumor-porting on the Worldwide Pants/WGA side deal includes some anonymous griping from screenwriters, one of whom said "I'm going back to work." He continues to show an extreme ignorance, of the sort I'd normally only associate with glass sorters and George Bush supporters:

"I have gotten five phone calls tonight from feature writers and every single one of them has said some variation on, 'Bullshit on this. Why am I looking at staying out of work until April when these guys are going to start picking up paychecks on Tuesdays?'"

The writer continued: "All you're doing every time a movie or TV star goes on Letterman is making money for a member of the AMPTP. If you're going to strike GM, then you strike GM. You don't say, 'We're going to give a waiver to the guys making pickup trucks because they're really good guys.'" You don't maintain solidarity by letting a handful of guys go back to work. So what's next: Lorne's people go back to work? Then Colbert's people go back to work?

That's right, nimrod. "If you're going to strike GM, then you strike GM." I know it's tough to grasp, but the AMPTP is an association, nay an alliance of producers. Since the jackhole brought in the auto analogy, let's run with it.

Let's posit a mythical alliance of GM, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Panoz, and Tesla^* illegally colluding to negotiate with the UAW. If my boys in Georgia decide they want to get back to work sooner and break from the alliance to make their own deal with the UAW, they have every right (and every legal obligation) to do so. No one would begrudge labor returning to work with a valid, viable contract. And no one would confuse a separate corporation for a fucking pickup division. Then again, auto workers are smarter than this retard.

Go back to work. We're all dying to see your magnum opus, the latest Uwe Boll movie. Sorry. That's cruel. Uwe wouldn't hire someone this FUCKING RETARDED to write one of his movies.

A member organization in the AMPTP broke ranks and negotiated a deal with the WGA. The first of many? Maybe, maybe not. What is sure is that a separate corporate entity with independent fiduciary responsibilities negotiated a deal with labor independent of the colluding alliance of which it is a member.

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^* Actually, I don't think Panoz or Tesla are union shops, but that reality would ruin my analogy.