Official WGA Writers Strike thread.

[Tony_P]

charliedontsurf vs kneeco

charlie wins

[KneeCo]

[ QUOTE ]
And no KneeCo I'd argue your wrong. The writers who worked for those crappy shows were good writers who wanted to pay the bills etc and since that was the job they got stuck with they kept with it until they got something better. While they sloggd away on those crappy shows they were working on their own more personal [censored] on the side...short stories, novels, spec screenplays, TV pilots, poetry, articles for newspapers or magazines, and other spec TV shows. They would have never been hired to Sopranos if they were bad writers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, 2 things
1 - You're changing your story at every turn. First you suggested they are good writers cause they are writing something that 95% of ppl couldn't. Then you argued that they are good writers cause the shows, some of which you listed, are actually good (which you seem to have backtracked on above). Now you're arguing that they are good writers cause they are writing other good [censored].
2 - Starting this paragraph with "KneeCo I'd argue your wrong" makes no sense (and not only because of bad grammar). I've said throughout that I'm saying writers if they are writing exclusively TV shows and then you're saying I'm wrong because they aren't writing it exclusively, which makes no sense.

Basically, in the end, you are agreeing with the following statement: "If every member of the WGA is only writing what we see on TV, then we must conclude that some of the members of the WGA are great writers, some are good writers, and most are bad writers".

[snagglepuss]

cds,

your posts in this thread give me the impression that you will someday be responsible for getting "home improvement: the elder years" on the air, or producing "Boat Trip 2: Caribbean Studs"

[Triumph36]

[ QUOTE ]
cds,

your posts in this thread give me the impression that you will someday be responsible for getting "home improvement: the elder years" on the air, or producing "Boat Trip 2: Caribbean Studs"

[/ QUOTE ]

99.99999% of people could not produce this.

I doubt Actual God will post on this topic (I am grunching mostly, fwiw), but I suspect he's a WGA member.

[CharlieDontSurf]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And no KneeCo I'd argue your wrong. The writers who worked for those crappy shows were good writers who wanted to pay the bills etc and since that was the job they got stuck with they kept with it until they got something better. While they sloggd away on those crappy shows they were working on their own more personal [censored] on the side...short stories, novels, spec screenplays, TV pilots, poetry, articles for newspapers or magazines, and other spec TV shows. They would have never been hired to Sopranos if they were bad writers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, 2 things
1 - You're changing your story at every turn. First you suggested they are good writers cause they are writing something that 95% of ppl couldn't. Then you argued that they are good writers cause the shows, some of which you listed, are actually good (which you seem to have backtracked on above). Now you're arguing that they are good writers cause they are writing other good [censored].
2 - Starting this paragraph with "KneeCo I'd argue your wrong" makes no sense (and not only because of bad grammar). I've said throughout that I'm saying writers if they are writing exclusively TV shows and then you're saying I'm wrong because they aren't writing it exclusively, which makes no sense.

Basically, in the end, you are agreeing with the following statement: "If every member of the WGA is only writing what we see on TV, then we must conclude that some of the members of the WGA are great writers, some are good writers, and most are bad writers".

[/ QUOTE ]

Again..you do not even have a basic understanding of how any of this works so I have no idea why I'm arguing with you.

The majority of current television writers do not just write episodes for the TV show they are one. They are often not hired based on a anything having to do with the crappy television show they will end up being on. They write books, short stories, graphic novels, magazine articles, screenplays, and television specs etc.

You have argued multiple things in this hijack so I have addressed them all but I tend to cluster them all together.

Essentially your two main opinions are retarded.

Almost all of TV is bad, poorly written, and crap.-false

If someone writes for a bad TV show then they are a bad writer.-false


Triumph: AG has written on multiple TV shows...he is in the WGA

[KneeCo]

An article about 'Scrubs' and the strike, and how it might keep the show from having a real series finale.
In it, the creator also talks about the 'alternate ending' approach (changing the last produced episode to make it feel like a season finale):
[ QUOTE ]
The "Scrubs" cast and Lawrence appeared at the New York Comedy Festival Saturday to celebrate the show's seven-year run. It was there that Lawrence revealed that he was asked to write a backup ending, which he dismissed as "two people kiss."

[/ QUOTE ]
So it doesn't sound like they are putting much work into these alternate endings; supposedly 'Heroes' has one ready to go to make their last episode before Christmas break end the season.

Also, Zap2it has this bank of show's status + strike stories.
For Lebowski, it says:
[ QUOTE ]
"Entourage": currently in the writing stages and were scheduled to air in the summer of 2008.

[/ QUOTE ]

It also confirms that the Wire is ready to air and "Dexter" is in the can through the end of the season.

[CharlieDontSurf]

[ QUOTE ]
cds,

your posts in this thread give me the impression that you will someday be responsible for getting "home improvement: the elder years" on the air, or producing "Boat Trip 2: Caribbean Studs"

[/ QUOTE ]

A crappy TV show that ends up going syndicated all over the country..hell yes...I wouldn't mind being worth 8 figures.

Boat trip 2..no thanks

[KneeCo]

[ QUOTE ]
Again..you do not even have a basic understanding of how any of this works so I have no idea why I'm arguing with you.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do know how logic works, what a consistent argument looks like, and if nothing else I can tell you're bouncing back and fourth like a ping pong ball.

[ QUOTE ]
You have argued multiple things in this hijack so I have addressed them all but I tend to cluster them all together.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, it's my fault you can't be clear? Well that's ok, it's not a big deal, as long as you don't have aspirations to communicate through written words or anything.

[ QUOTE ]
Essentially your two main opinions are retarded.

Almost all of TV is bad, poorly written, and crap.-false

[/ QUOTE ]

A strong majority, yes. When you consider all television (we'll limit it to stuff with a script), most of it sucks. Yes there is a handful of great shows producing 13/22 episodes a year. There's also 5 times that in primetime shows that blow and like what a dozen or so daytime soaps producing 15 new episodes a month each.

If I put you in front of a TV, and say I'm about to show you one hour of television chosen randomly from all the new scripted television that was produced and aired in the United States in 2007 and you had to bet if the writing will be good or bad, which would you bet? I don't think it's even close.

[ QUOTE ]
If someone writes for a bad TV show then they are a bad writer.-false

[/ QUOTE ]
For the last time, I clearly said if they write bad tv and nothing else.

[CharlieDontSurf]

[ QUOTE ]
charliedontsurf vs kneeco

charlie wins

[/ QUOTE ]

lol

this is giving me headache.
So back to strike talk.

[RunDownHouse]

KneeCo,

You dismiss most of the writing produced for the most popular medium ever as being trite, "familiar," accessible," etc, and denounce it as unskilled labor. At the very least, you seem to think that just about anyone could reproduce that work.

And that's the biggest hole in your argument. You say that, "The only value judgment I've made of TV writing in this thread is that the best of it is brilliant but most of it is crap; and I think that's not a controversial statement in the slightest, in fact I would guess most people would agree and of those who don't the majority would think the statement is too generous to TV writers, not too harsh." While all that may be true, it doesn't affect in one bit the fact that the vast majority of people couldn't write one of those shows if they had a gun to their head, those shows make a lot of money, and not getting a share of that money is the reason for the strike.

At heart, I think a good writer is not too far from a great propagandist. A good writer can evoke specific feelings from his audience. Whether that feeling is unexpected humor or familiar laughs isn't as important as the ability to have a goal and achieve it through the written word. Saying otherwise is like saying Stephen King isn't a good writer because he evokes only horror, or Shyamalan isn't a good director because he only makes movies with ridiculous twists. You can make nitty arguments about their artistic merits, but in the end they are both hugely successful in fields where virtually nobody succeeds, and arguing otherwise is a fool's errand.

Your main argument seems to be that, since most TV writers end up credited for something that fails, or isn't high art, they aren't truly skilled. I would argue that even being able to pen something like an episode of the most cliched sitcom ever is somewhat of an art, especially considering that's rarely the only thing on a writer's resume.