The Quixotic Radicals

"Their quixotic pursuit of radical demands led [the Writers Guild] to begin this strike and now has caused this breakdown in negotiations."

-- The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, in their statement Friday 12/7.

The AMPTP studio reps, unlike most screen and TV scribes, evidently don't think deeply enough about which words they choose to use, and so have provided us with a wonderfully provocative new label: The Quixotic Radicals.  Though it may sound at first like the name of an indie band that killed at the Wiltern last week, I'm proud to be a card-carrying member, and hope to get this monicker printed on a t-shirt ASAP.

Quixotic!  Rolls trippingly off the tongue, does it not? The producers are using it with the intention of denigrating the writers, whom they feel are pursuing... what?  A fool's errand?  The writers are crazily unrealistic folks who think that winning fair compensation for their work is an impossible dream, perhaps?

When I think of The Writer as Don Quixote, it does make a kind of sense.  Quixote is a wacky creative type, always chasing after fantastical challenges of his own devising... who spends a great portion of his adventure being beaten up by everybody he confronts.  That sounds about right as a metaphor for your average Hollywood screenwriter, no? 

Let's go to the dictionary.  Extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical is the first online definition of 'quixotic.'  Hey, thanks, I like that: my kind of writer is indeed a romantic visionary (who writes great parts for women).  And okay, impractical is not what you want first and foremost in a screenwriter, but people with vision don't tend to be the most pragmatic; they look at the big picture first and don't start off sweating the small stuff.

Maybe the producers are thinking of the secondary meaning of quixotic: impulsive, rashly unpredictable.  Right, I can see why this would pose a problem, given that the AMPTP has been nothing if not consistently predictable in their tactics: failing to honor promises made (remember the one about "we'll revisit the video residuals for writers issue once we know what kind of profits we're making?"), and duplicitous in their representation of the facts (e.g. blaming the writers for the talks breakdown Friday, when they were the ones who got up and left the table, a move that had apparently been planned in advance, no matter what the writers might do).

Nonetheless, call me quixotic and I'll accept that, sadly -- because inherent in the use of the word is a stinging subtext: what makes the writers look idealistic and unrealistic in asking for what amounts to a fairly meager portion of one big, fat corporate pie is the evident reality that corporate bean-counters will never understand the true value of what writers do.  So, to hope for getting our due?  Dude, go tilt at a windmill.

...As for the radical part -- well, when you put it that way, I'm kind of flattered: in contemporary slang, radical (or rad) is a synonym for awesome.  The Latin root of the word, oft forgotten, is actually genitive of root; the original meaning of "political radical" is someone who desires change at the roots of society.

Yes, now that you mention it, we quixotic writers are indeed making radical demands.  We want to change the very basis of the way things work in the industry's business-as-usual.  We're demanding to be acknowledged -- generally being, after all, at the very root of every project ever produced -- as something more than whores, "schmucks with Underwoods" and disposable fodder for the star- and profit-making machinery.  We want to be paid more equitably for the inestimable contribution we make. 

And our radically quixotic vision tells us that everything is changing -- that the new media is where the new business is already relocating, and that if we stick with the model tightly gripped by you un-chivalrous, anti-visionary, arrogantly predictable powers-that-be, we will never, in this lifetime or any hereafter, have a chance to redress what's been an industry wrong for nearly a century.

Enough of restating the obvious -- one absurd aspect of this entire debacle is how clear the roles are, how old the story is.  As a writer-director friend of mine pointed out, once the public perception of the strike had swung the WGA's way, even a studio head would see the logic: If you were making a movie about this strike, who would you cast Tom Hanks as -- the writer or the producer?

We know who the hero is, though he may seem as crackpotted as the Don.  Armed with their wooden picket-pole lances, the Quixotic Radicals will be singing their La Mancha-like latest hits at the studio gates again come Monday morning, bloody but unbowed.  Call us what you will, but you can't keep a good myth down.

Comments

[E.C. Henry]

Billy,

In my opinion the biggest sufferer in this strike is network TV programming. Me and my dad have gotten hooked on NBC's "Chuck," but now with no new episodes on the near horizon I'm going back to CBS's "How I Met Your Mother."

It seams to me this stike has really thrown a monkey wrench into the continutity of this season's TV season. Do you have insight into how the networks are going to handle the rest of the season once the strike ends? Are we looking at less shows? Or perhaps a longer TV season that stretches into summer?

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[joan gelfand]

So tell us - since it sounds like you are in LA - what is it like on the picket lines? Are writers talking about quitting the biz? Are recruiters coming to scoop up all that unemployed genius? I'm up here in SF but my heart is with all the writers who had the gumption to go up against the big baddies. Keep up the good work. Besides, this country is in desperate need of something quixotic!

[Christian Howell]

Sounds like a good excuse to push female driven stories, since we're (loosely used) chivalrous and radical.

[j]

love this post.

Quixotic is a fantastic word...and your comparison between screenwriters and Don Quixote is so good you should copywrite it.

Someone's gonna try to steal it and throw it up on '60 minutes' or something.

...watch out for that Andy Rooney.

[Diana Celesky]

Great post, Billy. "Quixotic Radicals" really is an apropos moniker for those wild daredevils who believe they should be adequately compensated for their work. I mean, how many 'practical' people do you know who can creatively write worth a darn? I'm looking forward to seeing your t-shirt as you've picked some awesome graphics for your post.

[Barbara]

Mernitman - Terrific post. Somebody out there should make copies of this post and hand it out on the picket line.

[Joanna Farnsworth]

Hang in there, QR's. No one knows better than writers about chasing that impossible dream - to the winning ending? Great stuff, Billy. And on the back of the that T-shirt - "They should listen to me" ...

[scarlet hip]

Well put "Don"! But I think the back of the t-shirts should read, "To right the unrightable wrong". Or maybe, "To right the unwritable wrong"?

Either way, I'm cheering for you!

-"Dulcinea"

[Alex Moore]

I agree with scarlet except on one tiny detail of wording... maybe: "To Write the un-rightable wrong" but meh, just a matter of aesthetic preference.

[mernitman]

EC: Here's a recent Times article about exactly this issue:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/arts/television/09tube.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Joan: No talk of quitting the biz, and no such "recruiters" that I know of; morale seems generally to be high, despite the very not-good status of the talks.
And yup, we need all the windmill-tilters we can muster...

Christian: You're singing my song (and there are a LOT of actresses dying to see such parts available).

J: Thanks for the support and the warning -- I'll keep my eye on Rooney; he's a shifty old bugger, idn't he?

Diana: Strange but true, how "practical" and "creative" are so often antithetical...

Barbara: Though it's hard to read when you're walking in circles...

Joanna: Or the back could read, "This scene needs a rewrite!"

Scarlet: You Dulcineas make it all worth while.

Alex: Oh, you WRITER, you!...

[Jake Hollywood]

Maybe the WGA should paint the AMPTP as the Wolf from the Three Little Pigs...and we know what happen to him, right?

[Christian Howell]

Well, I've got one in the wilderness now (it actually has four solid roles) and about 6 more in progress. One of which is for perhaps THE actress.

I find the female psyche rather intriguing and more than worthy of cinematic exploration.

[Joanna Farnsworth]

Or, oooooh, can't resist: "ReWrite the Residual Dream"...

[mernitman]

Jake: Something to do with bricks, wasn't it?

Christian: Worthier than we, I sometimes see.

Joanna: Our Out-of-Work Writers Anonymous meeting will now come to order...