HollywoodIdiocy.com

The last few months have provided a lot of fodder for this site; stubborn producers robbed us of a good chunk of this TV season and ended up giving writers most of what they were asking for to begin with - pure idiocy. Fortunately, the foolishness is now in cease-fire mode, at least until SAG sits down to the bargaining table.

But worry not. HollywoodIdiocy.com is still here to chronicle the ongoing stupidity (and occasional flashes of brilliance) that emanate from the San Andreas Fault on a regular basis. The strike is over, but HollywoodIdiocy.com goes on and on and on…

Here’s the official “Strike’s over” message from WGA West prez Patric Verrone:

On Tuesday, members of the Writers Guilds East and West voted by a 92.5% margin to lift the restraining order that was invoked on November 5th. The strike is over.

Writing can resume immediately. If you were employed when the strike began, you should plan to report to work on Wednesday. If you’re not employed at an office or other work site, call or e-mail your employer that you are resuming work. If you have been told not to report to work or resume your services, we recommend that you still notify your employer in writing of your availability to do so. Questions concerning return-to-work issues should be directed to the WGAW legal department or the WGAE’s assistant executive director.

The decision to begin this strike was not taken lightly and was only made after no other reasonable alternative was possible. We are profoundly aware of the economic loss these fourteen weeks have created not only for our members but so many other colleagues who work in the television and motion picture industries. Nonetheless, with the establishment of the WGA jurisdiction over new media and residual formulas based on distributor’s gross revenue (among other gains) we are confident that the results are a significant achievement not only for ourselves but the entire creative community, now and in the future.

We hope to build upon the extraordinary energy, ingenuity, and solidarity that were generated by your hard work during the strike.

Over the next weeks and months, we will be in touch with you to discuss and develop ways we can use our unprecedented unity to make our two guilds stronger and more effective than ever.

Now that the strike has ended, there remains the vote to ratify the new contract. Ballots and information on the new deal, both pro and con, will be mailed to you shortly. You will be able to return those ballots via mail or at a membership meeting to be held Monday, February 25th, 2008, at times and locations to be determined.

Thank you for making it possible. As ever, we are all in this together.

Best,

Patric M. Verrone
President, WGAW

Michael Winship
President, WGAE

Following a membership meeting Saturday and a press conference Sunday, it appears the WGA has reached a labor agreement with the AMPTP that could put striking writers, who’ve missed three months, and almost four months, of work while out on strike, back to work as early as Wednesday of this week. Show runners have been ordered by all the major studios and networks to report to work today (Monday) to start preparing for the return of writers.

Networks are hoping to salvage as much of the remaining 2007-08 TV season as possible. As recently as a week ago, some show runners for shows like Pushing Daisies, have said that this season is already a wash and they would expect any return to work to be in preparation for next fall. While some shows may indeed skip the rest of the season, you can bet the Big Four - ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC - as well as possibly the CW - will want at least their top-rated scripted comedies and dramas to go back into production for fresh episodes immediately.

It’s still unclear, however, how fast productions can get back up and running. NBC’s The Office, for example, notoriously laid off over 100 nonwriter, nonactor and nondirector technical staffers with no guarantee of being rehired once the strike was over. Whether shows in that situation, like The Office, can regroup, recall and/or replace entire tech crews and get back into production in a timely matter is still a relevant question; some of their previous workforce, due to the length of the strike, may no longer even be available to be rehired, which would necessitate a filling positions left vacant on the fly; in other words, it could be as much as a month before some shows are back to their normal production schedules, filming and completing episodes for broadcast, even after the writers start writing again.

And that’s not even taking into consideration all the paperwork involved in rebooting the suspended season, including everything from drafting revised production schedules to re-employment considerations like the paperwork for job benefits like health care, dental insurance and even Medicare insurance. After months of inactivity, look for the next month to be a frenetic frenzy of activity on all fronts.

While all the detailing and chrome accessories have yet to be finalized, the WGA appears to be taking steps that could signal an end to the four-month-old TV and movie writers strike. WGA West has scheduled a general membership meeting for Saturday at which the details of a tentative contract between the writer’s union and the AMPTP will be announced and explained to membership.

If the deal passes muster with Saturday audiences, a union-wide ratification vote and an end to the work stoppage could take place within a week, just in time for the Academy Awards to move forward; some speculate that a few of the bigger network hits may even return to production to crank out several more episode prior to the traditional summer break and ramp-up to the fall TV debut.

If the strike does end, several shows like ABC’s Pushing Daisies are expected to wait until fall to return to air, while others will rush back into production as soon as the pistol sounds for the end of the strike. The Screen Actors Guild, however, may throw a wrench in the works; their contract is up in June and if an early deal is not worked out between AMPTP and SAG, we could be headed right back into a work stoppage, this time due to the actors rather than the writers.

E! Online is reporting, direct from showrunner Bryan Fuller, that even if the strike were to end this week, his show, ABC’s Pushing Daisies, would not be back for more episodes this year. And I quote from E! Online:

“Lots of talk has been going down this past week,” Daisies boss Bryan Fuller told me earlier today. “Essentially, even if the strike is resolved in the next week or two, we wouldn’t be back until next season. There was a preliminary conversation that involved a plan to hit the ground running and try to get episodes on the air as soon as possible, but it no longer seems like that’s going to happen. It seems most likely that we will have a very short first season and then come back in the fall for a proper season two.”

Now, that’s a dang shame. Sure, it took yours truly until the strike break to find time to display a bunch of TIVO’d episodes of Pushing Daisies across my standard Sony WEGA sitting awkwardly atop my plasma tv mount, but once I found the show and realized it was from the same wonderful folks who brought us Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, I was all over that show and it’s now in my personal Top 10 “Must Watch” list.

C’mon, Fuller… say it ain’t so! If the writer’s strike settles soon, I don’t wanna have to wait till September to see more of The Pie Maker and Dead Girl! That’s just wrong in SO many ways!

CityTV viewers in the great white north will benefit from a special scheduling situation this Monday night. The Canadian broadcaster will be transmitting the final two pre-strike episodes of the dramady CHUCK, about a reluctant spy, in its regular Monday night time slot. All NBC affiliates, including Canadian NBC affiliates, will still be airing the final two Chuck episodes on Thursday as planned, scheduled on either side of an all-new episode of Celebrity Apprentice.

The show’s brief return from hiatus marks a successful pre-strike run for the dramady, which typically aired on Monday nights in the fall, as a lead-in to HEROES. It is one of a handful of select shows already renewed for next season, thanks in part to the strike-shortened timeframe of the show’s run. Another freshman NBC drama from the Monday fall schedule, Journeyman, a personal favorite of HollywoodIdiocy.com, was not as fortunate; not only has the show been canceled, but the studio apparently tore up its agreement with the writer-producer of the show as part of a strike tactic.

One things for sure, owning a pair of disposable gloves might be necessary to avoid all the dust that’s going to be settling once this strike is done and over with.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel after all, folks.

Six days after the Directors Guild of America began negotiations with the Hollywood hotshots (otherwise known as AMPTP, the negotiating arm for producers), the DGA struck a deal with producers to avoid a strike of their own and may, in the process, have paved the way for labor peace between scribes and studios.

At least one Hollywood type who is a member of the WGA says he’s amazed at what the DGA negotiated out of the AMPTP, and if writers get a carbon copy deal, it would be groundbreaking. That person is ER executive producer John Wells.

“This is a genuinely landmark deal. I’ve been involved in negotiations for 20 years. This is the best deal I’ve seen that anyone’s been able to negotiate,” Wells told online sources on Friday. “The DGA took all the leverage the writers gave them and negotiated a hell of deal. I didn’t think we’d be anywhere close to this.”

Wells went on to predict the writer’s strike would be over in two weeks or less, if the WGA is willing to accept a carbon-copy deal of what the DGA agreed to. If so, maybe irate TV fans can put their rakes and pitchforks back in tool storage and return to the business of watching scripted dramas and comedies, rather than, y’know… communicating with their family members for the first time in 35 years.

Now the WGA writers strike is getting ugly for the long haul; the kind of ugly that a simple exchange of religious jewelry cannot solve.

In a trend started last week by ABC and taken up this week by Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox TV, CBS Paramount Network TV and Universal Media Studios, Hollywood’s leading studios have decided to cut costs by axing the development deals of several writer-producer teams whose output has halted as a result of the strike.

The move is seen largely as a counter-move to the WGA’s decision to come to individual agreements between the WGA and certain studios, like David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants, a deal which allowed the CBS late night host to return from hiatus with his staff of writers intact.

By axing the writer-producer deals with these studios, the studios are cutting their costs but are also freeing up a lot of creative talent from their current obligations, so that when the labor agreement is finally settled, there could be a lot of “free agent” producers available whose services could induce a bidding war.

But before that can happen, a labor agreement must be reached; unfortunately, the move of studio owners to ax existing deals in the middle of the strike is likely to result in a strike that is much longer, more bitter and increasing entrenched, rather than one that will be resolved more quickly.

Hollywood writers no esta aqui!

Even a simple sentence like that may be difficult to manage when late night hosts from Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien to Jimmy Kimmel all return to the airwaves early next year, some perhaps as soon as later this week. Unlike David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, however, they won’t be returning to the air with the benefit of writers.

Which means Leno fans won’t really notice a difference, though fans of Kimmel and O’Brien may.

Kimmel and O’Brien have shows that feature actual, scripted sketches; the type of humor that requires writers. Leno, even with benefit of writers, usually puts on skits that involved him standing on a street corner handing out promotional pens.

And since Leno’s monologues all sound like unfinished Jerry Seinfeld jokes, writers probably won’t matter much on The Tonight Show one way or another.

LENO:
So! Did you hear about that thing at the White House today? That had to be pretty weird, huh?

(Yes, that joke is finished now. Thanks, Jay, for all the years of those imponderable, unfinished thoughts.)

On second thought, maybe Leno’s show never should have left the air; it clearly hasn’t been using writers during his reign.

All I can say is, the switch to The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien can’t arrive soon enough! Hopefully he can bring Triumph with him if the show uproots him from Manhatten and plops him down in LA.

Shortly after the new year begins, Late Show host David Letterman will be returning to the air … with writers and no extra luggage! Did the 2007-2008 WGA Writer’s Strike finally settle with producers?

Not exactly. The writers did settle with the Letterman-owned production company, Worldwide Pants, which basically gave WGA most of the stuff they were asking for. As a result, both Letterman’s Late Show and Craig Ferguson’s late night talker will be back with their writing staff in tow.

That means monologues, skits and, yes, even Top 10 lists will be part of the Letterman fare later this week when the show returns to CBS broadcast air. Some in the producers organization are grumbling about Worldwide Pants breaking ranks and settling with the writers, almost completely on their terms; it sets a precedent that could force other producers to give in to most of the demands of the WGA once they ultimately either settle individually with the union, or return to the bargaining table, a bit humbler for the experience.

Of course, the network can’t be too pissed at Letterman; if they were, they wouldn’t let his show back on the air.

That could be the key to a WGA victory in the labor conflict, but don’t expect a quick settlement. Some holdouts could still be freezing out the writers come summertime. In the meantime, when Letterman returns to the air, expect a lot of network sniping and strike-related humor to be the order of the day; Letterman is, of course, a WGA member himself, as well as serving as a producer for Worldwide Pants.

I can imagine Letterman’s first joke upon his return may go something like this:

“Thank you, ladies and gentleman. First off, let me apologize for this show’s long absence from the air. As you know, we have this strike thing going on between Hollywood writers and producers. Now, some of you may not no this, but I’m both a writer and a producer on this show, so you’d think we could settle this thing pretty easily, right? Yeah. Turns out, I’m a real bastard to negotiate with.”

Keep the medical supplies handy, it looks like we’re in this one for the long haul. The WGA announced this weekend that, due to Hollywood producers insisting several of the writers’ union demands be taken off the table as a precondition for further negotiations, the WGA will now attempt to negotiate individually with each studio.

The company behind Late Night with David Letterman is one of the few producers likely to break ranks and negotiate with the WGA individually; they have stated their openness to reaching an interim agreement based on the WGA’s current list of demands, in order to get their show back on the air.

Few other producers are expected to be quite so accommodating to the WGA.

The maneuver is expected to only deepen the divide between producers and writers, which could extend the strike, already about six weeks old, into a conflict that could soon be measured in months rather than weeks. The losers in this ongoing conflict are viewers and the thousands of employees being let go with no rehiring guarantee, due to the work stoppage.

It may need to be heavily edited for broadcast TV, but one of Showtime’s most critically-acclaimed shows may provide the Eye network with some “fresh” programming in the strike-shortened season that’s headed our way after the first of the year. CBS is considering airing the first two seasons of Showtime’s Dexter, which will expose the cleverly-written show to a broader audience that doesn’t necessarily subscribe to Showtime.

The drama, headlined by Michael C. Hall, focuses on the saga of a serial killer who works as a police CSI blood-splatter specialist by day, and preys on other serial killers by night. The first season of Dexter garnered rave reviews and the soon-to-be-completed second season has overachieved in the eyes of critics who expected a sophomore slump form the witty drama, based on the 2004 Jeffrey Lindsay novel, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Two more novels have followed, 2005’s Dearly Devoted Dexter and 2007’s Dexter In the Dark. If the show performs well on CBS, it could be a money making move that results in diamond pendants for everyone; if it falters, it could show that viewers have little tolerance for shows that have already appeared on other networks being repurposed for broadcast network airings. Time will tell.

While the Showtime drama features a fair amount of nudity and a heavy dose of profanity compared to traditional network fare, the important aspect in picking up the show for network rebroadcast, from CBS’s point of view, is that there are 24 completed episodes completed that, so far, only Showtime subscribers - and those who bought the Season One DVDs - have seen before now.

In other news, freshman sitcom The Big Bang Theory and freshman vampire drama Moonlight have both received second-season orders from the Eye network; The Big Bang Theory is a Chuck Lorre Productions show that did well in the eight episodes completed prior to the strike; Moonlight has about 12 to 14 episodes in the can, with roughly 10 episodes aired so far. It is unclear whether the second-season orders will consist of 22 new episodes plus the uncompleted episodes from the first season, or if the uncompleted first season episodes and scrapped and storylines planned for the first season will be moved into the second-season order, once the WGA writers strike is ultimately resolved.

Hollywood may be filled with idiocy, but not everything is stupid in this grand ol’ world of ours.

Take Car Angel for example. Here’s a nonprofit company that accepts things like car donations and turns them into funds for giving away videos to kids and teens in need.

Giving away videos might seem a bit odd; but their content is important and they’ve been able to help something like 2.4 million kids so far, so they must be doing something right.

In Hollywood, with the writers strike, you have a lot of folks doing pretty well for themselves, fighting to do even better. If it all seems a little narcissistic, it probably is. That’s why it’s nice to see a group like this, thinking of others. Especially at the height of the holiday season.

Happy Hanukkah!