Writers' Strike.

"Leaders of the union representing Hollywood's film and television scribes declared Thursday night that they would go on strike in what would be the first walkout by writers in nearly two decades," reports the Los Angeles Times, which has staff blogging the countdown and a special section gathering news and analysis.

Updated.

More writers' strike roundups: Variety, heavy on breaking news, and the Huffington Post, heavy on pontification.

"Beyond all the claims and counterclaims, policy arguments and negotiation strategies, it's important to remember that a writers strike would severely affect the lives, careers and dreams of a great number of aspiring and struggling writers," notes Jay A Fernandez, introducing interviews with a few of them.

"It's terrible folly for the moguls to mistake the Writers Guild for wimps, but 19 years is an eternity in forgetful Hollywood. Even more thoroughly forgotten is the fact that the Writers Guild is the oldest union in Hollywood, that it paved the way for collective bargaining within an anti-union industry head-quartered in a notoriously open-shop city, and that the studios tried to strangle it in its cradle, even packing it with conservative writers in the 1930s, the better to sabotage it from within," writes John Patterson in the Guardian. "The studios were heavily invested in the McCarthy witchhunts, not because of commie-phobia per se, but because it gave them a perfect patriotic cover for more union-busting. And still the WGA stands."

On a related note, for Salon, Laura Miller reviews Marc Norman's What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting, a "long, sad saga of mistreatment at the hands of ruthless moguls and Napoleonic directors... Norman attributes some of this animosity to the essential mystery of the writing process. To the tough, practical, working-class men who founded the movie industry, it looked suspiciously like loafing."

Online viewing tip. Norman talks about the contract negotiations at the WGA site.

Updates: "The Writers Guild of America has announced that its 12,000 members will go on strike Monday morning against studios and networks, but left the door open for new talks," report Dave McNary and Cynthia Littleton in Variety.

Online viewing tip. "With no happy ending yet in sight to the labor standoff between Hollywood writers and studios, a group of screenwriters has posted a comedy short on YouTube that humorously explores some of the non-writing career options for members of the Writers Guild of America should they go out on strike," writes Robert W Welkos in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at November 2, 2007 3:47 AM