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Writers get the ball rolling
14/02/2008 15:30 - (SA)
Los Angeles - Euphoria over returning to work quickly gave way to workaday cold sweats as Hollywood writers resumed the daily grind of cranking out scripts after a three-month strike.
"I felt giddy," Craig Sweeny, a writer for the NBC drama Medium, said about being back on the job on Wednesday, a day after the Writers Guild of America overwhelmingly voted to end the walkout. "Then someone handed me a production schedule, and then I felt scared."
TV writers face tighter deadlines than usual to salvage what is left of the season for shows that went into reruns because of the strike that started November 5.
On its first day back, the crew at CBS' CSI: NY scrambled to start pounding out two scripts from scratch in two weeks, about half the usual time, so new episodes could premiere in early April.
Executive producer Pam Veasey tossed out a story premise for one episode: "There's a fire, and it's clearly arson."
Under such a tight deadline, the writing crew had little time to readjust to work after so much time off.
"It was like we were all sent to a really weird summer camp for three months, but now we're able to come home," writer Samantha Humphrey said.
Added colleague Peter Lenkov: "We want to deliver something good to thank the audience for sticking with us."
Back on air
Dates were announced on Wednesday for some series to return to the air, among them CBS' How I Met Your Mother on March 17, NBC's My Name Is Earl on April 3 and NBC's The Office on April 10.
While many TV writers were back at work, their counterparts for big-screen films were gradually easing into it, pitching new scripts and resuming meetings on screenplays left in limbo because of the walkout.
"We got calls last night to our agents saying, 'Let's get back to work'," said Derek Haas, who co-wrote 3:10 to Yuma and met on Wednesday with the director of a summer blockbuster he and writing partner Michael Brandt had begun revising just before the strike started.
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo screenwriter Harris Goldberg said he was thrilled his phone was ringing again as development executives checked in with him on an idled TV pilot and movie script he wrote.
"After complete silence for three months, I got maybe six or seven calls from people saying, 'Let's go, let's get together, let's get the ball rolling'," Goldberg said.
The sudden collegial spirit was in contrast with the darkest days of the strike after talks between writers and producers broke down in early December. For more than a month, all both sides did was trade insults, until top studio executives stepped in and negotiations resumed.
Meanwhile, reality shows and repeats ruled prime-time TV, and most late-night comics had to come up with their own jokes. The Golden Globes were cancelled because stars refused to cross writers' picket lines.
Film production went on generally unaffected because of the longer lead time for big-screen shoots. Yet a few major films - such as Ron Howard and Tom Hanks' Angels & Demons, a follow-up to The Da Vinci Code - were delayed until writers could touch up scripts.
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South Africa
