The Strike Brawl Spills Into The Stands

In the early days of the writers' strike, now nine weeks old, even the wing of the media that's by definition opinionated seemed to stay on the sidelines. (It was in part a search for a hard-won neutrality, as evidenced by the tally of how many journalists have confessed in their strike copy, however redundantly, that they, too, are writers.)

But now, as in a fight that starts on center ice and ends up six rows deep in a hockey arena, the writers and the suits have started to duck objects thrown from the stands--interestingly enough, by writers who chuck phrases at both teams alternately.

For hockey fans it's hats, sometimes heated pennies, and occasionally, an octopus. For Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris, it was this summation of what began as a tirade against the suits:

And the moment that this bunch of corporate titans hired a $100,000-a-month PR firm to explain to the world that writers are greedy, they moved from the reality-based community to the land of Lewis Carroll

And then a nearby slag of the writers:

And knocking the Golden Globes off TV is a self-defeating move that sacrifices a potential big win for a guaranteed small one... and they may try to do the same thing with the Oscars, a decision that, as The New York Times' David Carr has astutely pointed out, amounts to little more than ''picking a fight with many of their natural allies.''

At another weekly's web site , Newsweek's Joshua Alston wrote a piece called "Striking Out" that was billed as a diatribe against the writers, but began with a nod to their justification for striking:

[The WGA] did an impressive job of winning the propaganda war. They explained in clear and simple terms just how raw a deal many of their members were getting, how they receive mere pennies for pricey DVD box sets, how the industry's view of Web-exclusive content was such that they were essentially expected to work for free.

But, he quickly went on note:

In the last week the WGA's decision makers seem determined to be the ones to make the case for their irrationality. And so far, it's a very compelling case.

He added that the guild's seeming favoritism of Jon Stewart over Letterman in terms of granting Dave's Worldwide Pants a strike waiver was a "misstep" in terms of needed public sympathy:

This willy-nilly negotiating seems at the very least arbitrary and, worse, like some kind of Draconian muscle-flexing. In either case, it's not the way to convince viewers that the writers are powerless underdogs worthy of your sympathy.... The guild has taken for granted the fact that John Q. Public had to overcome his gag reflex in order to get behind the strike in the first place.

Menawhile, the Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein, piercing the veil of relative secrecy that had hung in front of the useful collusion of WGA head Patric Verrone and SAG leader Alan Rosenberg, ran revealing quotes from both, while stating,

This unprecedented guild alliance not only upended the Globes and promises to wreak havoc with the Oscars, but has Hollywood's studio overlords re-evaluating their dismissals of the WGA as a bunch of radicals and crackpots too hapless to engineer a successful labor stoppage.

While also citing the WGA's "missteps" with the confusing stance they've taken towards Jay Leno, he doffed his hat to the power the guilds have created together. He quotes Verrone:

It made a huge difference when Alan wrote a letter to our membership, saying essentially, 'Any doubts you might have, I'm here to say, SAG is with you. I was there and I can testify that it was the [studio] negotiators who walked away from the table, not your guys.'

Rosenberg then weighs in on the actors' unified rejection of crossing a picket line to enable the Globes telecast-"It sent a powerful message to the industry that we had the complete support of our biggest stars."--even as Goldstein sections off the Oscars by tossing the octopus at the Globes' sponsoring Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

... a show presented by a group of obscure foreign journalists who, outside of the actual night of their awards, are taken about as seriously as Paula Abdul.

But the Oscars are a different story. The academy is an institution held in high regard by one and all, both inside and outside of Hollywood.

It's "a move fraught with peril", notes the columnist but Rosenberg isn't cowed:

I'm sure we'll take some heat. But if the Writers Guild is picketing, we will follow their lead. I'm assuming no one will be crossing the picket line. You certainly won't see me on the red carpet. I know it's the Oscars, but we're taking a stand -- the bigger the event, the greater the impact.

And although the other guilds are now dependent on the DGA to carry negotiations forward, and the DGA's negotiation committee chairman is none other than Oscars producer Gil Cates, Goldstein sees a pretty even....hockey rink:

Seeing the kind of alliance the WGA has forged with SAG, I wonder if the all-powerful studios, accustomed to picking off the guilds one by one, will discover that solidarity is more than just a tidy slogan.

As this week's events have shown, the guilds have some weight to throw around too.

Undermining the blood sport aspects of all this has been a certain unavoidable resemblance to a high school social meltdown. Here's how Harris puts it:

Now that they have nothing to say, the studio chiefs huddle quietly behind their chosen negotiator, Nick Counter, who is currently doing an exemplary job of not negotiating. Presumably, he's earning his place as chief strategist by telling the CEOs to ''hang tough,'' a message that appeals to their desire to be seen as street fighters who can play hardball, not (as is more often true) the bright, nerdy kids with asthma who always got picked last for the team and don't recognize that power has turned them into bullies.

Harris likely wrote that little suspecting that NBC's co-chief Ben Silverman, speaking with E! News anchor Ryan Seacrest about the trashed Globes telecast, would stick his foot in his mouth up to the calf by saying, "Sadly, it feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom. But NBC wants to try to keep that prom alive."

Silverman was rewarded with a photo-shopped `snapshot' of himself in a ghastly orange jacket with a frumpy date whose head and face were a pasted-in AMPTP chief Nick Counter. The writers' sites also had lines like "Remember Carrie", and

You know, it's comments like that that make AMPTP and NBC publicists start drinking in the afternoon. Wow. He really should not try to talk to the press on his own. He could use a writer right about - now.

All this as strike time marches on and the industry's individual workers suffer. More on the larger economic picture coming soon in this space.

(An octopus thrown on the Detroit ice during a November 2002 Red Wings versus Hurricanes Stanley Cup game is removed;Photo by Harry How/Getty Images/NHL)