With No Guarantees Yet, WGA Pickets Disney

The Writers Guild leadership had mandated a show of force by the pickets on Thursday, the penultimate day before the guild comes together en masse in downtown Los Angeles at the Shrine Auditorium on Saturday at 7 p.m. There was some question of whether the twin sets of lawyers drafting (and comparing) the written form of a set of verbal agreements hammered out last weekend by a handful of top players in the conflict would have a final version that was a) complete and b) acceptable to both sides.

As the guild triggered a series of calls to get the membership out for the meeting, an estimated 600 pickets turned up at Disney (with a splinter group, as planned, picketing NBC Burbank although other picketing locations had been closed for the day). The casual and seemingly optimistic group were clearly happy to be marching in loose, chatty squads in the shadow of Disney's seven dwarfs.

Standing near the center of the rallying point in a cap that said, `Writer' and carrying a picket sign was showrunner (The Shield and The Unit) Shawn Ryan, a member of the negotiating committee.

His comments, delivered with an occasional grin as he squinted in the bright sun, seemed to epitomize the feelings of many on the line:

Sure, I'd rather be writing than striking...but until it's done, we gotta stay strong and be on the picket lines. Today it's Disney. We're cautiously optimistic, but there've been a few stops and starts already in this negotiation, so until our main leaders come back and say it's all done, we're just gonna keep doing what we've been doing the last three months

He held off, pending knowing the details, on venturing an opinion as to whether the membership would welcome the proffer:

That's presuming we have a deal by Saturday--I hope we have a deal to present to the membership by then, but there's no guarantee. If we do, we've had a couple of these big membership meetings before and they work the same way--John [Bowman] and Patric [Verrone] and David [Young] will talk, a couple others of us on the negotiating committee may talk, and all the members will have an opportunity to come to the microphone and express an opinion or ask a question.

For and all the other meetings we've done, we've stayed there until everyone who wants to has had the opportunity to ask their question. WGA West has 10,500 screenwriters who are very well educated, opinionated people, and you put `em all in the same room, it's gonna be interesting.

The previous meetings showed a great deal of unity, and I think this one will too. That doesn't mean everyone will necessarily agree, but we're like a family--they can argue a little bit over the dinner table but still all love each other.

Ryan said that while there had obviously had been some pressure from within, with certain unnamed show runners in particular dissenting from the union line in recent days,

There may have been people who felt the Directors Guild deal was acceptable in its own form..I was on the front lines of talking to people who had a gripe, and I did talk to a few people who were grumbling about the tactics we were using, but they were honorable guild members. I think it's telling that you never saw the names of these people in those reports. They wanted to have their voice heard within the guild. Once again, it's like a family, you have your arguments at the dining room table, but when company comes over, you slap the smiles on and it's all good.>

it's a democracy, and everyone's entitled to an opinion. I think he guild's strong enough to hear differing opinions...ultimately the majority will rule, but that doesn't mean that dissent is silenced in that room--you couldn't silence them if you wanted to.

(WGA negotiating committee member Shawn Ryan compares notes with fellow picketers in front of the Walt Disney Company gate in Burbank.)