A John Ford film marathon is always cause for celebration.

Turner Classic Movies is obliging on Dec. 10-11 with a sked of nine Ford pics -- some well-known, some less so -- to coincide Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment's Dec. 4 release of nirvana in a box for Ford fanatics with $300 to spare. The "Ford at Fox" DVD box set encompasses 24 pics the helmer did during his days on the Century City lot, plus the docu "Becoming John Ford" from Nick Redman and all kinds of other trimmings: a photo book, lobby card reproductions, etc. etc.

The TCM marathon unfolds over two nights, starting Dec. 10 at 8 p.m. with a little-seen 1931 comedy "Up the River" starring Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart and Claire Luce. The next night opens with the 1941's breathtaking "How Green Was My Valley." If you're not bawling by the end of this Oscar-winner about the struggles of Welsh coal miners, you ain't human.

So if you're not schooled in the Ford milieu, drink some coffee (or something stronger as Ford was wont to sip) and stay up all night, or set the TiVo, or go buy the DVD box set and take your own John Ford seminar this winter. The genius of his spare, un-showy, story-driven cinematic style is hard to describe in words (goodness knows he didn't care for hifalutin' film commentary stuff). You've just gotta have the experience of being sucked in within the first 30 seconds of one of his master works to understand why the eye-patch sporting, pipe-chomping Irishman (by way of Maine) and his pics rank so high on the list of Hollywood's all-time greats.

The TCM sked is posted below:

Let's hope there's real movement this week in the talks between the Writers Guild of America and the majors -- for the good of the biz in general and for the sake of "Brothers and Sisters" in particular.

This show has been growing on me all season, and it did again Sunday night, with a little help from a nicely written guest shot for the ever-charming Lyle Lovett (pictured left). "Brothers and Sisters" is the poster-child for shows that are too promising -- creatively and commercially -- to lose their momentum because of the Big Distraction of the strike.

I'm not the only one who thinks so -- "Brothers and Sisters" ratings have been solid all season on the back of 9 p.m. companion "Desperate Housewives." Most recent seg drew 12.5 million viewers and 4.8 rating/11 share in adults 18-49, and even more impressive in femme demos, including women 18-34 (5.6/15) and women 18-49 (6.7/16).

Another potent weapon ABC has in the wings is midseason drama "Eli Stone," from "Brothers and Sisters" alums Marc Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti and Ken Olin. Pilot for skein starring Jonny Lee Miller (pictured right) as a lawyer who suddenly becomes convinced he's a prophet is quite compelling, but it's doubtful ABC will invest in the launch of the show while the writers' room is still empty.

VH1 Classic has a Positively Fourth Street treat on Thanksgiving for overstuffed Bob Dylan fans.

As if there isn't enough Dylan fever stirred up by the impending release of Todd Haynes' biopic "I'm Not There," VH1 Classic is offering a 2 p.m. screening of a Bob doc from the Cate Blanchett years, "Don't Look Back," followed at 4 p.m. by "Bob Dylan Unplugged," an acoustic concert spesh from 1994. And at 6 p.m. it'll cap the night with an airing of Martin Scorsese's 2005 doc "Bob Dylan: No Direction Home." ...

Meanwhile, on Sunday HD Net has a program that Dylan might be inclined to watch, "American Voices: A Conversation with Dan Rather and Willie Nelson."

Rather will conduct what's described as an hourlong wide-ranging interview with his fellow Texan in which the Red-Headed Stranger riffs about the war in Iraq, the state of family farms and the legalization of marijuana. The 8 p.m. spesh will be followed at 9 p.m. by highlight's from this year's Farm Aid benefit concert in September, including perfs by Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews,   the Allman Brothers Band, Counting Crows and Montgomery Gentry. One of the many reasons to love Willie Nelson is that Farm Aid, the close-to-home charity Nelson founded in the dark days of the Reagan era, is now in its 22nd year. Funny how time slips away...

The real value of a good script in this town hinges not on the eloquence of the prose or the cleverness of the plot but in its execution from page to screen. Nobody understands this Hollywood truism better than television showrunners; it’s the challenge they tackle with every week.

As such, it comes as no surprise that these multitasking members of Writers Guild of America should have played such a pivotal role in the first and second acts of the scribe strike of ’07. The determination of a wide swath of showrunners shut the biz down, for all intents and purposes, in a hurry in the first 72 hours after the strike began on Nov. 5. And by many accounts, it was the growing restlessness of many of the same showrunners last week that prodded both the studios and the guild off of their rhetorical high horses to agree to resume formal negotiations on Monday.

“The showrunners were the tip of the spear in this fight,” said a top tenpercenter who’s been piped into the backchannel discussions among scribes, CEOs and top agency partners during the past fortnight of discontent.

(Pictured above: "Grey's Anatomy" star Sandra Oh marches with "Grey's" showrunner Shonda Rhimes, to Oh's right, and "Back to You" co-creator/exec producer Steve Levitan, on Rhimes' right, during WGA's Tuesday march and rally on Hollywood Boulevard. Below, the march at its peak covered three blocks. Pics by Matthew Simmons/WireImage)

Now this actually makes some sense to me.

"Made in America," the much talked-about series finale of HBO's "Sopranos," was in parts a commentary by creator/capo David Chase on the war in Iraq and the extreme denial (apathy?) that the vast majority of Americans seemingly have toward the carnage that's going on over there every day -- so he sez  in a first-person essay to be published in the December Men of the Year issue of GQ mag. (A GQ publicist was kind enough to send along a sneak peek.)

In Chase's view, it was "Made in America," as in, we've got it made in the shade here in the land of milk and honey, and we've got no clue and don't really care about how the rest of the world feels about us. In it Chase reveals the allegory behind those onion rings and what it would take to get a "Sopranos" movie on track. To wit:

The theme of that episode was “Made in America.” I used that title not only because Tony’s a made guy, and all these guys are made guys, but also because it was about the extreme amount of comfort Americans have, especially people with money. And specifically, it was about the war in Iraq—it was made in America, and as you saw in the show, Tony and Carmela just didn’t want their son to go, and they could afford to see that their son didn’t go. Like some of our leaders.

I felt, and I continue to feel, that our country is in a tremendous crisis right now, and people are focused on onion rings, and as it turns out, they’re focused on onion rings as they appear in the end of "The Sopranos." Not to get too didactic about it, but it was really sort of about how we are going about our amply fed, luxury-car life here, and the world is going to hell and we’re under tremendous threat. And people don’t want to see it.

Just as things were looking particularly bleak heading into the weekend, the emails arrived, one right after the other. And for a change, the AMPTP and then the WGA West were saying basically the same thing: Talks to resume Nov. 26. Whoo-hoo! ('Whoo-hoo' added for emphasis.)

This joyous news reached my BlackBerry while I was taking in the "Lou Grant" reunion at the Paley Center for Media. The reunion was a hoot, as these things go. They're all much grayer than they used to be in the Trib newsroom -- even Animal, aka thesp Daryl Anderson. But they're still feisty, particularly Ed Asner. When asked by a frothing super-fan type whether there was any hope for a reunion series, Asner quipped: "I'll work for food." When asked if he was ever sorry that his stint on "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Lou Grant" typecast him as the curmudgeonly Lou Grant-type, Asner didn't hesitate.

"I'm extremely lucky to have been chosen to do him in all his embodiments. He was a good guy," Asner said. "I could've been Ted Knight." (I think he meant "Ted Baxter" but you never know...)

I didn't froth too much, but I made a point of telling a few of the principals how much the show meant to an impressionable girl who only ever wanted to be a reporter when she grew up. (For a little while I wanted to be a novelist, and then I read "Ten Days That Shook the World" and "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" in quick succession and that pretty much sealed it.)

Linda Kelsey, aka Billie Newman, was gracious, as was exec producer Gene Reynolds. Allan Burns, who co-created "Mary Tyler Moore" with James L. Brooks and shepherded "Lou Grant" with Reynolds, was smart and funny and insightful about TV then and now. Moreover, Burns outta qualify for hero status with the younger-gen of WGA members -- he's been out pounding the picket pavement in front of 20th Century Fox every day that I've gone to the lines since the strike began Nov. 5.

Burns (pictured far left with Asner) noted that despite its Emmy and Peabody winning glory, "Lou Grant" was frequently on the verge of cancellation. Burns recalled "a famous meeting at CBS" a few weeks into the first season in 1977-78 with then CBS programming head Bud Grant, Burns and Reynolds and Grant Tinker, then head of MTM Prods.

"They told us we were doing it all wrong. We were a little 'uptown.' We want more action...What you're giving us is The New York Times and we want the Daily News." After hearing this, "Tinker had smoke coming out of his ears," Burns recalled. "You mean you don't want the New York Times on your network?"

Given the setting -- the lovely wood-paneled halls of the Paley Center for Media -- there was a funny story to tell about how the show went out after the 1981-82 season. Asner, of course, had been gaining noteriety for his outspokeness regarding the political situation in Central America, back in the days when U.S. foreign policy was greatly concerned with shooing Communists out of America's backyard, particularly in places due south of Texas like El Salvador and Nicaragua. (Asner actually made an interesting point that his "activism" was somewhat overblown in this period.)

And back in the days when even moderately successful primetime series routinely drew 20 million-25 million viewers, it was hard to hide from a "shit-storm" stirred up by the star of Big Three network show -- as Asner provoked in 1981 by taking part in the presentation of a $25,000 check to a humanitarian org that aimed to provide medical care to the needy in parts of El Salvador that were held by rebels. Humanitarian gesture to some; sedition to others. Conservative forces in Congress and elsewhere mounted a letter-writing campaign to CBS boss William Paley. And though a host of CBS execs denied it to Asner, he's always believed the story he heard after the fact about how "Lou Grant" got spiked.

"We heard that CBS (execs) had 'Lou Grant' on the scheduling board" in the spring of 1982 when they were setting the sked for the 1982-83 season. "And supposedly Mr. Paley came in and said 'What's that doing up there? Get it off, get it off," Asner recounted. "And at that point, 'Lou Grant' was off the board."

This just in from the home office at the Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan. This is why we've always loved David Letterman. From his spokesman Steve Rubenstein:

“Next week's tapings of 'The Late Show' and 'The Late Late Show' have been cancelled and we will continue to make a week-by-week determination about future tapings. However, it is important to Dave that our staff members have some degree of support during this uncertain time. Therefore, Worldwide Pants, which independently produces both shows, will continue to pay the non-writing staff of the shows – fully compensating lower-salaried employees, and providing a substantial portion of salaries for those at the higher end -- at least through the end of the year.  Of course, we all want to get back to work as soon as possible, and it remains our hope that both sides in this dispute will make progress toward that end. In the meantime, we will continue monitoring this situation closely as we make decisions regarding our future production schedule.”

POSTED BY STUART LEVINE

There probably wasn't a lot of love for the striking writers in the ballroom at the Grand Hyatt in Century City last night, but with the Paley Center for Media honoring NBC Universal honchos Jeff Zucker and Dick Ebersol that was to be expected.

It was a company night, for sure, and a quick one at that (more details later on).

Ebersol (pictured here with Paley topper Pat Mitchell and Zucker) has been NBC's sports maven for a while now, though he began his career at the Peacock in the entertainment division, starting up "Saturday Night Live" with Lorne Michaels in 1975. Eventually, he would become one of, if not the top, most important figures in the history of the Olympic Games.

NBC has a bunch of Olympics lined up over the next few years — Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012 — so there's little doubt Ebersol will remain busy.

Only half-kidding about Ebersol's influence when it came to the 2006 Olympics, newsman Brian Williams said in a videotaped message: "He renamed the city of Turin to Torino. That's the kind of power Dick has."

Al Michaels, who introduced Ebersol to the podium, added: "He may be the most important person in the history of sports television after Roone Arledge."

It's a bold statement but one that would be hard to argue. We'll forgive him for the ill-fated XFL.

In a very classy acceptance speech, Ebersol took time to acknowledge the importance of former NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff ("He treated failure and success in the same way") and colleague Ron Meyer, calling him one of most respected guys in Hollywood.

Throughout the portion of the evening dedicated to Ebersol, there was no mention of the tragic plane crash that took his son Teddy's life in 2004, but at the conclusion of his speech, Ebersol said, "I'd like to thank everyone in this room for the way they embraced my family three years ago."

Again, very classy.

In a very funny taped intro, the accomplishments and failures of Zucker were shown before his moment on stage. Included, of course, were his producing days at "Today," which helped catapult his career, and his rare moments in front of the camera as well. And what would a tribute to Zucker be without showcasing some of his historic flops, such as "Inside Schwartz" and "Good Morning, Miami."

Zucker soon took the podium and seemed much more business-like and less personable than Ebersol in accepting his award. He quickly addressed the strike — "It's a difficult time for all of us. We're in the middle of a seismic shift and I hope the issues will be resolved soon." — and congratulated his fellow honoree.

Zucker's speech might've set a record for expediency. I didn't time it but it felt like it couldn't have lasted more than 5-7 minutes. Geez, I had barely finished my key lime dessert. As soon as he was done, he introduced John Mayer to sing a few numbers for the crowd and that was it.

With a meal that started around 7:30, I was in my car by 8:50 (though I didn't sit through all of Mayer's performance), making for a short evening. Maybe it was Zucker's master plan, as he hoped people would be home to watch "Heroes" at 9. "We could use the eyeballs," he said, not kidding.

The quick night wasn't a bad thing at all. Just wasn't expecting the lovefest to end so soon.

— Stuart Levine

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Parry/Paley Center for Media)

Jimmy Kimmel's ABC late night skein may be temporarily idled by the writers strike, but picket lines can't stop the march of time. Kimmel toasted the onset of his forties with a birthday bash at Tao in Las Vegas on Nov. 9.

According to IMDB, the big 4-0 for Kimmel officially arrives on Tuesday (Nov. 13). Too bad he won't have a show to mark the occasion and show off pics like the one at left with his mom and dad, Joan and Jim Kimmel, and galpal Sarah Silverman apparently mistaking his cheek for a slice of cake (or maybe not?). According to an ABC rep, "Jimmy Kimmel Live" is taking it day by day but will fer sure be a repeat on Tuesday.

(Pic by Johnny Nunez/WireImage)

Congrats to this year's She Made It honorees. The Paley Center for Media's ongoing tribute to femmes in TV and radio announced an eclectic batch of 50 honorees for 2007.

List includes one of my heroes, Linda Ellerbee (pictured right). There are the no-brainers a la Gracie Allen and Jay Presson Allen; execs including Betty Cohen, Bonnie Hammer, Margaret Loesch, Abbe Raven and Lucie Salhany; journos including Nancy Dickerson, Betty Furness, Gwen Ifill, Andrea Mitchell, Hannah Storm, Nina Totenberg and Meredith Vieira; and multihyphenate creatives including Lee Grant, Salma Hayek, Marta Kauffman, Lynda La Plante, Shonda Rhimes (pictured left) and Jennifer Saunders. Third annual She Made It kudos are set for Dec. 6 in Gotham.

Complete list follows:

Perry Miller Adato

Gracie Allen

Jay Presson Allen

Candice Bergen

Frances Buss

Peggy Charren

May Chidiac

Betty Cohen

Judy Crichton

Nancy Dickerson

Margaret Drain

Rebecca Eaton

Linda Ellerbee

Betty Furness

Amy Goodman

Lee Grant

Bonnie Hammer

Salma Hayek

Maria Hinojosa

Gwen Ifill

Marta Kauffman

Barbara Kopple

Claire Labine

Lynda La Plante

Margaret Loesch

Nancy Malone

Caryn Mandabach

Mary Margaret McBride

Beth McCarthy Miller

Marilyn Suzanne Miller

Andrea Mitchell

Gloria Monty

Christine Ockrent

Suze Orman

Rosie O’Donnell

Abbe Raven

Shonda Rhimes

Martha Rountree

Radhika Roy

Lucie Salhany

Jennifer Saunders

Martha Stewart

Hannah Storm

Nina Totenberg

Ellen M. Violett

Meredith Vieira

Judith Cary Waller

Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Yang Lan

Paula Zahn

The word that comes to mind to describe the mood among the scribes on the picket lines during the past week is: resolute.

Over and over, the attitude expressed on the lines was one of calm, cool determination to stick it out for a "fair deal." Despite the early predictions that the Writers Guild of America membership would be split along income-strata lines, there is no doubt that writers of all stripes, of all levels of experience and success are fired up by the feeling that the major congloms have been hosing them for years.

The WGA leadership has expertly built on that foundation of pent-up ire to help scribes gird for the strike that many rightly predicted was inevitable. On Friday (Nov. 9) at the mega-rally of at least 4,000 guild members and industry supporters held outside the Fox Plaza building in Century City, guild leaders and guest speakers including the Rev. Jesse Jackson very clearly drew a line between the WGA strike -- disparaged by some as a rich union's attempt to paint itself as blue-collar -- and the growing income disparity that has cleaved the nation into the super-haves, the haven't enoughs, the have-nots and the have nothings during the past 40 years.

"If they gave us everything that we're asking for, and then they went and did the same deal with the DGA and SAG, they would still be giving all of us less than each of their CEOs makes in a year," WGA West prexy Patric Verrone asserted to a receptive crowd on Friday.

(Can't absolutely vouch for Verrone's math, but we've all seen the studies on CEO pay gone wild and the widening gulf between the salaries of top execs and lowest-paid workers at many corporations.)  A picket sign in the crowd featured an unflattering picture of News Corp. prexy Peter Chernin, with "$34 million last year" scrawled underneath.

Seth MacFarlane, a wunderkind who scored his first multimillion payday before he was 30 with a hit animated Fox series "Family Guy," was a savvy choice by the guild to address the rally. His is a voice representing both the future of the guild and the promise that the biz holds to make (very lucky) people fabulously wealthy on the strength of a great idea. MacFarlane (pictured below) made a point of urging his fellow high-earners to keep paying their freshly laid off assistants for as long as possible. And he urged "the press" to get the message out to the general public that WGA members are, in the main, members of the five-figure annual income middle class, not the six-, seven-, eight-figure and above ultra-elite.

"Writers in this guild are not millionaires," MacFarlane stressed. "The royalties we're fighting for will make a big difference to them."

(Above pic snapped by Michelle Sobrino-Stearns/Variety)

Yikes, awkward timing for the season finale of "Weeds." Showtime skein's third-season closer involves our favorite gated-community suburbanites fleeing from a raging wildfire. Episode titled "Go" is set to air Nov. 19.

Showtime took pains to note in its listing release issued Wednesday that the segs were shot over the summer, and in no way is the show trying to grandstand on the real-life tragedy that hit so many in Southern California just a few days ago. In fairness to the show, wildfires are  a fact of life in this state, so it's a natural plot point. But now that "Weeds" maven Jenji Kohan and the rest of her scribe team are on strike, show's probably hard-pressed to tweak even a line or two if there's one that hits too close to the recent headlines.

I have to confess to being way behind on my "Weeds" viewing this season, but the season finale synopsis sounds intriguing enough to make me fire up the DVR this weekend and reconnect with our friends in Agrestic. I have to find out why Kevin Nealon's character appears to be getting romantic with his banjo.

(Pictured left, Mary-Louise Parker and Alexander Gould. Pictured right, Kevin Nealon.)

Multihyphenate Marshall Herskovitz has a thoughtful op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times looking at -- what else? -- WGA strike issues and how so many of the issues on the table are intertwined with the death 11 years ago of the FCC's financial interest and syndication rule. He also gets in a noticeable plug for his new online skein "quarterlife," which once tried to find life as an old-fashioned show on ABC.

(In the spirit of unabashed self-promotion, chapter one of a certain new book about the life of two now-defunct networks has a whole lotta info about fin-syn and its legacy, not that I'm plugging "Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN" or anything...)

As Herskovitz submits about the post-fin-syn world of network TV:

The most profound change resulting from that ruling is the way networks go about the business of creating programming. Networks today exert a level of creative control unprecedented in the history of the medium. The stories my friends tell me would make me laugh if the situation weren't so self-defeating. Network executives routinely tell producers to change the color of the walls on sets; routinely decide on the proper wardrobe for actors; routinely have "tone" meetings with directors on upcoming pilots; routinely give notes on every page of a script. (When we did "thirtysomething" in the late '80s, we never received network notes.) And by the way, they have every right to do these things. As owners, they have a responsibility to satisfy themselves that their product is competitive and successful.

Actually, Tom Selleck and my Variety colleague Brian Lowry are old pals, having done the Q&A tango once before at an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences event. They reunited Tuesday night at the Paley Center for Media for "An Evening with Tom Selleck," which I'm genuinely sorry to have missed.

Girls of a certain age will always harbor the deepest of crushes on Mr. Magnum P.I. Thomas Magnum's short-shorts drove us crazy. And like all great leading men, Selleck only gets better looking with age.

(Pic by Kevin Parry/Paley Center for Media)

Sadly, editing chores kept me in the office this a.m. For comprehensive coverage from Variety's Josef Adalian and Michael Schneider of the rally that brought out a who's-who of showrunners, check out Variety's Scribe Vibe strike blog.

Our cause is worth the fight. That's the message top showrunners plan to send to the nets and studios this morning (Wednesday) with a Very Special Episode of picketing outside of ABC's HQ in Burbank.

A strong turnout of high-powered types is expected to gather along West Alameda Avenue in an effort to demonstrate loud and clear that TV's ultimate multitaskers have thrown down their pencils and every other tool they use to deliver their segs under normal circumstances.

I've no doubt there'll be fists of fury in the air, lots of clever placards, quippy chanting and shouting into bullhorns. Showrunners have rallied with a surprising degree of solidarity around the belief that the contract talks with invariably be spurred along that much faster if production comes to a grinding halt this week.

Of course, there's been scoffs in many quarters about how some of the most successful folks in showbiz have suddenly gotten in touch with their inner blue-collar worker (and their scruffiest pair of jeans) to walk the picket lines that they drive to in Mercedes and BMWs from digs in Brentwood and Bel-Air.

But for others, the very fact that writers who are well off enough already to shrug their shoulders at a few pennies worth of residual hikes only proves that the picketing is more than money, (though it is surely about money). For the high-earners on the picket lines, it's about fairness, respect and recognition, something many feel they've had none of since the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers came to the table in July with a residuals revamp proposal that was instantly seen as an "attack" on the decades-old compensation formulas that keep film and TV scribes afloat between gigs.

Of all the strong convictions expressed by the hundreds of Writers Guild members who took to the streets on Monday, none was more pervasive among the strikers than the certainty that the television business as we know it today will soon be a distant memory.

Many scribes are convinced that soon all television program distribution, or at least the reruns that generate the stuff of mortgage and car payments for WGA members, are going the way of the Web. The advent of buy-to-own downloads, web streaming of full-length segs and DVD box sets by season will combine to put the knife in the kind of mammoth syndication deals that for decades have yielded the biggest windfalls for studios and profit participants.

The CEOs of the struck studios and networks undoubtedly share those fears/concerns -- on that point at least they can all agree. Warner Bros. did well with old-fashioned syndie sales to local broadcast stations of CBS' "Two and a Half Men," but is it the last one? How long will cablers keep paying $1 million-plus for rerun rights to an hourlong series that can be readily accessed on an on-demand basis?

"The media is changing. The way our product is getting out is changing," said writer David Fury as he stood outside the 20th Century Fox lot on Pico Boulevard holding up one end of a large homemade paper banner reading "Writers 4 a Fair Contract." Fury, who also gamely leaned into the street with a sign urging drivers to "Honk 4 Writers" (and they did, through the gamut of Toyotas, Mercedes, BMWs, Lexuses, Prius, Hondas, etc.), said the fire this time stems from a desire to protect themselves in the future.

The hangover of the much-reviled formula writers agreed to in the mid-1980s on homevid compensation hovers like smog in Riverside on a windy day in L.A. over every move the scribes and studios try to make on new media. In the view of writers who took roles in Monday's picket street theater, the biggest problem is that the studios have refused to make any moves on the matter.

"The younger writers -- the kids who are now in college -- are not protected" for the new media world order, said Fury, whose credits include "24," "Lost" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."If we don't do it now, a lot of writers are going to wonder why we let them down."

And so it begins, the shutdown scenario no one wanted to see. Sunday's marathon talks between writers and producers couldn't move the sides close enough together to prevent the pickets from going up all over town and key sites in Gotham (click here for the WGA's list of L.A. picket sites).

No new talks are on the horizon, as Variety's Dave McNary reports, but here's to hoping that will change soon. The local weather report forecasts a cooling trend during the next few days for the L.A. area, but we all know the temperature is going to rise several degrees as those pickets hit the street at 9 a.m. Of course, the big question now is how the Teamsters-repped showbiz workers react to pickets, and how showrunners and the multihyphenates a la "The Office" writer-thesps respond to a professional dilemma, as Variety's Josef Adalian and Michael Schneider report.

For a flavor of how workaday scribes are feeling during this season of discontent, check out United Hollywood, a blog maintained by several WGA members. And check Variety.com all day for updates.

Godspeed to John Wells and all of those who have been engaging in shuttle diplomacy during the past 48 hours in the effort to bring about a cease fire agreement between the WGA and the producers.

I sensed a shift in sentiment in the room Saturday night at Hollywood's Cabana Club during the ironically-timed 300th seg celebration of the Wells-produced "ER" -- a shining example of the kind of high-end scripted TV that is at risk in the WGA-Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers contract talks. (I confess to wondering if I wasn't being hopelessly Pollyanna-ish with my post-party post below, but I also felt it couldn't hurt to put some hopeful vibrations out there.)

If Wells, given his background and experience, is the one who can get the sides to build a bridge, or even some temporary scaffolding, to prevent the pickets from going up all over town on Monday, he really will be "the Eisenhower of all showrunners," as Warner Bros. TV boss Peter Roth intro'd him on Saturday night. Fingers crossed...

This just in: Gloria Reuben is set to reprise her "ER" role in an episode skedded to begin shooting next week (hopefully).

She'll be back as Jeanie Boulet, of course, though only the writers know where life has taken the one-time physical therapist in the eight years since the character exited the "ER" scene. I'm told Reuben's is a one-off return visit that has been planned for some time, a treat for the fans who have hung in with the show through thick and thin all these seasons.

(Pic of Reuben by Mark Von Holden/WireImage)

It was a celebration of a mighty impressive achievement -- "ER's" 300th seg -- but the talk of the party thrown by Warner Bros. Television Saturday night at the Cabana Club in Hollywood was all about what may transpire on Sunday and Monday.

Any gathering of TV industry insiders would have been abuzz with talk of the writers strike called for 12: 01 a.m. Monday and the Hail Mary meeting set for Sunday between the scribes and producers. But with "ER" in particular, it had to be the dominant theme given "ER" exec producer John Wells' background as a former WGA West prexy, one who skillfully helped avert a Defcon 4 scenario in 2001 when contract talks got heated (though not nearly as scalding as they are this time around).

In his brief remarks saluting the show and the people who make it, Warner Bros. TV prexy Peter Roth called Wells "the Eisenhower of all showrunners," and his use of a militaristic comparison was not lost on the crowd, unconscious as it may have been on Roth's part. NBC U Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman was more pointed, saying that Wells was going "fix all of it" in relation to the strike.

During his turn at the mike, Wells didn't use the S-word (except to sheepishly scoff at Ben's remark), but he did note that he'd done the math, and in the 14 seasons since "ER" dawned, skein has produced some 24,682 pages of scripts.

Neal Baer, a WGA negotiating committee member and an "ER" alum (who now shepherds NBC's "Law & Order: SVU" and does the work of angels as a licensed physician in his spare time), was on hand and inundated by "what's gonna happen?" queries. It was intriguing to see Baer and Wells and former "ER" showrunner Lydia Woodward huddled in a heavy-duty discussion toward the end of the evening.

As befitting the spirit of "ER," there was a define touch of optimism to all the strike talk among partygoers. The fact that a meeting was called for Sunday on Friday afternoon, hours after the WGA formally announced its plan to walk out on Monday, was widely dissected and discussed as a flicker of hope. There was also a feeling among the card-carrying types in the room that after Friday's strike announcement, some of the CEOs were starting to get more personally engaged and realize the serious-as-a-heart-attack-ness of the threat at hand.

Maybe, just maybe, there'll be enough of a give-and-take on Sunday for the scribes to hold their fire, even if it's 12- or 24 hour increments. Or in "ER" parlance, let's hope Sunday's meet turns out to be the final act of a two-parter, packed with guest stars and exotic location shoots, with a cliffhanger in the middle...and an uplifting ending by 11:59 p.m. Sunday.

Best quote to come from today's 1:30 p.m. newser at the Writers Guild HQ:

“We have 48 hours. What we really want to do isn’t to strike. What we want to do is negotiate. There still is time.” -- WGA Negotiating Committee head John Bowman.

The atmosphere at the guild's HQ was tight-lipped and fairly grim. This was not a coffee-and-pastry kind of affair.

There wasn't much rhetorical grandstanding by guild brass, and both WGA West prexy Patric Verrone and his WGA East counterpart Michael Winship seemed earnest in expressing that they are more than willing to go back to the bargaining table, so long as the producers ease up on the stance that the home video residual formula be applied to the new media realm as well -- at least "electronic sell-through," or digital downloads, of existing films and TV programs.

“There is still time and a deal to be made before this strike begins. We urge the studios and the networks to come back and bargain fairly,” Winship said.

During the wait for the newser to begin, there was some clucking among the journos and camera folks that the WGA had already gone to the trouble of getting a camera-ready screen backdrop reading "Writers Guild of America Contract 2007."

But after hearing them out, I'm convinced that none of the guild leadership wanted it to get that far -- despite the many accusations to the contrary. When asked whether there was any peacemaker who might step forward to avert this disaster, Verrone sounded firm in his resolve that "what we are seeking is fair," but not damn-the-torpedos defiant, either.

“No one was able to prevent us coming to this moment. There is still a chance that someone or someones will and that’s what we look forward to,” Verrone said.

For updates throughout the weekend, check out Variety.com and the United Hollywood blog maintained by numerous WGA members.

Among the many immediate concerns for WGA members on this dark Friday is what to do with those scripts they've been furiously writing up until the Pencils Down moment arrives. The WGA is asking scribes to turn in copies of their eleventh-hour scripts to the guild so that they can see where the pages stand at the time they were turned in -- and compare them to produced work down the road should things get that far. Studios, of course, are wigging out about this WGA strike rule, and some of them have even dispatched formal letters to scribes under contract expressly stating that they'll be in breach of their agreements contracts if they ship their scripts to the guild.

So what's a working writer to do? I'm told by a veteran talent rep who has vivid memories of the Five Months War of 1988 that scribes would be well-advised to turn in their scripts to their commissioning bodies, and then head to the post office to drop a copy in the mail to themselves, and then stick that package unopened in a drawer. That way they'll have a postmark time stamp to prove, should guild brass inquire later, when they stopped working on it and what shape the script was in when it was turned in.

Meet the damas of Calle Manzanares.

Univision and Disney have unveiled the cast of the Spanish-tongued version of "Desperate Housewives," and by the looks of it, and them, it appears they're going for a faithful translation of the ABC hit with "Amas de Casa Desesperadas."

Seasoned telenovela thesps Scarlet Ortiz, Ana Serradilla, Lorna Paz, Julieta Rosen and Gabriela Vergara are taking on the Susan, Gabrielle, Lynette, Bree and Edie roles -- or in this rendition, Susana, Gabriela, Leonor, Regina and Roxana. Lucia Mendez will take on the narrator/seen-in-flashbacks role of Mary Alice, aka Alicia. Even the male characters are adhering to their English-language counterparts, with sexy plumber Mike Delfino becoming Miguel Santini (played by Peruvian telenovela heartthrob Diego Ramos), sexy underage gardener John Rowland becoming Pedro Linares, etc. etc.

Univision's spin on "Casa Desesperadas" is lensing in Argentina and expected to bow on Univision next season.

Pictured above, from left, Ana Serradilla (Gabrielle), Lorna Paz (Lynette), Lucia Mendez (Mary Alice), Scarlet Ortiz (Susan), Julieta Rosen (Bree) and Gabriela Vergara (Edie).

A group of Endeavor partners paid tribute to Hope Rosen -- the wife of agency co-founder, partner and all-around good guy Rick Rosen -- on Friday by spending the day volunteering at Project Angel Food.

The Hollywood-based org is dedicated to preparing and delivering healthy meals to people in the greater L.A. area who are battling AIDS, cancer and other debilitating illnesses.

Rosen died of cancer on Oct. 9. She'd been an active volunteer for Project Angel Food for many years. Her friends Matt Solo, Richard Weitz, Nancy Josephson and Paul Haas could think of no better way to honor her memory than by rolling up their sleeves and doing the same.

Here's some good TV news that I overlooked earlier in the week: Brian Lamb, founder and face of C-SPAN, has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The courtly gentleman who had the foresight to push for a cable (and now satellite) channel dedicated to the goings on in Congress and other corridors of power back in the late 1970s, was lauded by the Prez for "elevating America's public debate" and for his "dedication to a transparent political system." (Straining not to make a wisecrack here...) Read all about Lamb and C-SPAN's accomplishments since its March 1979 bow by clicking here, and for more milestones, click here.

Also making the Medal of Freedom cut this year is author Harper Lee, whose inspiring 1960 novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" remains a standout of 20th century American lit, and the kind of book you can flip open to any page and be thoroughly drawn in, no matter how many times you've read it before.